The Structure of “Gaze” and Women in Art Throughout the recorded history, we have lived in patriarchal social systems. Male artists dominate the art world and art is made for male audiences. Not only are women represented in singular and passive ways, but also some works were transgressing against females. Men maintain a studio system, which has excluded women from training as artists, a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their work, as well as from being collected by museums. The late 1960s manifested the dying of the avant-garde. With the rise of Post-Modernism, the authorities and institutions were fundamentally questioned. When Feminism emerged, women become particularly …show more content…
As Dr. Funkenstein pointed out in the audio lecture , Post-Modernism questions the authorities and critiques of institutions and museums. Post-Modernism is opposed to Modernism, which is about masculinity and hierarchy. There is no distinction between high art and low art. Artists use varied and mixed mediums, such as performance, film, installation, and photography. From the Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demand , museums are argued to “encourage female artists to overcome centuries of damage done to the image of the female as an artist by establishing equal representation of the sexes in exhibitions, museum purchases and on selection …show more content…
As a member of the Fluxus group, Yoko Ono focused on simple and small acts, such as cutting . In her performance, Cut Piece (1964), Ono sat on a stage and invited the audience to approach her and cut away her clothing, so it gradually fell away from her body. Ono presented a situation in which the viewer was implicated in the potentially aggressive act of unveiling the female body, which served historically as one such ‘neutral’ and anonymous subject for art. She transformed art from an object of aesthetic contemplation to a gesture of political action. Cut Piece became political postmodern female performance art. In Ono’s performance art, the issue of female representation in gender and patriarchy well as in modernism was implicit. The female body is gendered, raced, classed, and sexed. The performance provided an opportunity to demonstrate and potentially subvert the male