Day 9- Reading Response

The focus of today’s class was women and art. It chronicled the struggle that women have gone through breaking into and making name for themselves in the artistic world. The movie that we watched really illustrated how difficult it was for one woman, Frida Kahlo, and she was just one woman artist of the time.

The movie was the first thing that I watched for this class. I found it to be very informative about her life, but at the same time I think it is hard to relate to all women artists. She was most definitely a very powerful artist and was very capable of portraying her ideas on the canvas yet she had all of the means to make it possible for her to achieve these great paintings. She had money, she had a father who was a painter as well, she married a painter and she was given space to work and create. Now, I am aware that she did have huge hurdles to overcome because of her polio and bus accident, but I think that all of those issues that she had to face made her a better painter. If she had never been in the accident she would have never become a painter. So I think that while yes she is one of the most recognized women painters is she truly one of the best women painters, or was she just a victim of circumstances.

The Guerrilla Girl’s is interesting to me. I think that is it cool that they take the names of dead women artists and that they petition for more women notoriety in the public at large as well as in the areas of politics, art and film. Since they use humor I think that they are taken more seriously; this is an irony in itself but one that seems to work for the group. Their posters are loud but they command attention and they have a lot of great information on them that makes it hard not to take the group seriously. I think that it really cool that they take the pseudo-names of dead female artists, and it ties into the movie that we watched because one of the founding members took the name of Frida Kahlo.

The reading on the other hand I found really boring and kind of dry. It was hard to piece together the ideas that were being discussed. I thought that they had some good ideas about women and how they have been not fairly recognized but I think it was a little verbose and it was difficult to put all of the concepts together.