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still ignore the political potential of abstraction.9
They accept male definitions of what art is, and
do not deal with the evolution of a feminist
creative process or feminist art forms. Theirs is a
reformist approach to a revolutionary endeavor.

| am reminded of Andrea Dworkin’s “after-
word”—"The Great Punctuation Typography
Struggle” —in her book Woman Hating, where
she explains how the text was altered against
her will by the publisher’s insistence on upper-
case letters and standard punctuation. She had
wanted the book to be as empty of convention
as possible, to create a new form that would
merge with the content.

reading a text which violates standard form
forces one to change mental sets in order to
read. there is no distance. the new form, which
is in some ways unfamiliar, forces one to read
differently—not to read about different things,
but to read in different ways.

to permit writers to use forms which violate
convention just might permit writers to devel-
op forms which would teach people to think
differently: not to think about different things,
but to think in different ways. that work is not
permitted.10

The fact that innovative form is so feared by
the male establishment shows that like content
it has a power of its own. If our lives and our art
are connected, and if “the personal is political”
in the radical sense, then we cannot separate
the content of our work from the form it takes.

As abstract artists, we need to develop new
abstract forms for revolutionary art.

The women’s work I've discussed here, and |
include my own, is moving in this direction. We
are not yet there. Hopefully, as we create art
within the context of other women’s art, and
within the context of evolving feminist theory,
we will develop a new visual language. Art in
transition is political, for it both is our develop-
ment and describes our development. In a sense
we are coming out through our art, and the
work itself is a record of the ongoing process of
developing a feminist esthetic ideology.

1. Alexa Freeman and Jackie MacMillan, “Prime Time: Art
and Politics,” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly (Summer,
1975).

2. Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the
Cold War,” Artforum (June, 1974).

3. Brooke, “The Retreat to Cultural Feminism,” in Femi-
nist Revolution, ed. Redstockings (New York, 1975).

4. Patricia Mainardi, “Quilts: The Great American Art,”
The Feminist Art Journal (Winter, 1973).

5. Elizabeth Weatherford, “Craft for Art's Sake,” Ms.
Magazine (May, 1973).

6. Ibid.

7. Kathryn C. Johnson, catalogue introduction to
“Changes,” exhibition by Betsy Damon and Carole
Fisher at the College of St. Catherine (St. Paul, Minn.,
1976).

8. Ibid.

9. Freeman and MacMillan, op. cit.

10. Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York, 1974).

’

Harmony Hammond is an artist living in New York who
teaches, gives workshops, and has shown her work here
and elsewhere. She has also studied martial arts, Tai Chi
Ch’uan and Aikido.

Joan Snyder. Small Symphony for. Women 1. 1976. Oil and
mixed media on canvas. 24” X 72”. (Photo: Libby Turnock.)