“Female Experience in Art"":

The Impact of Women's Art in a Work Environment

Ruth E. Iskin

In early summer of 1975 | was asked by the
Women’s Committee and the Office of Equal
Opportunity of Aerospace Corporation to cu-
rate an exhibition of women’s art on the subject
of female experience. This seemed to me to
offer the potential of reaching a broad audience
and avoiding the defensive reactions often at-
tached to “feminist art” or “female sensibility”
in the art world.! This art has been at the heart
of an ongoing, often heated controversy which
has clouded the issues and obstructed direct
perception of the work.

Female experience has been the starting point
for the new art created by feminists since 1969.
Consciousness raising and other forms of wom-
en’s communication, sharing and group action,
initiated as a result of the women’s movement,
made female experience a rich source of subject
matter and sparked the fresh energy with which
women are making art. For the show | selected
the work of 15 L.A. artists? to represent both a
broad scope of women’s experiences and a di-
versity of media, ranging from large environ-
mental pieces to paintings, drawings, photog-
raphy, prints, collage, assemblage, and artists’
books. In an attempt to build a bridge between
the art and the creators’ intentions, | request-
ed written statements from the artists, which,
along with biographical information, were
available in a folder in the exhibition area.

The exhibition was on view from August 18th
through September 5th in the Cafeteria Confer-
ence Dining Rooms of the Aerospace Corpora-
tion. It was the first exhibition of professional
art on the company’s grounds, preceded only by
shows of art by employees. Although sponsored
and funded by the corporation, the show was
initiated by feminist employees who conceived
it to offer “insight into the emotional aspects of
contemporary women.”3 They scheduled it to
coincide with Women’s Week, a program fea-
turing prominent speakers and entertainers.

The management of Aerospace Corporation
(“a non-profit research and development corpo-
ration which provides technical direction of
general systems of engineering, primarily for
the Air Force”4) had been forced to develop
new policies for hiring women in order to meet
affirmative-action requirements for receiving
government funds. Women are in the minority,
constituting only 25% of the roughly 3,200
Aerospace employees. Most of them (80%-
85% ) are in lower-echelon clerical and secre-

tarial positions; only a few rank among the engi-
neers, scientists, or chief administrators. The
company was, no doubt, hoping that the art ex-
hibition and the activities of Women’s Week
would go on record as testimony to their new-
found good will toward women. Much to my
surprise, and to the dismay of the sponsors, the
exhibition became the focal point of hot de-

bate. Violent emotional reactions, protest and.

support quickly assumed the dimensions of a
local scandal and echoed for months in letters
to the editor in The Orbiter, the company’s
newspaper.

The art in the exhibition offered a feminist
point of view on subject matter usually treated
from a male perspective. Though one might
assume that the controversial responses arose
out of an alienation from contemporary art
forms, it seems that the conflict stemmed pri-
marily from feminist content.> None of the
works included were blatantly political protest
art, yet they all reflected, to varying degrees, a
new feminist consciousness. It was this con-
sciousness —judging from the reactions of many
of the female viewers—that was unfamiliar
and threatening.

We are accustomed to think of political art as
crude, illustrative, or plainly propagandistic, in
contrast to “good/serious/modernist” art. It has
of course been pointed out that no art is entirely
disconnected from its historical, political, cul-
tural, and geographical environment, and that
therefore any art reflects these conditions.
However, feminist art is often labeled political
art because the consciousness it reflects is held
by a minority, and it is at odds with the tacit
beliefs of those in power. The label “political
art” is used to demean the work rather than to
evaluate its artistic significance.

In a recent interview with Judy Chicago, the
artist articulated her thoughts and feelings
about these issues:

The issue of politics for me arises at the point
where my work interfaces with culture; it does
not arise at the point of origin in my studio. |
never think about politics when | make my art;
rather | think about being true to my own im-
pulses, and for a woman to be true to her own
impulses is, at this point in history, a political
act. ... What ! challenge is the idea that mas-
culinity is inherently better than femininity;
that hardness is better than softness, that de-
fensiveness is better than vulnerability, and

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