Caitlin Burke

Waging the Women Art Revolution
08/25 | Caitlin Burke

Woven intermittently amongst interviews and archival film footage, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s documentary !Women Art Revolution offers viewers slides of artwork by female artists rarely, if ever, seen in the classroom. The images create a type of impromptu art history class on the feminist art movement, and by connecting it with the trajectory of American history from the 1960s onward, she astutely places the movement in historical context. Simply as something to watch, WAR is enjoyable: interviews with important figures such as Judy Chicago, Marcia Tucker, and Lowery Stokes Sims are witty, insightful, and replete with anecdotes. Yet as an analysis of feminist art, Hershman Leeson posits an unsettling conclusion: while the efforts of feminist artists were not all for naught, much of their work’s significance has been glossed over throughout the decades, largely due to the same hegemonic structures they fought against.