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Show Kruger uses commercial ad design to mock i ads and media for their determination of roles through ""1 I images. This work specifically criticizes the ability of images to stand in for j actual organic 'J subjects. ., if .' . y n selling feminism as "glitz and image," as Nadya Labi writes in in 1998, but the art world still had artists like Barbara Kruger, whose political feminist work never loses sight of the first and ferocious Feminist Movement. While Kruger currently maintains activist agendas, much of popular culture appears satisfied with powerful, yet feminine, images of women in the media. Women who slay vampires, who dump a line of boyfriends, who appear as teenage sex goddesses in control of their own virginal sexuality and are not afraid to flaunt it. Is pop culture's "girl power," what Labi calls the '90s feminism, good enough? For those like Kruger, it isn't. Through her work, she challenges the images and roles women have unwittingly taken on to perpetuate a system where men will always hold the upper hand. While Sherman's work challenges such ideas as the myth of woman and the woman as the object of the male gaze, it is through metaphorical representation. Kruger's feminist art is more literal and louder. Kruger's work consists of photographic images of women with words written across the images. For example, one work shows a woman with a mask over her face, the eyes cut out and a woman's magazine in the left corner. Written across the photograph, in large red letters, is the word, "deluded." One of the photographs shows two gloves intertwined and says at the bottom, "seduced by the sex appeal of the inorganic," criticizing the seduction of women in magazines, women which " are only images. Kruger says of her work, "direct address has motored my work from the beginning. I like it because it cuts through the grease" TIME Silver Print Sherman simulates film dips to challenge stereotypical images ' By acting as the 'sole mode! for,, her work, Sherman aho shows haw one wcmzn can v.c,r many masks.? - Cindy thormcn fa th "70s In the '70s, Cindy Sherman worked with the ideas cf Jacques Lacan's. lacan was a student and modi-- ; fier of Freud. He redefined Freud's ideas on gender and sexuality, and, to generalize, shifted Freud's essential ideas of gender to a gender that is determined by language and socially constructed. The sentiment that only women could paint feminine paintings .becomes slightly passe in the '70s, although such ideas still per-- '' ' ;$ist today. :' ; ' Sherman's interests include playing with the language of film, which often situates women in a certain secondary position to men. Sherman's work in the '70s included photographs of stereo-typicftlm stills. .7 Sherman said "Some people have told me they remember the film that ne of my images is derived from, but in fact I had no film in mind at all" Her quote emphasizes the stereotypes that inscribe themselves so firmly in peoples' minds that they seem to" friel they have "seen them before" when presented with them for the first time. Solomon-GodeacHs Sherman's major accomplishment her " transformation of "images cf woman" to as each of cf her the Sherman, by acting subject photographs reclaims subjecthood and brings to Light the effects of the male gaze. : y Untitled Film Still m 097") ; , ; u "woman-as-image.- IVe don't want fa feminists in fita 'SCs end '90s, and what cbout todayFflr& '80s and early '90s popular culture became less amorous with the Feminist Movement. As Claudia Willis writes in TIME Magazine in 19 89, "hairy legs haunt the Feminist Movement, as do images of being strident and lesbian." A TIMECNN survey supported her ideas. When 1,000 women across the country were asked if they identified themselves as feminists, only 33 percent answered yes. The revolutionary nature of the Feminist Movement and the fierce momentum with which it began turned many off. When asked if they thought the Feminist Movement had made women's lives better in the same survey, however, 77 percent of the women said yes. So, while women were hesitant to associate Feminism Right Now Angela Carter wrote, "The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of female experience is a clever confidence trick." So, is feminism dead? Not for Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer. Not even for Britney Spears or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Is feminism a dirty word? Maybe the word is, but the implications and demand for women's rights still abound. You just have to choose your poison. Will it be cleavage and ass shaking, asserting your femininity, or will it be aggressive challenging of roles for women? What may be more interesting is the way high heels and hairy legs meet in a dark alley. camired-mag.co- m themselves with feminism, they admitted it improved the status of women.'"' But feminism stopped being cool in popular culture. Ads for women's magazines returned to women-at-hommodels of liv-- " ing and women with children cleaning and shopping for food. As Wills said, "Feminism has also been the victim of its own extremist rhetoric and a press that was happy to amplify it" ' But although feminism in the 'Sos and '90s lost momentum in pop culture, high art was rampant with feminist artists. Take, for example, the Guerilla Girls, a collective group which distributed pamphlets and posters around New York. One of the posters reds,"Do women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan Museum? Less than five percent of artists in the Modern arts are women, but 85 percent of the nudes are female." e Zz:ZZZ Kh?f h t!; the bte 'sos, pep culture began RED Magazine march 28, 2002 Rj |