WOMEN DEVALUATION IN THE HISTORY OF ART. Visual & Performing Arts

WOMEN DEVALUATION IN THE HISTORY OF ART
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Introduction
           The year 1968 is perhaps more than any other year will be remembered as the decade of radical change. Not only did the year witness, the occurrence of several events such as the political assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr in the political front, the year also saw a transformation in the art world. Human civilization has come and go to forget the contributions of women in different institutions, including art (Strong, 2002). There is much more that remains to be done in art institutions such as schools, museums, public galleries and practices review before any changes occur in women's position in art. Several investigations in art history depict that women as subjects and artists have been devalued in the history of art (Collins, 1979). The revolutionary events that happened in the 1960s made the decade a turning point for the social revolution of art as it saw numerous artists becoming political activists in challenging the patriarchal culture of men as authorities of society (Akdemir, 2017). Furthermore, the art from this era reveals the transformation accustomed to the political climate.
           Although the term gender refers to both sexes, gender issues as a concept are majorly driven by the emergence of feminism (Strong, 2002). The paper argues that gender is the social and cultural classification of femininity and masculinity and not the biological determination of the sexes. Therefore, gender representations of women in the art should be the outcome of the cultural processes that define a sexual and social identity that is not based on the misrepresentations of the patriarchal culture of traditional society before the 1960s. In this paper the artworks of Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero, the Guerrilla Girls and Robert Mapplethorpe are studied to understand the depiction of the various representation of the woman as subjects and creators to acknowledge women as important contributors in supporting society as a whole.
 
Challenges and Misrepresentations of Women in Art
As highlighted, the differences in gender mean the social roles that are accustomed to one on the basis of either being a male or female. Therefore, being a man or woman represents be biological structure but the sociological status is represented by masculinity and femininity. Hence, culture determines the gender differences thus identifies the prevailing values in the socialization process.  
Women Undervalued as a Subject of Art
           Under the patriarchal culture, women as the subject of art were limited to the definition of men on how they see femininity. However, men's specific genres in portraying women are misleading and do not capture the women in art. Men often focus on two types of women as a subject of art, which includes the female nude and social stereotypes.
1. The Female Nude
           The first gender issue in art is the false representation of the female body. Before 1968, the traditional subject matter regarding women is mostly represen...