Jessica Turner
VISA-2011-001, Professor Milena Tomic, December 4, 2018
Research Paper, OCAD University
Feminist Print in History: The Adoption of Printmaking in the Women’s Rights Movement
Throughout the history of The Women’s Movement, there have been a few key social catalysts which propelled the successful emancipation of women, all with the support of highly circulated print material. Each wave of feminism produced a plethora of material which tackled political and social issues to reform and radicalize the role of the female in society. With the introduction of the printing press, and later the use of screen printing, image-making in high volumes became utilized by many grassroots programs including that of The Women’s Rights Movement. In the 20th century, social justice came to the forefront as printmaking became a highly employed method for feminist movements to gain traction and produce change. From the early suffrage movement which gained American women the right to vote in 1920, to the second-wave feminism which birthed Betty Friedan’s The Féminine Mystique (1963); to the radical social reformist groups of the 1960s through the 1980s, such as the See Red Women’s Workshops, and The Guerilla Girls - cold hard facts of female inequality were brought to light. Each era produced print material that propelled each wave of The Women’s Movement into the next. It was especially crucial for women to adopt printmaking techniques, and to create compelling and thought-provoking art to broadcast their message(s). By producing prints such as lithography, woodcutting, screen printing, posters, novels and journals, the feminist groups were able to infuse the West with both their artistic talent and passion for humanity in an effective way. The use of printmaking in the 19th and 20th century Women’s Rights Movement proved that printmaking wasn’t just a man’s labor, but a tool for The Women’s Movement to utilize as a means to change the role of women worldwide, including the role of the female in the future.
The women’s suffrage movement, lasting nearly 100 years, gained women the right to vote over the age of 30 through the 19th Amendment in 1920, just following the First World War.[1] It is without doubt that the ability to create prints improved the chance for women to create this political change - in fact, suffrage posters were some of the first posters created that zeroed in on political disturbance and propaganda of the early 20th century. [2] Two British groups were specifically the driving force of the Women’s Suffrage Movement: The Artists’ Suffrage League and The Suffrage Atelier, producing a copious amount of visual propaganda throughout 1907 to 1924 for the suffrage campaign - Emily J. Harding being one contributing artist in particular (Kent 169). Both the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier were highly skilled in lithography, which was still often done on stone (although zinc and aluminum plates were also beginning to be used). Still, they practiced mainly woodcutting and photogravure techniques to produce propaganda for the Women’s Suffrage Movement. [3] Harding, a member of the Artists’ Suffrage League, contributed by making lithograph posters, including one that was printed in 1908-9 titled Convicts Lunatics and Women! Have No Vote for Parliament, an image which placed women, lunatics and convicts in the same bracket literally and metaphorically (see Figure 1). Depicted in the lithograph is an iron gate, and behind it a convict, a lunatic, and a woman, all locked up together. This lithograph was printed by J. Weinger Ltd. Acton W., and signed at the bottom left by Emily J. Harding Andrews. It was 40”x30”, and was also a part of the Howland Collection, which supported the work of artists to further the development of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (Felter 235). The desire for the right to vote, among other rights, ultimately was pushed by women as a human rights issue. Faust summarizes this saying:
“Feminism demanded emancipation from hardships through the same reforms of education and employment and rights within marriage, but these reforms were more than responses to an immediate situation. They were held to be rights. Feminism is thus a philosophy of emancipation for personal development and a rich life irrespective of whether or not a woman chooses to marry” (18).
The reality of the image Convicts Lunatics and Women! Have No Vote for Parliament is what’s most startling, because the truth was that women were considered ‘hysterical’ by psychoanalysts, placing them in the equivalent category of lunatics in asylums, and convicts in prison. Women of this era were under the influence of Freudian analysis, an analysis which analyzed women from the perspective of a homemaker, baby-bearer, and housewife - the product was depression and angst in women, but clinically diagnosed as neurotic - neurotic for wanting anything else, such as jobs, independence, and their own property, which was incredibly disabling to women, but didn’t stop them from being heard following WWII.
Betty Friedan released the prolific novel The Féminine Mystique in 1963; a book which proved how words can change the world, and how much influence one woman, and one book, can have on the world. A pillar in The Women’s Movement around the world, Friedan provided women with an alternative sense of self in The Féminine Mystique; an identity that doesn’t surround itself with caring for the husband, the children, and the home. Friedan, including many other female artists, produced work that contributed to the Women in Print Movement, a movement that was “nothing short of revolutionary: it aimed to capture women’s experiences and insights in durable - even beautiful - printed forms through a communications network free from patriarchal and capitalist control," which included the rise in production of silkscreen prints, lithography, books, journals, etc., by women (Travis 276). Friedan’s book was highly successful and propelled the production and distribution of various other forms of print, and by 1973 an astonishing 560 periodicals focusing on feminism emerged from the women’s movement. The confidence that Friedan offered women in the 60’s encouraged them to seek creative outlets outside of the home; the surge of feminist prints was clearly an indicator that women sought printmaking as an impactful create outlet - building the foundation for the third wave of feminism to develop in the 1990s onward.
Following the Civil Rights Movement, a mass amount of women entered the workforce and quickly capitalized on the revival of screen printing in the 1970s, a printmaking method which supplemented many independent women-only print shops. Silkscreen material was cheap and easily accessible, and so led to supplement the See Red Women’s Workshop, a grassroots program which emerged in response to the New Left views of the Free Speech Movement. This allowed feminist groups to create posters and artwork in mass amounts, including one specific work called So Long as Women Are Not Free the People Are Not Free, a screen print poster published in 1975 in London, England, by the See Red Women’s Workshop (see figure 2). [5] The See Red Women’s Workshop was a British radical protest group, sharing a left libertarian mindset, and produced radical posters not just for pro-feminist movements, but also for anti-hierarchy, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist programs following the enumeration of the Free Speech Movement.6 By operating their own printing press workshop in the UK, the adoption of print technology now had a significant impact on the Women’s Liberation Movement in places other than America. The poster So Long as Women Are Not Free the People Are Not Free was 28in x 20in, and illustrates three women printed in purple, shouting with their fists in the air against a yellow background. The poster radiates a powerful energy; an energy that was expressive of the newfound power and confidence women were gaining. The SoLong as Women Are Not Free the People Are Not Free is noticeably a colour theme adopted by the next generation of feminist protestors, and not so coincidentally, the work of radical feminist groups gained momentum.
In 1989, the Guerilla Girls created a lithograph called Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum? (see figure 3). This poster was shown at the Metropolitan Museum in response to the Met’s most exhibit at the time, which showcased an incredibly small percentage of female artists. This poster was a part of the third-wave feminist movement and was a more radical collective of women - with a framework surrounding radical ideas - allowing political and social issues to be confronted with a satirical angle (Freeman 800). The Guerrilla Girls produced several prints and posters, many where the texts dominated the colour or image. This specific work, however, was one of the first of their prints that were considered art - a naked woman with the head of a gorilla, depicting the Guerrilla Girl in the flesh, with the text “Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum?” below in bold black letters. The target? Art institutions such as the museum, and ironically gained a space in the museum while simultaneously satirizing the institution - a double-edged sword, allowing them to “critique museums right on their walls” (Kahlo and Wallz 208). The Guerilla girls used witty activist posters to help spread the message of the traditional museum’s oppression of women, often citing direct statistics such as, ‘less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art Section are women, but 83% of the nudes are female’ written directly below their poster Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum? To obtain these stats the Guerilla Girls “tallied the number of female nudes versus the number of male nudes and counted the number of works by female artists versus the number by male artists,” aiming to fight sexism and racism in the art world specifically (NGA 2018). This colour poster was highly successful, infiltrating the cultural hub of the 80s and 90s obsession with pop art, and helped to ignite the third-wave feminist era.
The Guerilla girls used witty activist posters to help spread the message of the traditional museum’s oppression on women, often citing direct statistics such as, ‘less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art Section are women, but 83% of the nudes are female’ written directly below their poster Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met. Museum? To obtain these stats the GuerillaGirls “tallied the number of female nudes versus the number of male nudes and counted the number of works by female artists versus the number by male artists,” aiming to fight sexism and racism in the art world specifically (NGA 2018). This colour poster was highly successful, infiltrating the cultural hub of the 80s and 90s obsession with pop art, and helping to ignite the third-wave feminist era.
The adoption of various printmaking techniques laid the foundation for the Women’s Movement to be propelled into a catalyst of change; the ability to fight for the right to vote, equal job opportunities, reproductive rights, and equal pay, amongst other rights were supported by the influx of radical prints, posters, and propaganda throughout the 20th century. The advancements of print technology and women’s recognition of how printmaking can be utilized were especially crucial to creating the effect. By developing their own workshops to create and publish prints, they were able to walk around government regulations for what was considered appropriate to print.
The vast circulation of these prints made it nearly impossible to not recognize their message: women deserve equality. The combination of an influx of women workers following WWII, allowed women to cleverly adopt printmaking techniques, which provided women a job outside the home, and an opportunity to stimulate change. From lithography to screen-printing and writing novels, each wave of feminism helped to support the next wave. Without the use of the printing press, the silkscreen, and the freedom for women to leave the home to write and publish books, The Women’s Movement wouldn’t be where it is today. Arguably, The Women’s Movement is the most successful and important movements in history, abolishing slavery, wage gaps, and abuse, feminist movements paved the way for parallel activist programs to recognize the widespread discrimination taking place in the world.
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