Walsh Library Gallery
presents

Exploring Gender Roles
Perception and Perspective
(Click here for the introduction and exhibition)

Vision and Revision

by Sue Scott

Exploring Gender Roles: Perspective and Perception brings together artists from around the country who use both traditional (painting, drawing, sculpture) and non-traditional (crafts, found objects, rug hooking, embroidery) methods to explore issues of stereotypes, gender and beauty. Positioned against the backdrop of current events, popular culture and politics, this exhibition is both timely and germane.

The works included in this exhibition either add to or question the historical dialogue of gender roles. Beyond dealing specifically with stereotypes, many artists in the show also tackled broader issues related to gender, such as: the breaking of the glass ceiling; dissolution of marriage; the crisis of mothers not being able to mother; suburban sprawl and the myth of the picket fence; costumes, fashion and fetishes; rampant consumerism and its effect on both men and women; gender identification; issues of genetics, reproduction and fertility; sense of space; and exploring new ways to question stereotypical portrayals of women.

It’s 2004. We live in a world threatened by terrorism, plagued by economic insecurities, suffering from the aftermath of war in Iraq and facing environmental crisis. Yet, a hot point of the upcoming presidential election is a gender issue- the legalization of gay marriage. Presidential candidates, no longer able to hide behind veils of decorum, are forced to take both a political and personal stance on the issue. What is mystifying is not that overarching issues of gender and sexuality have seeped into popular culture, literature, art and politics at this historical and cultural juncture. The question it seems should be, what took so long?

As Micaela di Leonardo and Roger N. Lancaster observe in the introduction to their book, The Gender Sexuality Reader, “Sometime in the 1960s, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, Western understanding of gender and sexuality changed.” Following the Stonewall Riots, which took place in New York City in 1969, gay rights activism exploded. By the early seventies, the Feminist Movement was in full swing and many feminists believed they were transforming culture. As di Leonardo and Lancaster further note: “Actual historical shifts, however, are far more complex than popular cultural representations allow; popular culture itself is also an inseparable part of change in gender and sexual relations.” Thus, television, movies, popular fiction, art and crafts are not only inextricably tied to the changing perception of gender roles, they also affect it.

In her book, Differencing the Canon, Griselda Pollock speaks of the art historical canons, or standards of Western art that still to this day define beauty. The question she poses is should this traditional canon be rejected, replaced or reformed? Pollock feels the answer lies in an acceptance of differences rather than in the creation of a hierarchy.

Issues of gender and identity have been part of contemporary consciousness for many years and thus one might be tempted to see these topics as having already been considered in depth. However, theory does not move in a linear manner. There is no concrete conclusion to reach. Gender-inspired art continues to offer a rich intellectual, conceptual and, at times, explosive field to mine. Revision, as Adrienne Rich notes is the “act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction.” Vision and revision go hand in hand

     Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leondardo, ed. The Gender Sexuality Reader, New York: Routledge, 1997.

     Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon, New York: Routledge, 1999.