April 19th, 2017

Just like many other realms of art, music, and literature, the contemporary art scene is prominently a male dominated area. Many of today’s society cannot name 5 women artists who have not only influenced the history of contemporary art, but they are, most definitely, going to form its future.

Cindy Sherman

Untitled #250,1992

Kara Walker

    Kara Walker is a contemporary American visual, being best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker’s work eventually stirred up greater awareness and pushed discussions about racism in visual culture forward. Her work challenges her viewers with bizarre and out of the ordinary scenes. Walker debuted a mural at the Drawing Center in New York City, entitled "Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart." Not only was it the theme of this piece that mesmerized the eye and attention of critics but the what it spoke and its form "black-paper silhouette figures against a white wall"as many critics would say. This mural launched Walker's career, making her one of the most leading artistic voices on the subject of race and racism.

Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.

Barbara Kruger


     "you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans."

Barbara Kruger is a contemporary photographer and conceptual artist that from America who was born in 1945 to a middle class family. Barbara's work pretty much consisting of black-and-white pictures with eye catching captions that were almost always including red. Kruger has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t." All her pieces speak to the viewer with concise statements and questions about consumerism, desire, individualism, and feminism using the pronouns "our, you, we, I and they"  as a way to emphasize what she saying to the viewer. 

  

    Belief+Doubt (2012) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden           

           

Martha Rosler

                            Makeup/Hands Up from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home c. 1967-72


Martha Rosler was known for her Video art, Installation art, Performance art, writing, she was an american artist. Her work mainly focuses on the public sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women.Recurrent concerns are the media and war, as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to systems of transport. Martha Rosler's essays have been published widely in catalogues, magazines, As well as the fact that she has published sixteen books of photography, art, and writing.

House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (1967–72)

She conceived Bringing the War Home during a time of high intervention in Vietnam by the US military. Putting together pictures of Vietnamese citizens maimed in the war making literal depictions of the pictures.

Jenny Holzer

 Jenny Holzer was an american installation and conceptual artist who utilized original and borrowed text to create works that explored and questioned contemporary issues. She is best known for her flashing electronic LED sign sculptures that display carefully composed yet fleeting phrases that act as verbal meditations on power, trauma, knowledge, and hope but first started off posting them and writing them on Holzer began inscribing her texts on stone benches, sarcophagi, and floor tiles.

Truisms (1994)
Jenny Holzer used words as the primary medium, make attention and content of her art. Her signature style is marked by the extreme brevity and concision of statements.

Aldrich, Ian. "Kara Walker." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 17 Oct. 2016. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

"Barbara Kruger." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2017. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

"Cindy Sherman." The Broad. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.
"Cindy Sherman." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2017. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.
"Jenny Holzer." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2017. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

Martha Rosler: Photos & Photomontages. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

Cindy Sherman is widely recognized as one of the most imperative and significant artists in contemporary art. Throughout her career, she has presented a constant, eloquent, and provocative exploration of the building of contemporary identity. Through photography, Sherman opened some of the gender stereotypical roles of women that were expected with the unequal status. As she utilizes the camera and various tools of the everyday cinema, such as makeup, costumes, and stage scenery, to recreate common impressions, or iconic "snapshots," that signify various concepts of public celebrity, self-confidence, sexual adventure, and other socially sanctioned, existential conditions.