Course Syllabus

WOMEN, ART, and IDENTITY

Course Content

This course is an investigation of women artists from a wide geographical selection and their impact on early modern and contemporary culture. Significant female artists from the late 19th Century to the present will be analyzed. The course discusses the social and art historical contexts in relation to shifting female identities in art, including a debate on women in the context of institutional practices.

The analysis of individual artistic achievements in a variety of media will be supported by the respective literature, providing a historical, theoretical and critical background.

Field studies to significant museums and contemporary exhibitions in the Copenhagen area form an essential part of this course. The visits require active student participation (e.g. student presentations and group work).

Instructor

Andrea Homann, Dipl.-Ing. (Apparel Engineering/Fashion Design, FH Mönchengladbach, 1989). 1989-1990 Designer at Westfalenstoffe, Münster/Germany, 1990-1993, Educator at the Museum of Contemporay Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Since 1994, Educator at the Danish National Gallery (Statens Museum for Kunst). With DIS since 1997.

Consultation: Preferably after class

Email: aho@dis.dk.

Objectives

• To gain knowledge of the primary manifestations of women’s art from the late 19^th century to the present
• To acquire the ability to formally analyze and discuss specific art works and related historical and cultural parameters
• To enable students to critically evaluate the contexts of artistic practice, with a special focus on gender and identity
• To utilize museums and art galleries in Copenhagen as sites for experiential learning
• To elaborate specific topics from the period in oral and written assignments

Course Requirements

• Attendance and active participation in class discussions and during museum visits, including oral presentations
• Written assignments: Exhibition review, research paper, test

To be eligible for a passing grade in this class you must complete all of the assigned work.

Course Evaluation

Assignment	Percent
Research Paper (8 pages)	30%
In-class Test	25%
Exhibition Review (4 pages)	15%
Oral Presentation in Class	10%
Active Class Participation	20%

Field Studies 

GL Strand, Gammel Strand 48 1202 København K

Statens Museum for Kunst, Sølvgade 48-50, 1307 København K

The Black Diamond (The Royal Library), Søren Kirkegaards Plads 1, København

Required Reading

Block, Rebecca and Lynda Hoffman-Jeep: Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in “Gringolandia”, Women’s Art Journal, vol.19, No.2, 1998/99, pp. 8-12 (available on Canvas). 

Blocker, Jane: Exile in Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile. Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1999.

Biesenbach, Klaus: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. The Artist was Present. The Artist will be Present, in Klaus Biesenbach: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. New York, MOMA, 2010 .

Bishop, Claire: Installation Art and Experience in Claire Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical History. London, Tate Publishing, 2005. pp. 6, 8, 10, 11, 13.

Breuning, Malene: A Room of One’s Own. The Intimate Quality of Anna Ancher,s Portraits and Interiors in: I am Anna, A Hommage to Anna Ancher. Skagens Museum, 2009.

Caws, Mary Ann, Rudolf E. Kuenzli and Gwen Raaberg: Surrealism and Women. MIT Press, 1991.pp.1-26.  

Danbolt, Mathias: Striking Reverberations. Beating back the Unfinished History of the Colonial Aesthetic with Jeanette Ehlers´ Whip it Good, in Lotte Løvholm (ed.): Say it Loud, Nemo, Copenhagen, 2016, pp. 2-9.

Danto Arthur C. and Shirin Neshat: Shirin Neshat , Bomb, No. 73, New Art Publications, Fall 2000, pp. 60-67. 

Engqist, Jonathan Habib: As the Ground below Vesuvius starts to tremble. https://www.hesselholdt-mejlvang.dk/Text

Goldberg, RoseLee, The First Decade of the New Century 2001-2010, in Performance Art, From futurism to the Present, Thames and Hudson, London, 2011. Pp. 226-249.

Gördüren, Petra: “Sophie Calle, The Shadow (Detective),” in CTRL [SPACE] Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, ed. by Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne and Peter Weibel, Karlsruhe: ZKM Center for Art and Media/Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 410–415.

Grimberg, Salomon: Frida Kahlo’s Still Lifes: “I Paint Flowers So They Will Not Die”, Women’s Art Journal, Vol 25, No.2, Woman’s Art Iinc, 2004-2005, pp. 25-30.

Helland, Janice: Aztec Imagery in Frida Kahlo’s Paintings: Indigenity and Political Commitment, Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 11, No.2, Woman’s Art Inc., 1990-1991, pp. 8-13.

Jalving, Camilla:Between Visibility and Invisibility, 2010 http://trinesondergaard.com/writings/between-visibility-and-invisibility/

Kotik, Charlotta, The Locus of Memory: An Introduction to the Work of Louise Bourgeois, in Louise Bourgeois, The Locus of Memory. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1994, pp. 13,16-19, 22-27.

Körber, Lill-Ann: Figurations of the Hybrid, Julie Edel Hardenbergs Visions of Post-Colonial Greenland, in Globalizing Art, Aarhus University Press, 2011, pp. 183-203.

Krogh, Sine: The Phenomenal Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann, in Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann: Between Worlds, Aros Art Museum, Aarhus, 2021, pp 38-47.

La Cour, Astrid: Disappearing into the Past: www.astridkrusejensen.com/texts_and_reviews/index.php?Disappearing_into_the_past_By_Astrid_la_Cour

Lavin, Maude: Hanna Höch’s From an Ethnographic Museum. In: Sawelson-Gorse, Naomi: Women in Dada: essays on Sex, Gender and Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998, pp. 330-359. 

Mulvey, Laura: Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema in Art in Theory, 1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 982-989.

Nochlin, Linda: Why have there been no great women artists? In: Amelia Jones (ed.): The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. London-New York, Routledge, 2003, pp. 229-233.

Nochlin, Linda: Why have there been no great women artists? Thirty Years After, in Women Artists, The Linda Nochlin Reader, London, Thames and Hudson, 2015, pp.311-321.

Nørgaaard Larsen, Peter: Sensory Observation and Divine Inspiration, in Anna Ancher, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 2020. pp 30-47.

Pollock, Griselda: Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity. In Vision and Difference, New York: Routledge, 1988, pp. 50-90.

Radycki, Diane, Pictures of Flesh: Modersohn Becker and the Nude, Women’s Art Journal Fall/Winter 2009.

Ravenal, John B.: Shirin Neshat:Double Vision, in Norma Broude, Reclaiming Female Agency, Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005, pp. 447-451, 453-458.

Reilly, Maura: Toward Transnational Feminisms, in Global Feminisms – New Directions in Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, Merell Publishers, 2007, pp.15-45.

Reilly, Maura: Taking the Measure of Sexism, Facts, Figures and Fixes, in Artnews, May 2015 

Rosemont, Penelope:  Introduction, Surrealist Women - An International Anthology, The Athlone Press, London, 1998.

Sandbye, Mette: I am Nothing (Weekendavisen, 2010) http://www.tinaenghoff.com/writings.php?case_id=24

Salto, Iben: The Quiet Diversity , Milik Publishing, 2005

Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis, London, Jonathan Cape, 2006, pp. 294-300.

Søndergaard, Sidsel Maria and Tea Baark Mairey: Like a Quivering Between Things in Søndergaard, Sidsel Maria (ed.): Women in Impressionism, From Mythical Feminine to Modern Woman. Milan: Skira, 2006, pp. 225-273, 228, 230, 234, 235-240, 246-48, 256-258, 264-271.

von Hantelmann, Dorothea: The Experiental Turn, in On Performativity, ed. by Elizabeth Carpenter, Vol 1 of Living Collections Catalogue, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center2014.

https://walkerart.org/collections/publications/performativity/experiential-turn

Wagstaff, Sheena: Uncharted Territory: New Perspectives in the Art of Mona Hatoum, in Said, Edward and sheena Wagstaff: The Entire World as a Foreign Land London, Tate Publishing, 2000.

Williams, Judith: Images of Woman, The Photography of Cindy Sherman in Hilary Robinson: Feminism – Art-Theory: an Anthology 1968-2000, Oxford:Blackwell, 2000 pp. 453-459.

Academic Regulations  

Please make sure to read the Academic Regulations on the DIS website. There you will find regulations on: 

• Course Enrollment and Grading  
• Academic Expectations and Honor Code 

 

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