Busy, busy and more busy

Some of you may have been wondering why I have not updated suzannemacnevin.com recently.

Well the truth is I am busy working my cute little *** off to make ends meet.

I call it the bane of all activists, artists and do-gooders. You still have to make a living regardless of your political, social or even artistic goals. I am not a starving writer by any means, but I certainly do feel like one sometimes.

This means little time to write, to organize, to paint, or whatever it is you do.

Being busy all the time is also emotionally frustrating. You want to be doing other things, but you are so busy from working that when you come home you just want to sit around eating ice cream and watching old Seinfeld episodes.

Why? Because laughter requires almost no brain power.

And when you are emotionally and creatively spent, working on artwork, writing or social activism ends up taking a backseat to the simple need of going to work, coming home and just chilling before you fall asleep and have to do it all over again.

For me this feels like patriarchy is winning. As if all the rapists, anti-feminists, deadbeat daddies, femicide murderers and other pricks in the world are getting away with whatever they are doing simply because I am too busy to talk about them and raise awareness.

As if the entire weight of the world rests on my tiny shoulders.

But then I realize that there is many more like me. You, my loyal readers, other feminist writers / activists who are fighting the good fight - fighting for freedom for all women. There are millions of feminist websites out there all pushing for equal rights for women and men.

And so I apologize that this is one of very few posts in 2014 so far. But I am still here. Still thinking the good fight even though I am not always able (time wise) to write about it.

And when I find more time I will be back to write more, spreading truth, justice and the feminist way!

Nobody is Immune to Breast Cancer

Wonder Woman, She-Hulk, Storm and Catwoman are not immune to breast cancer.

What makes you think that you are immune to a disease that effects millions of women?

Regular breast self exams can help detect lumps early on and save your life.

Gadgets just make things more Complicated

You are probably familiar with the Microsoft Office Labs vision of what 2020 might be like. Its in the video below if you haven't seen it before.


However I want to point out something of interest...

The gadgets don't actually make your life easier. They just make everything more complicated and time-consuming. Yes, they look kewl and interesting, but most of the time (99% or so) people are just wasting time on such things and not actually "building" anything.

Now in the video they do, eventually, design a rooftop garden for buildings in the future. Which is a nice idea, absolutely. But did they really need to use all those gadgets to design such a thing?

Nope. They could have done it a lot faster the "old fashioned way" and not wasted all that time playing with their toys.

Which begs the question... will so much of our society in the future be spent twiddling with gadgets and designing stuff (that rarely gets built) or will be actually putting our skills to use and BUILDING things.

I chalk it up to wasted "manpower". Take Britain for example, which has just over 2.5 million unemployed people right now (not counting me, I'm a professional writer).

That is 2.5 million people who could be building things. Building homes. Bridges. Roads. Parks. Rooftop gardens. Greenhouses. Windmills. Solar panels. Building things that would make Britain even more amazing than it already is.

Now what would it cost to employ 2.5 million people and give them a decent salary? Say 50,000£ per year (about $80,000 USD). Well it would cost £125 billion per year.

Now I admit 50,000£ is a lot. The average annual wage in the UK is actually 36,000£. So maybe we don't need to spend that much.

£90 billion would cover it and give those 2.5 million an "average job" building things that make the UK a greater place.

Well... let me put it this way.

The UK already spends £190 billion on "social protection services" every year. Another £119 billion on health care. £88 billion on education. £38 billion on defense. And so forth.

The pie chart on the right is from the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

So an extra £90 billion to give every unemployed person in the UK a job building stuff isn't actually that big of a deal. It is, ahem, controversial and a wild idea, but it would solve a host of problems simultaneously.

#1. It would pretty much eradicate unemployment and homelessness. As long as people are willing to work, they will automatically have a job waiting for them.

#2. Crime/theft would drop dramatically. People who have jobs have little reason to steal things if they are making a decent wage.

#3. Foreign investors would flock to the UK because our economy would be booming. Once the initial stages pass the private sector would start hiring more people and the amount of money being used for "building things" would drop dramatically over time.

#4. The UK government would get most of their investment back in income taxes anyway. Not just the newly employed people, but from everyone else as well. Why? Because people would be spending more, which means other companies will be making more, which means they too would be paying more in income taxes.

#5. More people doing manual labour means more people who are exercising as part of their daily routine. This would boost the overall health of the country. Which means health care costs would decline a bit.

HOWEVER THERE IS A BIG FLAW IN MY IDEA

And it is that many people simply refuse to do manual labour.

Pick up a shovel and do work with my hands? Pff!

I think this is because many British people now have this sense of entitlement, that they don't "need" to work. Myself included. I'm a writer / former teacher. I've never worked a manual labour job beyond when I did some gardening during high school.

But if someone offered me a job in a greenhouse tending plants, I would do it. I think that would be an awesome job. (I love greenhouses.)

The same thing is true of Canada and the USA. Nobody over there is willing to pick apples or do agricultural work. So instead they import hardworking Mexicans to do all the work instead. And its not just farming either... the food services industry is mostly Mexican and Asian people. Why? Because most white people are too proud to work in McDonalds.

White people are, frankly, lazy and feel overly-entitled. Many of them think they are too good for manual labour. They went to college or university, they got a diploma or a degree, but they cannot find work in their chosen degree because frankly how many psychologists and social studies majors does the world really need?

No. The real jobs are in manufacturing and in building / growing things. Which is why places like China, Taiwan, Japan, etc are now manufacturing superpowers compared to many other countries - because they mass produce things and their employees do it for relatively little - and they're not too proud to refuse to do the work.

Our Arrogance Will Be Our Downfall

"Love is Blind" by Eve

ENTERTAINMENT - Here is a good song for anyone who is upset about domestic violence. Kudos to American rapper Eve for making this song.




"Love Is Blind" Lyrics

Hey, yo I don't even know you and I hate you
See all I know is that my girlfriend used to date you
How would you feel if she held you down and raped you?
Tried and tried, but she never could escape you

She was in love and I'd ask her how? I mean why?
What kind of love from a n*gga would black your eye?
What kind of love from a n*gga every night make you cry?
What kind of love from a n*gga make you wish he would die?
I mean shit he bought you things and gave you diamond rings
But them things wasn't worth none of the pain that he brings

And you stayed, what made you fall for him?
That n*gga had the power to make you crawl for him
I thought you was a doctor be on call for him
Smacked you down cause he said you was too tall for him, huh?
That wasn't love, babygirl you was dreamin'
I could have killed you when you said your seed was growin' from his semen

[1] - Love is blind, and it will take over your mind
What you think is love, is truly not
You need to elevate and find

[Repeat 1]

I don't even know you and I'd kill you myself
You played with her like a doll and put her back on the shelf
Wouldn't let her go to school and better herself
She had a baby by your ass and you ain't giving no help

Uh-huh big time hustler, snake motherf*cker
One's born everyday and everyday she was your sucker
How could you beat the mother of your kids?
How could you tell her that you love her?

Don't give a f*ck if she lives
She told me she would leave you, I admit it she did
But came back, made up a lie about you missing your kids
Sweet kisses, baby ain't even know she was your mistress

Had to deal with fist fights and phone calls from your bitches
Floss like you possess her, tellin' me to mind my business
Said that it was her life and stay the f*ck out of it
I tried and said just for him I'll keep a ready clip

[Repeat 1 (2x)]

I don't even know you and I want you dead
Don't know the facts but I saw the blood pour from her head
See I laid down beside her in the hospital bed
And about two hours later, doctors said she was dead

Had the nerve to show up at her mother's house the next day
To come and pay your respects and help the family pray
Even knelt down on one knee and let a tear drop
And before you had a chance to get up
You heard my gun cock

Prayin' to me now, I ain't God but I'll pretend
I ain't start your life but n*gga I'mma bring it to an end
And I did, clear shots and no regrets, never
Cops comin' lock me under the jail
N*gga whatever my bitch, f*ck it my sister
You could never figure out even if I let you live
What our love was all about
I considered her my blood and it don't come no thicker

[Repeat 1]

But what does this have to do with feminism???

ART HISTORY - So I was browsing on artfem.tv and I found this video called "Reptilica" by Barbara Agreste...

And my basic response was "But what does this have to do with feminism???"

You see artfem.tv promotes feminist art. No problem there. Its what I was looking for.

But the video "Reptilica" was art... but it had nothing to do with feminism. Yes there was a woman in the video, and some leaves and worms, and something that looked like they might be worm eggs (not sure, hard to tell), but there was no men in the video, nothing about equality... it didn't even have a plot.



You see this is part of a larger problem I see in the feminist movement... its stuff that is female, but has nothing to do with actual feminism.

ie. If I photograph a woman and she is just sitting there not doing anything, is that feminist? No. There is no narrative. Its too meaningless. People might look at it and think its advertising the clothes she is wearing. I might as well paint an abstract painting and give it a feminist slogan for the title and that would have more meaning to it.

Feminism is about equality and pushing the boundaries of what people think is acceptable for women to do (and hopefully making people realize there is NO BOUNDARIES). Women with careers, women in sports, women in politics, women balancing the needs of family with their own needs to be happy.

My apologies to Barbara Agreste, but I am sorry I don't know why artfem.tv put your video on their website .Sadly her video isn't the only one which is off topic... there are numerous other videos that I scratch my head and say, wow, what is the point of this meaningless fluff?

I would find more feminist meaning watching Britain's Top Model (in a reverse thinking sort of way)... and because any show that glorifies beauty over brains deserves to be mocked.



Conclusions? Yes, Britain's Top Model isn't art... its not even good television. But watched from a feminist perspective and you realize just how desperate some young women are because they haven't explored the option of using the brains to earn money instead.

Not that money brings you happiness anyway. For that you need a balanced lifestyle... but that is another topic for another day.

The Truth about Feminist Videos on YouTube

Yeehaw! The following is some examples of feminist videos I found on YouTube, mostly ones which mention the word 'truth' somewhere. Maybe I will do another post later with feminist justice as the theme.







































There is also a whole slew of anti feminist videos, but I shan't be posting none of that garbage because they don't need the advertising.



There's also "response" videos, which are basically just video bloggers arguing back and forth. Nobody wins in those arguments because the bigots have already made up their minds.

The Truth about Child Slavery in America

These videos show some very interesting statistics about child slavery and prostitution in America.











Abducted Girl: An American Sex Slave is an indie film looking for producers / $$$ so the film can be made properly. I think it has potential.



What is a real shame is that the average Hollywood producer would rather be making be making an action blockbuster with no moral value than making a film with actual substance and purpose.



The closest thing is the Liam Neeson film "Taken", which points the finger at Europe when in truth America has more than its share of child slavery.







Another film on this topic I'd recommend is the 2000 film "Suspicious River", which shows the slippery slope of prostitution into slavery.

The Truth about My Fair Lady

ENTERTAINMENT - The following film (My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn) brings up many issues concerning class and the role of women. My only complaint is the end of the film, otherwise the film makes it pretty clear that Professor Henry Higgins is a stubborn know-it-all patriarch.

Eliza Doolittle however is the true hero of the story. Shows what you can do when you've got "gumption".

Made in 1964 "My Fair Lady" won 8 Academy Awards... not bad for a film with strong feminist undertones (despite the ending). You will see what I mean...



Note: On YouTube the film is broken down into 21 parts. There should be a link at the end of each part to the next part of the film.

British Women Artists during WWII

FEMINIST - I found this great article in The Independent (which I am including below without permission, but including a link so hopefully they won't mind). For the original article go to http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/women-at-war-the-female-british-artists-who-were-written-out-of-history-2264670.html

Women at war: The female British artists who were written out of history

The job of portraying battle has, traditionally, been seen as a male preserve. But Arifa Akbar discovers that women war artists also played a crucial role.

April 8th 2011

Images of war, rendered on canvas, have traditionally been presented to us in the most morbid forms: John Singer Sargent's chilling trench portrait of blinded troops in Gassed, Picasso's orgy of civil-war violence in Guernica, bloodied battlefields and frontlines from which artists capture live conflict as bombs whizz past them.


What is not so well documented is the women who work on war's hinterland, both as artists and as subjects. Few would be able to name a female counterpart to Sargent – it is assumed that a creative response to such violent destruction can only be delivered from a male perspective, a Siegfried Sassoon or a Rupert Brooke crouching in a foreign field.

Yet women have, since the turn of the 20th century, been interpreting and illustrating war, casting a fascinating light on the forgotten social, industrial and personal histories born from conflict which, while not as graphic as the front line, are invaluable in fleshing out a fuller picture of the human cost of war.

From the early 1900s, when it was indecent for women to be witnessing war from the brutality of the front, female artists produced their own images, many creating unofficial portraits surreptitiously as they worked in weapons factories, in hospital wards and in the ambulance vans of the First and Second World Wars, others in Belsen and at the trials at Nuremberg, and more recently, at the mass graves in Kosovo and the bombed borders of Iraq.

In an effort to bring these extraordinary, yet forgotten, artists to public attention, the Imperial War Museum in London is to stage a comprehensive exhibition on the subject of women as eye-witnesses, participants, commentators and officially commissioned recorders of war, entitled Women War Artists. The exhibition, opening tomorrow, will bring the work of those from the early 1900s alongside a contemporary wave of artists, including the Turner Prize shortlisted artist Fiona Banner, and the Palestinian video-artist, Mona Hatoum.

Kathleen Palmer, the show's curator, hopes the museum's survey will redress the enduring myth of the war-artist as an intrepid man dodging bullets, gun in one hand and sketchpad in the other.

"It's often misunderstood what the role of the war artist is," she says. "A lot of people think it is frontline sketching. War art encompasses far more than battle scenes or life at the frontline – it is about artists' creative responses to all aspects of war as seen and experienced by ordinary people, civilians, as well as servicemen and women. We look at women who find themselves in the war zone but also at those producing images unofficially, without the permission of the government in the First and Second World Wars, and also at women entering male workplaces in order to draw them, which was a radical thing to do then."

The first official war-artists' scheme was set up by the British government in 1916, mainly for propaganda purposes and for memorialising the nation's war effort. A host of artists were commissioned for this purpose, though only four women compared to 47 men, and of these four, three had their work rejected, while one did not take up the commission, so there was effectively no "official" female representation. However, the more determined artists, working independently and without government aegis, found themselves close to the frontline through medical work in hospitals and ambulance units, and began recording what they saw.

Olive Mudie-Cooke, already a trained artist who was driving ambulances for the British Red Cross in France from 1916, was one such woman. The images she produced departed from "official" fare: they featured hospital and auxiliary staff – images of the forgotten army of wartime helpers that would later be dramatised and in the novels of Pat Barker, and Sarah Waters's The Night Watch.

"Olive Mudie-Cooke served in France and Italy as an ambulance driver," says Palmer, "and she created work that responded to the situations she found – other women, the brands of tanks, landscapes, dramatic watercolours of nurses and ambulance staff lighting a cigarette, or ambulances being loaded with equipment."

At the start of the Second World War, women artists were given more leeway after the government's War Artists Advisory Committee (Waac) was set up, though there were still grave imbalances. More than 400 artists were involved – 52 of whom were women, the latter receiving fewer and shorter commissions, lower pay and far less publicity. Two women were given overseas commissions but only one, Evelyn Dunbar, was entrusted with a salaried position, and both were allowed to travel abroad only after the fighting had ended.

It was not until 1982, when Linda Kitson was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the Falklands conflict, that a British female artist was sent overseas to accompany troops going into battle, although women were not permitted to stay overnight on naval vessels at the time so Kitson had to travel on the QE2.

In 1945, as victory in Europe looked likely, an artist called Mary Kessell was preparing to go to Germany. By the time she arrived, the war was over but she created memorably intense charcoal drawings of homeless women and children in Berlin, as well as the destruction of Hamburg. Kessell also produced images of the Belsen resettlement camp, home to refugees and displaced people including some ravaged survivors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a few miles away.

Another female artist to be given an overseas commission in the 1940s was Dame Laura Knight. At the time she was painting, women auxiliaries had become more common, although female involvement in combat was strictly prohibited. Corporal Daphne Pearson, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (Waaf), sat for a portrait by Knight and revealed in a letter to her mother that the artist originally painted her with a rifle. The final painting features her brandishing a respirator instead of the weapon. It is not clear whether Knight was instructed to modify the image to make it less shocking, or whether she decided to tone it down herself. Corporal Pearson wrote in 1940: "I am being painted in a tin helmet and holding a rifle – Air Min [Air Ministry] will be furious but Dame Laura says my helmet is rather like a bonnet on the back of my head and the rifle makes a good line – Waafs are 'not to carry arms' – controversy is still raging and this will upset the apple cart. Dame Laura is adamant and firm."

Knight went on to become the first female artist since 1768 to become a full member of the Royal Academy. Her high standing enabled her to request an assignment to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945, which resulted in her painting The Nuremberg Trial. The tribunal tried 21 leading Nazis, headed by Hermann Goering. Knight was deeply disturbed by what she heard during the trial, and the realism of the courtroom in her painting is ruptured by the rubble of the city of Nuremberg shown as a ghostly backdrop.

"The trials just fired her imagination," says Palmer. "She drew many of the key Nazis in the dock. Unusually for her, it showed the back wall of the courtroom to have dissolved and the ruins of the city of Nuremberg lying there. She felt the destructive force of war needed to be in the painting."

The British Red Cross, meanwhile, commissioned Doris Zinkeisen to reflect their work in Europe in the 1940s, and she produced Human Laundry, a stark, searing image of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp's starving survivors. Of her time there, she later said: "The shock of Belsen was never to be forgotten... The stable was used to wash any living creature down before sending them into hospital to be treated. Each stall had a table on which to lay the patient – the German prisoners did the washing. The church was used as a hospital for those that were alive.'" Despite her personal horror, Human Laundry is in some ways, a seminal work in women's war-art as it proved that women could unflinchingly present the most discomforting aspects of war.

Social realities on the home front were also being presented more robustly the 1940s. Women with some artistic training were sneaking sketchpads into factories, without permission, depicting the civilian population contributing to the war effort, while others drew street scenes that captured air raids, shelters; sometimes these were comical or bittersweet images, at other times, shocking and violent. This work would have been considered dangerous and illicit had the authorities known about it, as imagery around war was tightly controlled for fear that it could used as negative propaganda.

Palmer says: "Women's images of the Blitz were hard-hitting. They were working independently, so doing more their own thing. Priscilla Thornycroft was an artist who was quite closely associated with the Communist Party, making drawings of places in Camden Town, people in the streets with air raids going on. They were dark and quirky and they really captured what was happening to individuals. Officially, the Blitz was reflected in a more abstract way but her work was specific about the working-class experience of war on the home front. It was quite a nice counterpoint to the official commissions." A previously unseen work by Thornycroft in the exhibition features a scene that took place early on in the Second World War when an air-raid warning frightened a bolting horse that became impaled on railings. She painted it in the 1950s in a lustrous style to highlight both the beauty and tragic outcome of the horse.

Margaret Abbess had completed her foundation course at the Royal College of Art but was conscripted and sent to make Spitfire parts in a factory before she could take her art training further: "She documented the factory work when she shouldn't have done. She didn't have permission but was covertly making sketches in her rest breaks and going home to work on the images. She was thinking of throwing them all away in 2005 when a family member told her to bring them to us," says Palmer.

The question of how female war-artists chose to represent ordinary working women during these decades is an interesting one. Images of women on the home front were not always "feminist" in the modern sense; some adopted the style of their older male counterparts while others painted women in stereotypically glamorised incarnations, even in factory scenes which, in reality, would have been sweaty places of industry.

The most iconic example of this glamorisation is an image of Ruby Loftus, a 21-year-old "shop girl" who mastered the difficult skill of screwing the breech ring of the anti-aircraft Bofors gun, a technique that normally took men almost a decade of dedicated experience. Her story was picked up by the Ministry of Information, which was trying to encourage women into weapons production at that point. Her portrait was painted by Knight and promptly exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Yet the image must have borne little resemblance to the reality of her work: "Ruby Loftus was painted in the middle of the mechanical process but in a way that reinforced the female stereotype. She was made to look very glamorous, wearing lipstick and with machinery that gleamed. It made her job look easy," says Palmer.

The image may have added to the conspiracy theories bubbling around that suggested Ruby Loftus was a fraudulent poster girl of the war, who could not, in fact, have been strong or clever enough to do the job.

More contemporary wars have led to different kinds of artwork: the rise of photo-journalism, and images delivered daily on our television screens from conflict regions, have progressively reduced the shock value of frontline artwork. War artists these days can be seen to be taking an "alternative" perspective, pioneered by female artists of earlier decades, that bring creative, personalised responses to war. Mona Hatoum, for example, renders hand-grenades as jewel-like coloured glass objects that encompass a terrible beauty in her piece, Nature morte aux grenades, while Rita Duffy transforms a weapon into confectionery in Dessert, which features a gun, cast from an AK-47 rifle that was decommissioned through the Northern Ireland peace process, but made out of chocolate.

The message in both these works appears to critique the fetishised status that the weaponry of war has assumed in contemporary culture.

"[Duffy's] piece embodies the attraction of violence, the temptation of the empowerment which comes from joining paramilitary organisations" and yet, "the gun is neutered: only made of chocolate, it cannot be used," comments Palmer.

The German artist Frauke Eigen, who photographed scenes from Kosovo in 2000 following its ethnic cleansing, has explained why she decided to photograph the personal effects from bodies exhumed from mass graves of genocide victims in Kosovo, rather than the bodies themselves.

"The sight of these bodies and the strong stench of formaldehyde made me leave the place, and on my way out I saw these clothes laying there in the sun for drying after they had been washed. For some reason, maybe because these clothes were much more human-like and recognisable than the bodies, I felt far more touched and disturbed and started to take pictures." Hatoum, similarly, has said she resists the demand for the literal horror of war.

"When I started making these works I was criticised for not showing the 'spectacle of horror' but expecting the viewer to imagine for themselves the impending disaster. I personally felt that this was precisely the strength of the work and a sign of maturity in the way the work conjures up certain images in the viewer's mind."

And in her sentiment, Hatoum sums up much of the spirit, imagination and force of a century of women war-artists.

Women War Artists, Imperial War Museum, London SE1 (020 7416 5320)9 April to 6 January

The art of war: women at the front

Dame Laura Knight RA (1877–1970)

Knight trained at the Nottingham School of Art and began by taking her subjects from the world of circus and ballet. These images were well received and established her as a leading artist of her generation. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Knight was the most important woman artist in Britain and the first to be elected a Royal Academician since 1768. Knight worked various commissions for the War Artists Advisory Committee and, at the end of the war, she was granted permission to paint the trial of major war criminals at Nuremberg. She spent the first months of 1946 in Germany, making her one of only three women war-artists commissioned to travel abroad to record the war.

Anna Airy (1882–1964)

Having trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, she was one of the first women to be officially commissioned. Invited by the Munitions Committee of the Imperial War Museum in 1918 to produce four pictures representing typical scenes in munitions factories – the shell forge at the National Projectile Factory in Hackney Marshes (London), a gun forge near Manchester, the aircraft assembly shop at Armstrong-Whitworth, Hendon, and the Singer factory in Glasgow. The conditions under which Airy worked were stringent and included penalties for any delay in her work. One painting, showing munitions girls leaving work, was produced at the request of the Ministry of Information's British War Memorials Committee in 1919. It was rejected by the Committee and later destroyed by the artist.

Margaret Abbess (1922–2008)

Abbess was offered a place at the Royal College of Art (RCA) but was conscripted into war work in 1942. Security was extremely tight in factories engaged in war production. Drawing sensitive subjects or places required a permit – which Abbess did not have. Nonetheless, while working in an aircraft components factory she produced several drawings of factory scenes. This work was produced in secret, often during breaks, and provides an unofficial insight into factory life. Most of Abbess's drawings began as small sketches which she later completed at home from memory. After the war, Abbess finished her studies at the RCA and worked for many years in art education. She kept her war drawings but felt they were of limited artistic value. In 2005 she considered destroying them, but was encouraged by her family to offer them to the Imperial War Museum.

Mona Hatoum (b. 1952)

Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon to a Palestinian family. She studied in Beirut, moving to Britain in the 1970s. When civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 she found it impossible to return home, and settled in Britain, training at the Slade School of Art. Hatoum's early work often includes performance and video ("Measures of Distance", above). She uses domestic objects such as kitchen implements and cots, or medical objects, such as trolleys and wheelchairs, to imply a sense of threat or violence. Her artworks have incorporated blades and pulsing electric currents. She now lives and works in London and Berlin. Her work is exhibited internationally and held in museum collections around the world.

Linda Kitson (b. 1945)

Kitson studied at St Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she specialised in illustration. She then taught at Camberwell, Chelsea and the City and Guilds Art Schools. Her drawings that appeared in "The Times" won her the Falklands commission from the Artistic Records Committee of the Imperial War Museum. Kitson became the first official female war-artist to accompany troops into action during the Falklands conflict in 1982. She travelled on civilian ships requisitioned by the Navy, as women were not permitted on naval vessels at the time. The original intention was for Kitson to disembark at Ascension Island, but instead she stayed with the forces throughout the conflict. She eventually produced more than 400 drawings showing all aspects of the conflict, except the actual fighting, most of which occurred at night. Her drawings were often completed at speed in hostile conditions.

Frauke Eigen (b. 1969)

The German-born artist studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London, and it was while working as a photo-journalist that she made her first trip to Kosovo, in 2000. While there, she was told that a mass grave containing the bodies of genocide victims had just been uncovered nearby. Witnessing the recovery operation, Eigen decided to photograph the clothes and personal items of the dead, rather than the bodies themselves ("Fundstücke Kosovo", left). Eigen recently completed a photographic project in Afghanistan.

The Truth about Rozsika Parker

FEMINIST ART HISTORY - British psychotherapist and feminist art historian Rozsika Parker has died... which means it is now an opportunity to bring her work to the younger generation and anyone interested in feminism, art, and women artists. Rozsika Parker was a pioneer... She was a feminist art theorist and activist from the 1970s and was active well into the 1990s, often collaborating with famed feminist / art historian Griselda Pollock.

Take the book "Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology" as an example, which Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock wrote together, one of the most important books of feminist art theory and history that you may ever read.

Parker and Pollock examined how art history as a discipline had misogyny at its core... like how most male art historians focus on male artists and give only token attention to women artists, and how art history as a discipline has a tendency to push women down and "smack down" anything that was remotely feminine.

In order words male art historians were basically b***h-slapping women artists down for being too uppity, but doing in such a way that it looked like they were just ignoring them because "women artists aren't important enough". Which they are, but when all the male art historians say you're not important it becomes a vicious cycle. Basically its a glass ceiling for female artists.

Parker and Pollock's second collaboration, "Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement 1970-1985" was and still is a great source of information about the feminist art movement in Britain (which often got overwhelmed by the American Women's Liberation Movement).

Parker's "The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine" is also a very good book, informative and relevant. Its not like embroidery changes much in the last couple decades. You might take it for granted that knitting or embroidering or weaving were not previously accepted forms of high art, but read this book and you might change your mind. There is a lot of work and detail that goes into embroidery.

Parker's personal life was a bit of a mystery. She was a bit of a mysterious figure for who was largely unknown in the USA and even in Britain where she was still into feminist activism and working as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.

Its difficult to say what she was like as a person. In her books you don't really know where Griselda Pollock left off and where Rozsika Parker began. Many of their beliefs evidently coincided.

She liked had a fierce feminism, was compassionate, very focused on her work and wanted to make the world a better place through both activism and writing. It was a very different era when she began writing in the 1970s, back when women were born instead of culturally constructed (a concept which grew in the 1980s).

"Old Mistresses" and "Framing Feminism" have long been out of print. Maybe in the future they can be re-issued.

Or maybe someone sneaky and intelligent could archive her writings online... for all the world to see and learn from.

Black Womanhood in Art

Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center

Right: DOUBLE FUSE: Wangechi Mutu’s playful razzmatazz makes reference to the past but lives in the present.

“Black Womanhood,” the exhibit at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, must have seemed like a sharp idea when it was being put together. It examines the ways in which “contemporary artists are challenging historic and often stereotypical images that present black women as the alluringly beautiful Other, the erotic fantasy, or the super-maternal mammy.” By now this is familiar, if still urgent, stuff; what makes this outing special is that it gathers more than 100 objects — traditional African art, Western colonial photos and postcards, and contemporary art — that connect today’s dissectors with the origins of the ugly stereotypes they’re working to take apart.

Barbara Thompson, who organized the show for Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, does a good job of mapping the territory. But it’s an uneven show with a dour vision that leaves a mediciny taste in your mouth — and, I think, offers signs of a generation gap among curators.

The art of African women was traditionally pottery, beadwork, basketry, textiles, and the decoration of their own bodies (tattoos, scarification, hairstyles, body paint). But Westerners collected primarily African sculpture, masks, and costumes — which tended to be made by and for African men. The women’s portrayal of themselves was more abstracted, less obvious than their men’s literal, if stylized, depictions of women. The show presents women-made pots with bumps and patterns that make reference to women’s physiques and body scarification. The women’s pieces emerge directly from their work and their rituals — like a leather skirt beaded by an adolescent girl in her seclusion as she made the traditional passage into womanhood.

The most charged part of the show surveys early-20th-century Western photos and postcards of African women. Western attitudes are apparent in images that treated the women as curious ethnographic specimens and pin-ups — either untamed, sexually available African primitives or Oriental harem girls. Photographers tailored their shots to different audiences by photographing the same models elaborately garbed or in various states of undress. A postcard of a young topless Temne woman lounging on a rug was published around 1910 as “Timnie Girl, Sierra Leone.” When it was republished in the 1920s, the caption read, “Just you and me. Sierra Leone.” These postcards could be the foundation of an electrifying stand-alone exhibit.

Right: HOT-EN-TOT: More of the contemporary work should have Renée Cox’s crackle and swagger.

But “Black Womanhood” — primarily work by black women, with some contributions by men and whites — deflates as it moves to the art of today. Sokari Douglas Camp’s 1995 sculpture Gelede from Top to Toe is an African woman turned into an armored tank of steel and chicken wire with wooden breasts that jut out like battering rams. In Renée Cox’s giant 2001 photo self-portrait Baby Back, she imitates Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1814 painting La grande odalisque by reclining, with nothing hiding her brown skin except for red heels, on a gold chaise longue. Cox asks how race colors our notions of beauty, and she teases black-white, male-female hierarchies. Ingres’s naked white lady is an imagined harem girl holding a fan; Cox has a whip.

More of the contemporary work should have Cox’s crackle and swagger. It should sadden, celebrate, anger. You’d think Kara Walker’s bawdy, violent versions of ante-bellum paper-cut silhouettes would be just what this show needs, but the 1997 pop-up book that’s here is too tiny to convey the fierce beauty of her best work.

The then-and-now focus favors artists whose work is built on looking back — but many artists seem hemmed in by their historical references. And the theme pigeonholes art that is more expansive, like María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s 1994 self-portrait When I Am Not Here/Estoy Allá. The photo shows her naked body from her chin to her belly, everything painted with blue waves. Slung over her shoulders and hanging over her breasts are a pair of baby bottles. Milk seems to drip from the bottles and her breasts into a simple wooden boat that she cradles. A black Cuban native who lives in Brookline with her white husband and their son, Campos-Pons often makes reference to the African diaspora and traditional African art. But her explorations of motherhood, race, and much else have their own rich mysterious symbols, and they’re planted in the present by her sculptural and symbolic use of hair extensions and beads.

These are highlights among contemporary works that are mostly dull, didactic, and rote — like a 1990-’91 photo from Carla Williams’s How To Read Character series that pairs a diagram of the parts of a cow with a photo of the nude artist. It’s art focused more on being good for you than on engaging you. “Global Feminisms,” a survey of recent international feminist art that was organized by the Brooklyn Museum and appeared at the Davis last fall, was similarly full of dour art. This eat-your-broccoli didacticism seems at least a decade behind the times.

In “Black Womanhood,” that’s partly because much of the newish work is at least 10 years old. But it also seems to represent a generation gap among curators who haven’t picked up on the changes in this area of art over the past decade or so. These curators know black and feminist art of ’80s and ’90s, which often took the form of pared-down didactic critiques. What they’ve missed is emerging women artists and artists of color who while continuing to berate the straight white guys who’ve kept their people down also create exuberant visions of what the future can hold. And they’ve embraced lavish beauty — often for its own sake. Among younger black artists, this trend tends to show up as vivid psychedelic colors, glitter, and patterns and fabrics that make reference to traditional African art as well as ’60s and ’70s Afro soul. These artists remain engaged with the past, but in terms of the themes and styles of their childhoods, when the transformations of the civil-rights movement, feminism, and post-colonialism began to be felt.

The single example of all that here is Wangechi Mutu’s 2003 collage and ink drawing Double Fuse. It depicts weird futuristic glam twins with hands made of motorcycle parts and glittering skin-tight outfits with blond hair as epaulets. The patterns recall African art, but the goofy, cheeky, playful razzamatazz is more about beauty than a comment on the past.

Where are Chris Olifi, Mickalene Thomas, Lorna Williams, Laylah Ali, Saya Woolfalk, Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, and the Chicago artist Nick Cave? The show would benefit from flashbacks to Betye Saar’s acid 1972 assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, which gave the icon a broom in one hand and a rifle in the other. Or cartoonist Robert Crumb’s notorious ’60s caricature Angelfood McSpade, which was inspired by racist comics of the 1920s and ’30s.

And though it doesn’t fit the show’s then-and-now focus, I wish “Black Womanhood” had a place for pseudonymous Chicago artist Lo (see www.livingoprah.com), who is spending this year following, as closely as she can, the advice Oprah Winfrey gives on her television show and her Web site and in her magazines. If that doesn’t tell us something deep about black womanhood today, what does?