黑料不打烊

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1617, oil on canvas, 159x126 cm. Naples, Museo di Capodimonte. © Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage, Culture and Tourism.

Hundreds of thousands will march in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington this Saturday, January 21, 2017, on the National Mall in Washington D.C, with supporting marches in other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, and global cities like London, Sydney, and Zürich. Across these marches will be the rallying cry of the “nasty woman,” a misogynist epithet casually muttered by Donald Trump in a presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, a term now proudly taken up by feminists. There are legions of artists who identify as such—NASTY WOMEN, a massive recent fundraiser exhibition at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York, featured over 700 works by female-identified artists, while raising over $50K for Planned Parenthood and other community organizations, and inspiring dozens of other exhibitions, from San Diego to Amsterdam. And on January 22, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, will lead a “Nasty Women” tour, highlighting the artists in its permanent collection who especially forged their own paths outside of the societal constrictions of gender.

Installation View, NASTY WOMEN Exhibition at Knockdown Center, 2017. Photo by EPW Studio/Maris Hutchinson, 2017.

Harvard University gender studies professor Caroline Light , dating it back to colonial times: “A ‘nasty’ woman is one who refuses to remain in her proper place, as defined by men.” Throughout much of art history, you would qualify as a “nasty woman” if you even dared become an artist, an untraditional occupation for a woman, and if you did, your work was constantly marginalized, questioned, or dismissed. The disparity continues today, most markedly in the art market, where the prices fetched by works by women artists continue to lag behind those of their male peers. Linda Nochlin discusses the ramifications of this institutional sexism in the art world in her landmark, and still very relevant, essay from 1971, “” Remarking on the “small band of heroic women” throughout the ages who did manage to rise out of obscurity in the arts, she writes: “for a woman to opt for a career at all, much less for a career in art, has required a certain amount of unconventionality…she must in any case have a good strong streak of rebellion in her to make her way in the world of art at all, rather than submitting to the socially approved role of wife and mother, the only role to which every social institution consigns her automatically.” In other words, these heroic women are nasty women, one and all. Although the term could encompass nearly every female artist in history, we’ve taken a look at just a few of the famous “nasty women” of art history and some of their pivotal works, from the Renaissance to today.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maid Abra, 1613 ca., oil on canvas 114x93,5 cm. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. Photo: Uffizi Gallery.

Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – c. 1656) painted a great number of strong heroines and Biblical figures, but none is more recognizable than her chilling, gory depiction of Judith Slaying Holofernes (1617). The visceral thrust of the knife through Holofernes’ neck takes on even further, wincing significance when one learns of the excruciating, seven-month-long trial Gentileschi was subject to, which included a gynecological exam and thumbscrew torture, to prove that she had been raped. The case was widely publicized at the time, and the eighteen-year-old Gentileschi was mocked as a bad painter and “an insatiable whore,” her reputation forever marred. The rapist, fellow artist Agostino Tassi, was convicted, but served only eight months of his sentence. Gentileschi painted her vengeful Judith shortly after the trial, and would go on to become a famous painter and the first woman to become a member of the Academy of Art and Drawing in Florence. Thirty of her paintings are currently on view in an exhibition reappraising her contribution to art history in “Artemisia Gentileschi and Her Times” at Palazzo Braschi in her birthplace of Rome.

Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains, 1859, marble, height: 82 in.

The most prominent female sculptor of the United States in the 19th century, Harriet Hosmer (1830 – 1908) brought a feminist slant to her neoclassical marble sculptures, portraying strong women from mythology and literature. Hosmer challenged the constrictive gender norms of her time, kept her hair short, wore men’s jackets, lived in a lesbian artist colony in Rome, and created formidable, colossal sculptures. Her 1859 masterwork, the seven-foot marble statue Zenobia in Chains, depicts a third-century queen of Palmyra, taken prisoner by the Roman Empire, downcast yet dignified. Critics of the time cast doubt that a woman could have possibly sculpted the massive statue. She sued for libel and won the case. Her grand statue of Zenobia currently stands tall at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

He Xiangning, Tiger, 1935, Hanging Scroll, ink & color on paper, 120.3 × 58.4 cm.

For outspoken Chinese radical He Xiangning (1878 – 1972), art fueled her cause. As a young revolutionary she designed flags and emblems and used the proceeds from sales of her paintings to fund the war effort. A devoted feminist, her first act of resistance was her refusal, as a child, to submit to customary foot binding, and throughout her life, as an official in the Chinese government, she advocated for equal rights for women. The He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen opened in 1997, China's first national-level art museum named after an individual artist.

Faith Ringgold, Picasso's Studio, 1991, acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 73 x 68". From the Series: The French Collection Part I; #7. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.

American artist Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) is primarily known for her narrative quilts—a feminine art form subverted to tell stories that carry strong political and social messages. Throughout her career, Ringgold fought for recognition in a society and art world that is both racist and sexist. “I wanted to make a difference,” , “and I decided I was going to use art to do it.” Story quilts like Picasso’s Studio and The Sunflowers Quilting Bee at Arles (both 1991) forcefully insert the African-American experience into dialogue with modernist European culture, delivered with cheerful colors, childlike forms, and irreverent humor. Her work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa, California.

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1964. Performed on March 21, 1965 at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. © Yoko Ono; Courtesy of Lenono Photo Archive. Photo: Minoru Niizuma.

Japanese artist Yoko Ono (b. 1933) is as famous in the art world as she is infamous outside of it. While the general public decries Ono as the woman who “broke up the Beatles,” the art public recognizes her as a crucial figure in the history of conceptual art and performance art. Her iconic performance Cut Piece (1964) can be interpreted as a feminist work, an allegory of sexual violence, a protest piece, or a striptease; “against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence.” It takes an incredible kind of resilience to not only continue to work in the face of the (still) constant barrage of slander Ono is subject to, but to open up her work so wholly to the viewer’s actions. A video of Cut Piece is on view in a survey of Ono’s work currently showing at the Reykjavík Art Museum.

Inna Babaeva, Marianne Renoir, 2016, digital print on vinyl. Part of NASTY WOMEN Exhibition at Knockdown Center.

“Nasty women” excel in the face of adversity; they unapologetically achieve greatness. A “nasty woman” is not afraid to criticize the patriarchy, to assert herself, and to challenge authority. As , “I honor every woman who has strength enough to step out of the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies in another.”

—Natalie Hegert