Dr Great Art Podcast Episode 31: 3 Useful Feminist Ideas for Art

Dr Great Art podcast, Episode 31: 3 Useful Feminist Ideas for Art (and Metaphor). A short podcast presenting three ideas from Feminist philosophy useful for art and metaphor: pragmatic action over absolutism, the located self, and finding loopholes in hegemonies to allow creative resistance.
iTunes, Spotify or http://drgreatart.libsyn.com/episode-31-3-useful-feminist-ideas-for-art 

#arthistory #metaphor #resistance #feminism

Here is the script.

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Dr Great Art Podcast 31

3 Useful Feminist Ideas for Art

Hi this is Mark Staff Brandl, with the 31st "Dr Great Art" brief podcast. I hope you enjoy it and come back for each and every one.

My artecdotal theme this time is a very short description of 3 ideas from Feminist philosophy which are crucial and empowering for art, metaphor and metaphor(m).

Various concepts derived from feminist literary theory have been partially surfacing in other contexts in my podcasts up to this point. Feminist theory contains a wide, exhilarating rang of approaches and concerns. Three specific considerations I find most valuable, beyond the clear main issue of equality between the sexes.

First, many feminists concentrate on strategies of action. Although the majority of feminist literary critics also wield grand theories, they prefer to treat these as instruments applied to attain very specific goals. This is a pointed admonition for the art and literary worlds, especially for those of us who hypothesize gladly. Don't take your ideology for the very reality it seeks to describe or change! Stay pragmatic! This reminds me that my interest is and has been in constructing a theory of metaphor in art, yet not an absolute one. Rather, one that grows from an appreciation of the nuts-and-bolts of production, and thereby endeavors to avoid too much abstracted absolutism.

Second, the feminist concept of the located self is one of the great tools of thought in history. This is the elucidation of the fact that gender and the rest of one's personality are largely socially constructed, not solely biological givens. Each person consists of a web of locational connections. Where you were born, who taught you, where you grew up, where you live, who your role-models are, etc. This idea shapes my thought as a whole, and I believe must be considered in contemplating art and metaphor: history and geography and culture.

Third, an appreciation made by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar is an inspirational, vital idea. They assert throughout their historic book The Madwoman in the Attic, that it is imperative for feminists to both partially comply with and yet contravene patriarchal literary standards. And I would expand this to concern all hegemonic standards in all creative fields.

These 3 perceptions, which I find useful and have described are being constructively continued in the third-wave and fourth-wave feminists and many others. As I will discuss in a future podcast on a favorite theorist of mine, Julia Kristeva, taken more broadly such strategies disclose the loophole through which resistance can come into existence. The ways in which we can improve life, society, and create art that assists in that and is of the highest quality. I find this loophole to be the play with tropes, metaphor, especially as seen in my theory of central trope called 'metaphor(m).'

And in the ever-more-oppressive constraints of our propagandized world, even in the artworld, we desperately need loopholes for resistance to enter and arise.

Thanks for listening. Podcast number 31.
3 Useful Feminist Ideas for Art

If you enjoy my podcasts, please go to Apple podcasts and give me 5 stars and a recommendation! It helps others find this podcast. Additionally, if you have any questions or requests for topics, please feel free to contact me with them! I'd truly enjoy covering them!



If you wish to hear more cool, exciting and hopefully inspiring stuff about art history and art, come back for more. Also I, Dr Mark Staff Brandl, artist and art historian, am available for live custom Performance-Lectures. In English und auf Deutsch.

I take viewers inside visual art and art history. Entertainingly, yet educationally and aesthetically, I analyze, underline, and discuss the reasons why a work of art is remarkable, or I go through entire eras, or indeed through the entirety of art history, or look at your desired theme through the lens of art history. The lectures often take place with painted background screens and even in my painting-installations.

Some recent ones were on the entire history of Postmodernist Art from 1979 through today, on Artemisia Gentileschi's La Pittura, and on Mongrel Art. Once again, I'd like to thank Chloe Orwell, Brad Elvis, and the rock band the Handcuffs for composing, performing and recording my theme song, "Shut Up and Paint," a tiny portion of which begins and ends every Dr Great Art Podcast.

You can find or contact me at

www.drgreatart.com/ (spell)

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