Mäns konst och menskonst - feministiskt formspråk i en konsthistorisk kontext

Sammanfattning: The main aim of this study is to answer the hypothesis that Judy Chicago's 1971 photolithograph "Red Flag", along with her academic career, can be seen as an answer to the new approach to art history and what defines art, that Linda Nochlin calls for in her essay "Why have there been no great women artists?". The analysis of "Red Flag", which depicts a bloodfilled tampon being removed from a woman's vagina, is then compared to Liv Strömquist's 2014 silk screen print "Isprinsessa", a drawing of a figure skater showing menstrual leakage while engaging in a pirouette, with the purpose to examine the aesthetics of menstruation art as a feminist statement in the second and third wave of feminism respectively, and as a genre within the movement. By using a sociological approach and analyzing the works' social context along with the aesthetics, in a gender theory based outset, it becomes clear that both artists are working out of a will to protest against injust taboos and social inequalities, experienced and observed by them both. Although the movement itself has evolved and grown into multiple variations of feminism wherein menstruation's symbolic meaning of womanhood is disputed, menstrual activism is still a growing concern within the feminist movement today, as the taboos surrounding the topic are still very evident. The results of the study show that as Nochlin and Chicago, both being active in the same time and area, the early 1970s feminist movement, have asked themselves the same question, but expressed their solution in different ways – Nochlin suggests scientific objectivity as the course of action, while Chicago considers a provocative and head-on approach to stir up deeply rooted patriarchal praxis within the academic field of art and art history.