ABSTRACT
Painting is simultaneously a medium, a critical category, a form of economic investment, a curatorial term and a symbolic system. Because it is always defined in relation to other cultural practices, it's meaning changes in relation to these extratextural conditions. The mapping of feminist painting is therefore complex. It is multifarious and multi-sited and it is constantly working against and through other, often dominant, positions: painting by men, alternative practices such as installation or performance, the art market, curatorial policies and so on. In the 1970s, painting was associated with a male-dominated tradition, and was seen as a private as opposed to a collective activity, with a modernist emphasis on the medium and the autonomy of painting. Feminist art practice in Britain grew out of the contemporary women's movement in the late 1960s and earl.
