ABSTRACT
ART RELATES TO GENDER in a variety of ways. Visual styles can be codedaccording to traits associated with a specific gender (and these traits may vary depending upon cultural contexts). Traditions of gender specialization, often passed on implicitly, may lead men or women to gravitate toward particular artistic media. One’s gender might afford advantages and disadvantages in obtaining training or professional opportunities within art. Gender affects how one understands and tells the story of art; thus, it impacts art history and criticism as well as the production of art. Each of the above-stylistic traits, specialization in particular media, professionalization, and historical and critical analysis-has been strongly critiqued from the perspective of gender theory since the 1970s, but social reform based upon the advocacy for the rights of women has a 200-year history. In fact, women writers from as early as the seventeenth century-such as Arcangela Tarabotti-had railed against the unequal treatment of women in areas such as education and economic life. It was in the nineteenth century, though, that feminist ideas began to coalesce into social reform movements. Considering its major role in social theory within the last two centuries, it is not surprising that gender functions as a powerful frame for cross-cultural analysis in art. When considering the art of a culture other than one’s own, it is useful to keep in mind that the gender relations within that culture may differ greatly from one’s own context. In addition, the understanding of gender in other cultures has a reflexive capacity for teasing out the impact of gender relations upon art, or the ways that art expresses gender, in one’s own.
