Material Iconography in Feminist Art

FIRST THINGS FIRST . . . .

The lesson plan provides an overview of feminist art history from the 1970s to the present day through the lens of material iconography. Because feminist artists have found the practice of appropriating materials and re-signifying their connotations to be a particularly rich vein of significance, is especially popular in feminist artistic practice, this method offers insights into various strategies, concepts, and themes feminist artists utilize. This lesson plan asks and answers the following questions:

  • Which materials have been meaningful for feminist artists and why? How has the usage of materials changed over time?
  • In which ways are we able to understand and analyze an artwork through the lens of material iconography, as well as in the context of feminist art history and thinking?
  • What do materials tell us about the cultural and economic context they exist in, the history of iconography, an artist’s intentions and viewer reception?

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to demonstrate how the methodology of material iconography is applied, to assess its possibilities and limitations, and use it to analyze artworks within a feminist context. Students will also learn about the significance of the method in the context of the materiality turn in art history.

Background Readings

  • For an exemplary explanation of material iconography, including comprehensive information on the methodology, see Petra Löffler, Änne Söll (Ed.): Materials, Practices and Politics of Shine in Modern art and Popular Culture, London 2021.
  • This article provides a concise overview of materiality in art: The Exploration of Materiality.
  • On definitions of materiality and its art-theoretical relevance, see: The Materiality of Art.
  • See this article for Judy Chicago’s artistic journey and her late recognition: Serpentine Interview
  • Judy Chicago official website.
  • On Judy Chicago working with car hoods.
  • For comprehensive informations on Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s practice and her exhibition at Biennale di Venezia in 2022, see Wojciech Szymánski, Joanna Warsza (Ed.): Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Re-enchanting the World, Exhibition Catalogue, La Biennale di Venezia 2022, Warsaw/Berlin 2022.
  • See this article for a short portrait of Selma Selman’s work with scrap metal.
  • For an overview of Rosemarie Trockel’s work and her stance on feminist art. The article is written in German and would have to be translated)

Suggestions for student discussion

  • To what extent is it possible to appropriate a material from its traditional use and subvert its meaning? — Will the material always reflect the context it was originally used in?
  • What are the limitations of the method of material iconography, and which other analytical methods could be used to fill these gaps?

Glossary

 Feminist Art: Feminist art is art by artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory in the early 1970s. Feminist art deals with the social and economic factors that make it more difficult for women to be recognized as artists just like their male colleagues, with the male-dominated art scene and art historiography, as well as contemporary, everyday female experiences in a patriarchal society. (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/feminist-art)

 Iconography: Iconography is the use of visual images, symbols, or figures to represent complex ideas, subjects, or themes that are important to different cultures. An understanding of the iconographic images and symbols used in a particular artwork helps to reveal the meaning of the work.For more information see  https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/iconography)

Materiality: Materiality refers to the physical substance that artists use to bring their visions to life. It encompasses everything from painting and canvas to clay, metal, fabric, and beyond. Choices of material are not arbitrary. Material plays a vital role in the artistic process and the final outcome. Each material possesses its own unique properties, textures, and capabilities. For more information see Art and the Exploration of Materiality.

Semantics: In linguistics, semantics refers to the study of meaning and its linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form. In colloquial terms, it refers to the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.

 To appropriate: Appropriating generally means to take something for oneself. But the term also refers to a political, artistic or cultural strategy, meaning to take something (e.g. a product, an idea, a symbol) and making it your own by adapting / changing it and including it into “your“ social context.

 Provenance: The place or source of origin. In an art context, it can also refer to the history and timeline of ownership of an artwork.

Timeline                                                                                                                                                            In one hour and fifteen-minute lecture you should be able to cover the following:

  • Judy Chicago, Bigamy Hood, 1965.
  • Judy Chicago, Birth Hood,
  • Selma Selman: From Paintings on Metal Series, 2018-ongoing.
  • Miriam Schapiro, Explode, 1972
  • Rosemarie Trockel, Strickbilder (Knitted Paintings), begun mid-1980s.
  • Rosemarie Trockel, Wasser (Water), 2004. 
  • Rosemarie Trockel, Ohne Titel (Fleckenbild) (Untitled (Spot Picture)), 1988. 
  • Rosemarie Trockel, Balaklava, 1986.
  • Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Re-enchanting the World, 2022.

Click for images: Slide Presentation

CONTENT SUGGESTIONS

Key questions for the lecture:

  • What is material iconography and how can it be applied to analyze artworks?
  • How is materiality an important aspect in the analysis of an artwork?
  • How do we research and formulate arguments through the lens of material iconography?
  • What can we learn about feminist art by considering the use of materials and materiality

Left: Judy Chicago, Bigamy Hood, 1965, sprayed automotive lacquer on car hood;
Right: Selma Selman: From Paintings on Metal Series, 2018-ongoing, paint on car hood. 

Introduction to the topic

Material iconography is an art historical methodology which expands on art historian Erwin Panofsky’s iconographic method. Panofsky outlined three levels of understanding symbols in a work of art. The first is Pre-iconographic – description with common human knowledge. The second level includes the iconographic – description with knowledge of the culture the work comes from – who, what, when, where – which story is depicted? The third level addresses iconology – looking at the personal, technical, and cultural history of a work. This last level looks at art not as an isolated incident, but as the product of its historical, social, political, and economic environment. Any iconographical reading of a certain motive is conditional to the cultural context in which it exists. The “material” aspect of iconography, or material iconography extends Panofsky’s method by not only identifying symbols but also by closely examining their physical presence and how that material form contributes to their meaning and cultural significance.

Since the mid-twentieth century, artistic mediums and techniques have broadened extensively — from industrial materials in minimal art sculpture, organic materials in land art and everyday objects in Arte Povera to new media and digital art. Therefore, it makes sense to apply the method of iconography to other components of works of art. The study of material iconography was born as a reaction to the long-standing superiority of form and style as art historical analytical categories and gained traction in the 1980s. This lesson, though, does not seek to compare different methodologies, but instead aims to deepen students’ understanding of analyzing and discussing art works through the lens of their materiality.

Material iconography examines how the choice of materials, their properties, and their treatment contribute to the overall message or narrative being communicated. This can involve understanding the historical, cultural, and even technical contexts in which those materials are used and how they are perceived. Material Iconography is based on the notion that each material — traditionally artistic or industrial, naturally-sourced or mass-produced — has specific socio-political semantics ascribed to it. [1] Every material has factual characteristics which we experience with our senses (smell, sound, color, surface finish, form …). But it also has a manufacturing process, monetary and societal value, modes of use, techniques of processing and refining; a historical origin story and history of use — all of which influence its semantic ascriptions, too.

Lesson

Students can use the following as a toolbox to follow along during the lesson.
To analyze the material iconography of an artwork, students will understand the following aspects:

  • How and where is the material produced and where are its components sourced?
  • In what context / in which way is the material typically used? Where can it be found, who uses it?
  • Based on the previous answers: What does it signify? What value is ascribed to it? Which ideas and semantics do we connect with it?
  • How does this correspond with the material’s perceptible properties?
  • How does the artist process it? How does it’s processing and the way it is exhibited reference the
    material’s cultural use? Does it reference specific modes of use?

A note to lecturers:

During the lesson, you will notice that not every one of the aforementioned aspects is picked up for the analysis of each artwork. It is the analyst’s job to choose which aspects are relevant to the context of the artwork.

In the following examples, different aspects of material iconography analysis are highlighted. You may compare different works of the same or similar materials, compare different artists’s strategies of using different materials and mediums to deal with similar topics, follow the lesson by noting the themes of the works, see what they have in common and how they relate to one another in the broader context of feminist art.

Car Parts

 Judy Chicago

(b. 1939), early in her career, turned to car parts instead of canvas as a support for her minimalist geometric, and colorful paintings. Her car hoods are primed, taped, spray-painted and sanded to create a sleek, shiny surface and precise shapes and lines. In order to learn how to work with the metal used in the car industry, she attended a course for car painters to learn to work with metal. The process required expertise in using tools and techniques which are usually used in male-dominated fields of manual and industrial labor. Chicago’s car hoods reflect the aesthetics of custom-painted cars of the auto-tuning culture as well as the minimal art scene in Southern California of the mid-1960s. The painted muscle cars reflected the sun, becoming a symbol of the Los Angeles, California scenery.
Kathrin Rottmann writes: ˝The so-called finish fetish, which Chicago has worked out on the sheet metal, was usually deemed somehow male, cool, and technological in conformity with the discourse of art history and critique of the 1960s, determined by the aesthetics of minimal art and the car as a symbol of male manual and industrial labor.“ Chicago’s painted hoods flip this symbolism. In fact, she is considered to be among the first in the Southern California art scene to introduce industrial, subcultural and manual-labor-associated materials and tools into the high art scene and use them to address womens’ issues.

Birth Hood is painted on the hood of a 1962 Chevrolet Corvaire II. This mid-range model, first released in 1959 and from an iconic American brand, symbolizes the modern middle-class American lifestyle.

The abstract and simplified, two-dimensional shapes we see on the hood vaguely resemble a cross-section of a woman’s reproductive anatomy, specifically the vulva, vagina and ovaries. The bright pastel colors further abstract this reference since they diverge from the usual color schemes of anatomical illustrations.

With Birth Hood, Chicago switches the attributions of the material and its processing techniques from the male sphere and ˝[…] blurring its seemingly clear gender code“, as Rottmann writes. ˝In Car Hood, a painting from the same series, [Chicago] argues, “[t]he vaginal form, penetrated by a phallic arrow, was mounted on the ‘masculine’ hood of a car, a very clear symbol of my state of mind at this time” (Chicago [1975] 1982: 36–7), and an expression of her Struggle as a Woman Artist […] She appropriated the virile horsepower machine by means of avowedly feminine forms[…].“

Suggestion for class activity: Ask the class to summarize how the material plays a role in the interpretation of the works. How does Judy Chicago’s method of utilizing material iconography work in the context of feminist art?

 Material iconography can be a useful analytical tool to approach feminist art. It is an effective method of using material iconography in feminist art is taking (or appropriating) materials typically associated with male spheres of life and / or male-dominated art forms, and infusing them with feminist themes and motifs. This creates a friction which can emphasize the unequal positions of women in society. It exemplifies the feminist modus operandi to claim spaces, actions, and symbols formerly reserved for men.

Selma Selman (b. 1991) began working with car parts for her ongoing series Paintings on Metal. Although there is a strong art-historical reference to Chicago’s work, Selman’s engagement with the material stems from her family background. She grew up inBosnia as a member of the ethnic minority of the Roma. Her father owns a scrap metal yard where he works along with other male family members. Selman, thus, has been in contact with car parts throughout her life. Painting on Metal addresses her cultural background and her position as a woman in her Roma community. [2].

 Three of her Paintings on Metal were exhibited at documenta fifteen (2022). The paintings were not hung on the wall, but installed across the room in different angles, giving them a more sculptural quality. The imagery of Selman’s Paintings on Metal includes a self-portrait of the artist in a black suit on a dark green BMW hood, a portrait of two men sitting at a table in casual clothing on a black Mercedes hood,

and a poem written in bold, upper case black letters on a silver Mercedes Benz car hood. In comparison to Chicago’s work, Selman left the brand logos and the radiator grill attached, which makes it easier to identify the objects as the hoods of a BMW and twoMercedes Benz. This is in contrast to Chicago’s Birth Hood, where the artist abstracted the form of the hood by flattening it and removing identifiable characteristics such as the radiator grill and the brand logo.

Suggestion for class activity: Look at Selman’s self-portrait. Does it remind you of any classical painting traditions? Which social classes were typically depicted in this way?
You can ask students to compare Selman’s self-portrait to Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy’s Portrait of a Man (1628). Selman’s self-portrait has many similarities to Baroque-era representative society portraits. They are typically composed in a half-length format. They depict persons of a high social status who typically take up a confident pose, wear their best attire, and look directly at the viewer. These artistic means are utilized to express authority and prestige, as can be seen in Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy’s Portrait of a Man. Selman adapts these characteristics for her self-portrait. By referencing traditional painting customs, Selman makes a critical commentary on her social rise through her success, while also referencing her familial background with the choice of materials.

 Selman co-opts her family’s manual labor and valorizes the material’s monetary and ideational value by creating an art piece out of scrap metal. Working in the scrap metal industry is a job typically done by economically disadvantaged groups. She subverts the symbolic meaning of the materials and objects she works with. Stigmatized labor becomes precious, old scrap metal becomes a painting surface. She goes a step further than Chicago by including the context of her family within the precarious socio-economic position of south-eastern European Roma, thus valuing the labor her family does. Selman depicts herself as someone who was able to transgress restrictions she faced because of her gender and social affiliation.

Miriam Schapiro, Explode, 1972

Textiles

Textiles are also popular in feminist art. At the opposite spectrum of using materials typically associated with masculine culture, feminist artists who work with textiles
use materials found in traditional female domestic arts and handicrafts, using techniques such as sewing, knitting, and crochet. Canadian Miriam Schapiro (1923-2025), who worked in the United States, was an early adopter to employ a feminist methodology in textile work. She began her femmages in the early 1970s. Femmage was “a word invented by us to include traditional women’s techniques to achieve their art: sewing, piecing, hooking, cutting, appliquéing, cooking and the like–activities also engaged in by men but assigned in history to women.” 
Her first works resembled large cabinet of curiosities that countered the male technological world of computers, a methodology that serves to underpin the artists discussed in this lesson. 

 

left. Rosemarie Trocket, Water (Wasser), 2004.                                                                               right. Malgoratzata Mirg-Tas, Re-enchanting the World, 2-22 (detail)

 

Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952, German) began Strickbilder (Knitted Paintings) in the mid-1980s.  Knitting, like other types of needlework, is traditionally associated with the work of women in the home. To refer to two of the most prominent keywords of second-wave feminism, Trockel takes this cultural technique out of the private realm and into the public, political one.

 Suggestion: You may ask the class to explain what “the private is political“ means, and how it might apply to this artwork.

There are institutional as well as social structures, rules and beliefs which have traditionally assigned women to the private sphere: For a long time, they were not allowed to vote, to take up employment without their husband’s permission, to be independent and act as political subjects in society. Feminists recognized that the private realm is political, therefore individual relationships are political, and formerly private topics are now being discussed publicly as political issues. [4]

Trockel’s Strickbilder are made of knitted woolen yarn mounted onto frames. Many of her artworks, such as Wasser (Water) (2004) consist of geometric, color-blocked planes. They remind the viewer of Color-Field painting, a style popularized by New York artists Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Barnett Newman in the 1950s. Other works, such as Ohne Titel (Fleckenbild) (Untitled (Spot Picture)) (1988) feature simple, repetitive geometric patterns and resemble the painting style of Op-Art, a subsequent style under the umbrella of geometric abstraction. Both of these scenes were dominated by male artists. By creating knitted paintings, Trockel problematizes the distinction between decorative craft and high art.

Textile crafts, such as knitting, sewing, and embroidery, are skills typically carried out by women in their own homes. The pieces they make are usually functional and/or decorative, and often intended for private use only. Therefore, crafts are traditionally considered a lower form of creativity than non-applied fine art which is made to express creative or philosophical ideas. [5]

Thus, Rosemarie Trockel transfers the aesthetics of these modern painting styles onto a material and technique which were previously not considered a suitable medium for high art. One could argue that her knitted paintings are a practice of making the private political and claiming a space in the art world for materials and techniques associated with the low-art forms of the domestic sphere which were traditionally held in lower regard.

Knitting is integral to feminist art. Artists who use the technique aim to overcome the idea that handicrafts and traditional female creativity are of a secondary importance compared to high art, which is (or was while Trockel was creating her series) dominated by male artists who were worked in large-painting format. It is important to note, though, that Trockel does not knit her Strickbilder by hand. She uses a knitting machine.

Suggestion: Here, the class could discuss the implications of Trockels decision to create her Strickbilder not by hand, but by knitting machine.

This decision creates a complex interweaving in the hierarchy of different materials and production techniques. Mechanizing the traditional intimacy of hand-knitted pieces takes the production process out of the private realm of the home. Although we still associate the finished knitted artworks with the female craft, Trockel opts out of re-enacting this cultural technique by having her artworks be machine-knitted. The technique also creates the potential to mass-produce identical artworks. This raises questions about the craftsmanship and authorship of the artist, as well as the uniqueness of the works.

Optional (or as homework): Analyze the work Balaklava, 1986, by Rosemarie Trockel based on what you’ve already learned about her work.

Additional info: Each balaclava has a label that includes a serial number, date of production, and the artist’s signature. They are machine-knitted and exhibited on styrofoam mannequin heads, similar to the way they would be presented at a store.

  • The symbolism of the balaclava is complex: it is a functional garment to keep one warm in the winter, but is also used for criminal activity to conceal one’s identity.
  • The patterns and symbols also evoke different references: Hammer and sickle, the Playboy bunny logo, swastikas, a nondescript wave pattern and plus and minus signs — they range from fashionable to tacky to illegal.
  • If they were worn by someone, that person would be able to convey their political affiliation or stance on women’s rights without giving away their facial features.
  • By putting these five patterns, which vary in controversy, on the same level, Trockel raises questions about fashion and identity, the power of symbols and the banality of merchandising.
  • As the balaclavas are machine-knitted, too, they could be mass-produced
  • . This distinguishes them from the traditional criterion that artworks should be one-of-a-kind creative objects, usually produced through many hours of skilled, manual work.

The Polish Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (b. 1978) sews large, colorful collages out of second-hand textiles. In her practice, she also refers to materials and techniques associated with female crafts and handiwork like Judy Chicago but the way she sources her materials gives her work additional meaning. She not only sources the clothes and fabrics from second-hand stores, but also from her friends and family. Mirga-Tas was part of the group exhibition RomaMoMA at documenta fifteen, along with Selma Selman, and represented the Polish Pavilion at Biennale di Venezia in 2022. Her project for Venice, called Re-enchanting the World, consists of large-scale textile collages covering every wall of the pavilion. Each collage is horizontally divided into three panels. All the equivalent panels depict similar themes: The top panels show genre-esque landscape scenes with people doing daily tasks such as cooking, washing, and traveling. They illustrate a stylized version of the early modern life of nomadic Roma. The center panels show zodiac signs and portraits of various Roma women who work in art and activism on a dark blue background. The bottom panels also show various group portraits, insights into the contemporary life of Polish Roma from the community of the artist. Each collage represents one month of the year.

With the composition and motives of the collages, Mirga-Tas refers to the early-Renaissance fresco series of an unknown artist in the Italian Palazzo Schifanoia, but swaps the mythological depictions and those of the Renaissance courtly society with portraits and stories of Roma, especially those who she has a personal relationship with.

 The personal, the micro-stories of the Roma women, is also conveyed through the use of materials which come from the possessions of the women in Mirga-Tas’ social environment. The identities and experiences of the women thus are built into the work of art. At the same time, the artwork tells a macro history of the historic oppressions Roma have faced, and shows us how this has shaped the contemporary identity of the Roma. The artist literally sews together the identities of her social environment with their historical background, and thus points out the connections.

The manufacturing process of the work also took place in cooperation. Mirga-Tas worked together with three seamstresses. This affirmative, community-building practice is, for example, also referred to in the fabric collage of June: Four women work on textiles, which expresses solidarity and cohesion. At the same time, this motive can be read as a reflection of the role in which Mirga-Tas sees herself in her community. Theoretical references can be drawn here to the theory of minority feminism: Mirga-Tas’ motives show women in specific roles, at specific activities. They exhibit an iconography which is situated in the subjective and emancipatory perspective of a Polish Roma woman.

 The artist explains what the material means to her in regards to her artistic concept: ˝The materials, clothing, and curtains from which I sew portraits are meant to give them additional energy and power. I have been collecting things given to me by women in my family, from Roma neighborhoods and friends. Sometimes I buy them in second-hand stores. I can see life in them; I see emotions and feelings. Portraits sewn from the clothes of these or other Roma women gives them spirituality and magic. I personally feel moved when I see some of the scraps of material, knowing who they came from, who I saw in them, who they belonged to. It is also wonderful to feel that what I do is important to them, that they know they are a part of the project, a part of something bigger, a fight against racial, class and economic prejudice.” [5]

In conclusion, Mirga-Tas uses the female-coded, house and handiwork technique of sewing in an affirmative way: She appropriates the iconography of the frescoes and infuses it with stories of European Roma as well as personal stories. The technique of collage refers formally to the composite, i.e. polyphonic, stories and iconologies as well as the idea of re-enchanting through cooperation and solidarity.

Suggestion for student discussion: The title of the artwork, Re-enchanting the World, refers to a book of the same name by feminist author Silvia Federici. She postulates that building community and relationships (also with non-human beings) is a peaceful way to change the world. Do you recognize this sentiment in the artwork?

Another point of discussion: In what ways, and to what extend would you consider Mirga-Tas’ work an emancipatory practice — an act which empowers the artist to re-define how Roma people are depicted and how their stories are integrated into art history. 

DELIVERY SUGGESTIONS

  • The lesson plan Feminism & Art is suitable as a preceding lesson or as a source for preparation / as a recap for lecturers and students.
  • This short video from the MoMA YouTube channel summarizes feminist art and can be watched in the beginning of the lecture.
  • Idea for pre-class preparation / homework: Give the class the task to research some feminist artists and find out which materials and mediums they like to use, to describe their characteristics, and think about what they associate these mediums and materials with. They can take notes to share their findings in class.
    Optional: If they make art themselves, they can think about the materials they like to use: Why do they use them? Which qualities do they have that make them interesting to use? Which meanings or references do the students associate with the materials? They can take notes to share their findings in class.
  • To start off the analysis of an artwork, ask the class to describe the qualities / properties of the material used in the artwork. Then ask them what they associate it with. You could collect their answers on a blackboard or digital pad.

AT THE END OF CLASS…

The method of material iconography offers a unique, and often revealing insight into the materials, techniques, concepts and strategies of feminist art. Especially the popular strategy of appropriation can be recognized in the way feminist artists work with specific materials. Popular materials such as textiles, collages, and the body all work as signifiers of certain social ideas or statuses, their semantics are informed by the cultural and social contexts they are produced and used in. By using these materials in their artistic practices, the artists refer to these semantics in a critical way and aim to overwrite them.

Material iconography recognizes artistic materials as motives and signifiers. Through this lesson, we learned that for every individual piece of art, different aspects of material iconography lend themselves to be taken into account for an analysis. Often, the combination of material properties and cultural and social semantics of a material is what brings across the themes and concepts of an artwork and what makes it interesting to analyze. It is important to keep in mind that our own cultural and social backgrounds inform the way we receive materials as mediums of iconography, as well.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Hilary Robinson (Hrsg.): Feminism Art Theory. An Anthology 1968–2014. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.

Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Hrsg.): WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, 2009.

Website of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist art with resources such as articles, artworks, and exhibitions.

[1] Monika Wagner, “Surface Matters: ‘True‘ and False‘ Gloss in Architecture,” Materiality in Roman Art and Architecture (2022), pp. 25-38.

[2]Boshko Boskovic, Reclaiming ourselves through our labour. Selma Selman’s artistic practice and modes of healing, O.D. in: RomaMoMA Blog. URL: https://eriac.org/reclaiming-ourselves-through-our-labour-selma-selmans-artistic-practice-and-modes-of-healing/)

[3] See Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, Polity Press, Cambridge (1988).

[4]Art vs Craft: What’s the difference?
[5] Wojciech Szymánski, Joanna Warsza (Ed.): Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Re-enchanting the World, Exhibition Catalogue, La Biennale di Venezia 2022, Warsaw/Berlin 2022, p. 82

Shirin Graf is an art historian and educator based in Kassel, Germany, focusing on the intersection of modern and contemporary art and politics, feminist and queer art history and theory, as well as art education and museum practice with an anti-racist and transcultural focus.