A Political Abstraction?

In the 1970s abstraction remained on the margins of feminist debates because it was considered not to be politically committed. ‘’I wrote less about abstract art because there was less there to get my teeth into [...]. I don’t think much symbolic or abstract work contributes directly to a feminist revision of contemporary culture’’, declared Lucy Lippard in 1994. When abstraction was discussed, it was from opposing points of view. Thus, Ann Berg and Monica Sjöö objected violently to abstraction in “Images on Womanpower – Arts Manifesto,” published in Towards a Revolutionary Feminist Art. Harmony Hammond articulated a link between abstraction and militant commitment, exploring the possibility of a political and feminist abstract art in her article “Feminist Abstract Art – A Political Viewpoint,” published in Heresies in 1977.