Vagina Question

March 19, 2005 2:11 PM

Famous vagina-centric feminist artists out there? I know Judy Chicago is pretty famous for her Dinner Party and Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues is a good one too. Any others? I know there have been a few male ones too, can't remember. Google is not easy to search for this stuff!

My professor said once that the beaver was a hermaphodite. I tried to look it up on Google, but "Beaver sex" or "beaver vagina" never offered good results.

PS This is a serious post.

posted by Napierzaza to media & arts (21 comments total)

o'keeffe?
posted by drpynchon at 2:15 PM on March 19, 2005

carolee schneeman's "interior scroll" is pretty much a classic.

i'd do a search on "body art", "performance", and possibly "70s".
posted by fishfucker at 2:32 PM on March 19, 2005

Georgia O'Keefe came to my mind also.
posted by Rumple at 2:33 PM on March 19, 2005

Also: Who was the New York performance artist woman who had semi-nude women and men roll around the floor of a studio covered in dead fish and chickens? It was filmed and there were apparently all sorts of rules to how the touching and handling of the corpses happened.
posted by Napierzaza at 2:36 PM on March 19, 2005

oh, and for the beaver thing try "beaver hermaphrodite -xxx"

googleguide.com offers some good tips for searching with google.
posted by fishfucker at 2:36 PM on March 19, 2005

tee corinne's cunt coloring book?
posted by ifjuly at 2:43 PM on March 19, 2005

annie sprinkle famously let people look at her cervix through a speculum.

there's a re/search book called angry women that gives an excellent overview of this sort of art.
posted by judith at 2:52 PM on March 19, 2005

miro. or am i imagining things?
posted by andrew cooke at 3:05 PM on March 19, 2005

Don't forget former NEA Four member Holly Hughes.

(MI on sex-positive feminism.)
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 3:12 PM on March 19, 2005

Yoko Ono, early in her performance art career, squatted over a piece of canvas and painted with her menstrual blood (or maybe used a brush dipped in red paint and er, no hands). Art history class was a long time ago, so the details are sketchy.
posted by picea at 3:25 PM on March 19, 2005

You have to read Viva La Vulva, it's a great essay. Also, picea reminded me of Vanessa Tiegs and Tinet Elmgren.
posted by iconomy at 3:46 PM on March 19, 2005

the rolling around on the floor naked with dead animals, was a piece called "Meat Joy" and it was also by Carolee Schneemann of the "interior scroll" fame.
posted by geryon at 3:53 PM on March 19, 2005

I am not sure if she would qualify for *famous,* but there is Hong Kong artist Phoebe Man's performance art, Rati. Here are some of her other works.

You might find some other artists in the Online Vulva Museum.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:41 PM on March 19, 2005

Yoko Ono, early in her performance art career, squatted over a piece of canvas and painted with her menstrual blood (or maybe used a brush dipped in red paint and er, no hands).

You're probably thinking of Shigeko Kubota's Vagina Painting (Ono and Kubota were both part of the Fluxus movement). Note that the brush was attached to her underwear, not inserted in the vagina.
posted by rafter at 5:23 PM on March 19, 2005

Meret Oppenheim's famous fur-lined teacup.
posted by naxosaxur at 5:43 PM on March 19, 2005

Karen Finley, the "Chocolate-Smeared Woman".
posted by obloquy at 6:34 PM on March 19, 2005

Vulva puppets
posted by bendy at 6:45 PM on March 19, 2005

Kathy Acker.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:54 PM on March 19, 2005

Rachel Rosenthal
posted by euphorb at 9:23 PM on March 19, 2005

Well, the contributors aren't famous feminists as far as I can tell, but tamponart is vagina-centric, at least. There are probably a ton of other similar sites by now.

Also, the search you wanted for beaver hermaphrodites is this one. Adding the word "animal" knocked out most of the porn stuff (it's an easy trick for limiting search results; just add different words until you get closer to what you're looking for). For the record, the first result notes beavers are *pseudo*-hermaphrodites, based on evidence that many male beavers have been found to carry around a uterus.

Spencerville trapper Darcy Alkerton provided 11 male beavers to a research team at the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College. Two professors there were looking for something specific and they found it in 100 per cent of the males -- a uterus. They also found the "male uterus" in 70 per cent of the 13 beavers from Timmins, Algonquin Provincial Park and Guelph....

To further confuse the issue, in all European beavers, Castor fiber, males carry a uterus and are well-known as pseudo-hermaphrodites. (A true hermaphrodite, such as an earthworm, is so-well equipped with both gender's reproductive organs that no matter which gender it meets on the mating grounds, it's always the right one.)
posted by mediareport at 10:19 PM on March 19, 2005

Shawna Dempsey and Tracy Traeger's video short We're Talking Vulva.
posted by teg at 8:41 AM on March 20, 2005