Reading response

Where and How Gender and Art Intersect According to (Barnet 1996), there’s a way in which gender and art have been related. Firstly, we find Andy Warhol referring to art as a man when he is responding to the question, ‘’what is art?’’ (Barnet pg. 1). This shows some comparisons of a man’s characteristics in art. It may be that, Andy tried to compare a man with art may be to try to show that it is a man’s thing. This is a kind of a direct comparison that can also be used to show that art is a hard thing to do as men are associated with such hard things.
Secondly, Barnet goes on to show us the work done by a student in the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of Art, which was exhibited at the Bronx Museum in 1995 (Barnet pg. 8). According to this work, we’re told how two instructors and twenty students turned an abandoned house into art work. The house is described as a ‘’womanhouse’’ to show that, in hart, there’re those works that are for women and others are for men. In this house, each participant majored into making the closets into their dream houses and closets according to their fantasies. The students were then encouraged by their instructors to make use of materials that were associated with women such as dolls, sanitary napkins, cosmetics, and crotched materials.
When we look at how Barnet defines art (Barnet pg. 2), he considers art to be anything that a person who knows art to consider it to be. This definition is similar to how Kate Bornstein describes how gender or sexuality is a social construct (Bornstein 2000). Under gender identity and assignment, certain cultures consider determination of gender a social responsibility (Bornstein pg. 180). In as much as it can be natural, one identifies themselves sexually according to how they feel. One can feel like a woman while another can feel like a man. In this case therefore, art and gender are intersect in such a way that, the same way art can be anything a person considers it to be, gender is also determined by a person according to how they feel.
Works Cited
Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. New Jersey: Pearson, Pentice Hall, 1996.
Bornstein, Kate. Sexuality. London: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000.