The Standpoint of Art/Criticism: Cindy Sherman as Feminist Artist?

摘要

Feminist Standpoint Theory identifies knowledge as a social product developed from a specific social position. We apply this theory to explore the dominant standpoint informing the social organization of Western art via an institution we call art/criticism. We find that the assumptions, values, and analytic strategies informing mainstream art and art criticism express the standpoint of privileged men. As a test of our argument, we consider the case of an artist who is often hailed as a feminist artist and yet is one of the most successful woman artists today: Cindy Sherman. We find that while Sherman is working with some fertile possibilities for feminist analysis, her work ends up re-directing this potential into a disempowering play with images. We conclude that rather than countering our argument, the celebration of Sherman's work as feminist reveals the workings, as well as the limits, of the privileged male standpoint in art.