Sherrie Levine, along with Richard Prince, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman and a small cadre of other artists came to define “The Pictures Generation.” Their collective efforts wrestled with age-old questions surrounding authorship, citation, and originality in art. Her acts of artistic appropriation drastically renegotiated what was permissible both creatively and legally in an unprecedented way.
Iveković is a role model for artists working within the constraints and restrictions of an oppressive regime.
RRosler became a leading figure in the Feminist art movement because much of her work revealed the divide between how women were portrayed as individuals whose only place was within the confines of home, marriage, kitchen, and motherhood and the way they actually felt by being pigeonholed into said domestic roles. She also used brave new technologies such as video to differentiate herself from the male art stars and their traditional mediums that had come before.
Barbara Kruger’s work has an integral place in the history of feminist, postmodern, and conceptual art. Connected with this, Kruger dissects contemporary culture in her unique combinations of image and text, often targeting multiple oppressions or hypocrisies.
Though her art was strongly and explicitly feminist, Wilke’s work was often misunderstood by feminist and other critics who saw it as narcissistic, and reaffirming of women’s position as an object of desire.
Arbus’s short and troubled life resulted in a body of work that was, and continues to be, both celebrated for its compassion and condemned for its objectification.
Long overshadowed by her extraordinary life and her relationship with Edward Weston, she was viewed as his muse, rather than as a gifted photographer in her right. Despite a remarkably short career in photography – just seven years – she created a body of iconic images that confirmed her place in history.
Responsible for many “firsts” – the first industrial photographer, LIFE’s first female photographer, the first American female war photojournalist, the first woman to take her camera into combat zones – she proved a role model for future generations of professional female photographers including the likes of Lynsey Addario, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, and Susan Meiselas.
Rimmington’s prolific practice in drawing, painting, writing, poetry, and photography gave significant substance to the British Surrealist movement, helping to secure its reputation both locally and overseas.
As a photographer, her unapologetic framing and cropping of the negative taught us to look closely at people. Her photographic techniques paved the way for contemporary photographers’ unorthodox amending of the original material to create insightful pictures about how we see the world. Her interest in the ambiguity generated by images reflected on shop windows, later informed the work of street photographers.