Up in Arms: Women Artists, Feminism, and Guns in America Culture

American women artists from the 1960s until today, have incorporated gun imagery in their art to expose or to challenge governmental, societal, and art-world institutions exerting power over women, trying to keep them in their place. Women artists’ gun imagery emerged against a background of political activism, male chauvinism, and growing violence during the 1960s and 1970s, when women artists, now of historical importance, responded to diverse stimuli. Their association of male power with the phallus and with guns is not new. Women and guns go back in American history. A cultural icon like Annie Oakley (1860-1926), the famous sharpshooter, can be viewed as a kind of early performance artist displaying female agency and competency. Like her, women artists have adopted gun imagery to identify and to challenge male power and to prevent their female voices from being silenced. Yet, this subject matter is such a loaded issue that the appearance of guns has led to the censorship of art, especially in work commissioned from women for public spaces. What prompted so many women to “draw their guns” ranges from feminists like Judy Chicago, Hannah Wilke, Judith Bernstein, and Laurie Simmons who dealt with the objectification of women, and violence aimed at them. Black feminists like Faith Ringgold and Betye Saar dealt with the civil rights movement. Other contemporaries like Martha Rosler or Shirin Neshat addressed global political issues. Digital artist Roz Dimon treated both the mechanical “beauty” of guns and explored the link of gun violence to mental illness.