Feminist theoretical and visual challenges to modernist representation

Abstract

The international and local feminist avant-garde of the 1970s is discussed in Chapter 6. Vancouver women’s rejection of canonical art history, their development of alternative distribution and exhibition systems for promoting artwork, and their psychoanalytic critique of the male gaze all implicitly challenged the legitimacy of the theoretical and historical project of Vancouver photo-conceptualism. These threats would thus be selectively integrated into the new male-authored photography. Historical and contemporary critical responses to Marian Penner Bancroft and Liz Magor’s work are also analysed, which through contrary-example further establishes the male-gendered character of avant-garde discourse formation in Vancouver.