During the feminist movement of the 1970s, the slogan "the personal is political" gained widespread currency. It re-examined the relationship between individual experience and systemic power structures, declaring that art would expand its scope to explicitly represent the perspectives of marginalized communities.
The slogan "the personal is political" originated from an influential essay written in 1969 by feminist activist Carol Hanisch. In her essay, she argued that the problems women faced were primarily social and political, rather than merely personal or psychological, thus requiring political solutions rather than individual therapy. Hanisch identified commonalities between women and other oppressed groups, asking, "Can you imagine what would happen if women, Blacks, and workers no longer blamed themselves for their oppression?" Feminist art faced practical exclusion from art history and galleries. The influential essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", published in 1971 by American art historian Linda Nochlin, famously questioned the institutional biases that historically excluded women from the category of "greatness" in art. In essence, established conventions, largely controlled by men, had both defined "greatness" and effectively barred women from participating in or being recognized by the art world.
Feminist artists responded by challenging traditional, male-dominated art historical narratives. For instance, Judy Chicago's seminal installation The Dinner Party (1974-1979) celebrated women's achievements, integrating themes of female greatness, gender, spirituality, and nurturing roles. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro co-founded the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts. As part of this program, students and artists created the collaborative project Womanhouse (1972) in an abandoned mansion, where installations—such as those in bathrooms—addressed women's experiences previously overlooked by art.
Throughout the 20th century, the evolving relationship between art and political movements, along with the question of whether art can convey personal experience, persisted. Feminist art, by integrating the personal and the political, embraced this critical perspective. It fostered an academic critical theory that understood art, texts, and cultural products as deriving meaning from broader systems—social, political, and linguistic—rather than solely from the individual expression of the creator.
Feminist groups, such as the Guerrilla Girls, formed in 1985, whose theoretical and performative practices significantly transformed the art world. More women artists began to be invited to exhibitions, to pursue professional careers, and to receive commissions and accolades. Aspects of women's experiences were for the first time accepted as legitimate artistic subject matter. Western feminist art created a model that shifted marginalized artistic practices to the center stage, transcending conventional boundaries of gender, race, and social status. In 1996, in Renée Cox's photograph Yo Mama's Last Supper, the artist placed a nude Black woman (herself) at the center of a re-imagined Last Supper, a gesture that provoked outrage from patriarchal and Catholic institutions.
