Women, the language of art making and feminist theologies in the 20th and 21st centuries

Abstract

Theology and art have always been seen as bedfellows but historically both the world of art, language and theology have been recorded, spoken and viewed through the male gaze and patriarchy's theological voice of authority. Women's art began to speak a language of its own after the turn of the 20th century with the suffragette movement in full swing, and there was also a shift in the art world progressing from the Victorian age to modernism. Realism took on a new face and the world of art was being transformed through the Avant Garde movements of mural painting, abstract art namely cubism and surrealism, developing into distinct styles and speaking in multiple tongues about the changing social world. The explosive revolutionary second wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s has deeply influenced Christian art and feminist theology and art through its renegotiation of the body as a space to speak from regarding women's sociocultural experience. The mid-20th century and the 21st century saw a flourishing of women engaged with both theology and art and the works emerging have been, at times, world shifting.