02/01/20

“Women’s work” is also art

 

What is “Women’s Work”? To me a women’s work is the detailed or emotional work. Even without thinking back to the gender stereotype of what women work is (cleaning the house, doing the laundry, make the meals, take care of the children, etc.) we can observe that both home setting or work setting, women’s usually are able to see and apply the little details into their works. These details are what help improves their works or the environment that they are working in. For example in the house setting, women would do/do the cleaning often to keep the family healthy and presentable, personalize the environment to keep a welcoming or warm environment to relax in, cooking to make sure no one’s starving themselves by skipping meals, or making sure the family gets together to socialize to maintain the love and harmony in the family. All of these attention to detail are the important things that helps a person’s day run smoothly, without it life would be like walking through an unpaved road. Possible but not as easy or comfortable. It is also because of how often these works are done in a daily that others may slowly forget to appreciate it and instead take it for granted, until they one day loose that person. These attention to detail are also often seen in the work force to. If we are looking back to our teacher’s, Glenn Zucman, example of the only women in the fire department being the head manager. It can be theorize that the only women in the fire department is the head manager because she is able to be through in accomplishing her task, and took in considerate of all the areas involved, no matter how small. So she became the best fit to become the manager who oversee the work force. That had also been the theory why secretaries or assistant managers, since the 1950’s, were majorly women (or assumed to be women).

What is “art”? Art to me is a creative piece of work that was created, with emotion, to be known, appreciated, and valued by the viewers who see’s it. It may or may not evoke emotions, but must be seen.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleaning the steps of an art museum and Richard Serra flinging molten lead against the walls of an art museums are different types of art. Mierle Laderman Ukeles art represented maintenance and preservation while Richard Serra’s art represented more of destruction and death. Both can be considered as a type of art, which is a similarity they have in common. Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art performance at the Wadsworth Atheneum is considered as “art” because it was a performance to be viewed. If she had simply gotten hired as a janitor at a factory somewhere and performed that job for 6 months, it would have been work and not an art performance. This is similar to the question of whether a job should be considered as a leisure experience if one enjoys their job, however students learned in class that it isn’t because the leisure experience must be done during one’s free time. Here the act of Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art performance is considered as art because it was a deliberate performance she made to the audience, if it was a job then it would no longer be a performance but a service or labor. Another example could be painting a house, if it is a regular house painting then it is labor done to maintain the house and keeping the house from deteriorating. However if the housing painting is a design to change the look of the house, then it is art, because it was done primarily to be viewed and enjoyed, not to maintain the house.