Gender and art

The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s museum of comic and cartoon art is proud to present, Wonder Women: On Page and Off.

The exhibit is an exploration of the role of women as artists and in the workplace of the comics industry, and the way the way women have been portrayed in the art form of comics.

Comics provide yet another example of the roller coaster of gender constructs that hindered women. Since the turn of the 20th century, women have inched their way into the industry despite the many hurdles placed in front of them. Early female comic characters often appeared in minor, supportive roles, however, today there are many comic heroines as main characters.

 

The exhibit will run January 4th-March 30th 2014.

http://toonseum.org/exhibits.html

 

Via Ladies Making Comics

Underground comics, like so many of the 1960s counterculture’s anti-institutions, started as a boys club. But the field didn’t stay that way for long. The all-women “It Ain’t Me, Babe” was published in 1970, followed in 1972 by “Wimmen’s Comix,” which persevered for two decades. One of the central figures in this India-ink insurrection was Trina Robbins, whose work is included in “Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women,” at the Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center’s gallery. The retrospective doesn’t cover every aspect of women’s comics, but among the 18 participants are several of the early-’70s prime movers, including Diane Noomin, Sharon Rudahl and Aline Kominsky-Crumb (who married one of Robbins’s macho nemeses, R. Crumb).

Via Ladies Making Comics