Vanamie Art and Info Blog

I've been thinking about my last post. What do I actually think of this feminist art revival? The question is: can we judge it as good or bad art? Why does it appear to be an ethical and not aesthetic choice? I mean, say I appreciate this type of art. Could I still consider one of these works bad art? The critics, all of them, don't seem to give me that choice: either you are avant-garde and therefore love it, or have another system of values which disqualifies this art altogether. This is a very irritating phenomenon that also happens in other forms of artistic expression where important life values are at stake. It is as if the issues were so important, the art part of art is nearly irrelevant. That's a pity - because the quality of a work not only goes beyond its concept (that's trivial), but also engages the spectator in a specific way. This engagement, this relationship, is what I might call quality, and it is what seems to matter no less than the "intention" or "concept" or so. The spectator could be a hypothetical one, but he is still part of the works dialogical being, so to speak. From the works shown below, I find Kozyra's piece stronger than Żebrowska's, because it goes deeper, on more levels, and it attracts me aesthetically, whereas Żebrowska's work, not for the first time, I find discomforting, almost unappealing, as in - weak. I can very well imagine a cross, a penis, and some other forms sliding out of a vagina, and they would seem to "work" - but there is something just too simple about it, naive, one-sided. Kozyra, on the other hand, manages (once again) to keep the balance in her ambiguity. She confuses us, makes us shake our heads, and then answer, and then ask again. And it's this constant coming back to a question I particularly appreciate.
And yet, once again I ask: is this sort of art fair?