Fig1 Méret Oppenheim. Object. 1936. Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon. Purchase 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Pro Litteris, Zurich. Credits A Women's Thing
Editor’s Note:
In Parts I & II, we traced a herstorical arc—from muse to maker, from classical nudes to vulvas scrawled in protest and digital paint. Now, we step into the surreal salons and underground stages where feminist art staged its loudest rebellions and softest seductions. This is the art of resistance—masked, moaning, and unashamed.
The female body, once a mute muse, now screams, paints, films, and masturbates back. This chapter dives deeper: Who were the first women to reclaim the gaze, eroticize the intellect, and dance naked through the fire of history?
Fig 2 Martha Edelheit, Women in Landscape, 1966-1968 Acrylic on canvas via Artsy
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The Female Gaze: A Different Kind of Desire
To look is to want. But what happens when she looks back?
The “female gaze” isn’t just about swapping lenses—it’s about taking the camera, burning the script, and writing your own pornographic poetry. It doesn’t kill eroticism. It reinvents it. This gaze craves complexity: it sees women not as objects, but as subjects who desire, rage, ache, laugh, bleed, and dominate.
Fig 3 "Self Portrait with Nude" by the English artist Laura Knight, 1913. The painting is considered significant because it depicts a female artist painting a nude model, which was a subject matter generally forbidden to women at the time. National Portrait Gallery, London
Fig 4 Kadie Salmon, 'Untitled (Studio)' 2022 hand painted artwork courtesy, the artist
Fig 5 Dorothea Tanning, Voltage 1942. Oil on canvas. Credits The Dorothea Tanning Foundation
Dorothea Tanning once wrote: ‘There is no such thing as a 'woman artist' or person. It's just as much a contradiction in terms as 'man artist' or 'elephant artist.’
Her statement, provocative as it is, challenges the absurdity of gendered labels in art, even as history has tried its best to forget the women who defied them.
So who paved the paths? Who painted with blood, desire, and rebellion?
Fig 6 Dorothea Tanning, Profanation, 1943. Oil on canvas. Credits The Dorothea Tanning Foundation
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Fig 7 Birthday, 1942 Surrealist self-portrait by Dorothea Tanning, the cinematic painting that brought her and Max Ernst together
Fourth Wave Feels: From Fur and Vulvas to Velvet. A Timeline of Feminist Desire, Daring & Decadence
Fig 8 Atelier Binder- Anita Berber From Das Leben 1931. Credits La Petite Mélancolie
Fig 9 Adorée Villany’s controversial nude dance performances early 20th century - Phryné Moderne Devant l’Aréopage, 1913
Dance of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy: Anita Berber, the Original Berlin Banshee
Think Lady Gaga meets Weimar cabaret. Anita Berber was the cocaine-snorting, drag-dancing, bisexual performance queen of 1920s Berlin. Alongside her lover Sebastian Droste, she staged expressionist fever dreams onstage—orgiastic rituals dripping with kink, death, and divine filth.
Fig 10 I llustration by Margot Van Huijkelom, also known as Book Margot via Pinterest
Fig 11 In Nomine Kaos by HotCyberBeauty, Created using AI tools on Deviantart
Fig 12 Lynn Paula Russell, Bodyscapes series (2010)
They weren’t just dancing; they were casting spells in stilettos. Berber danced in blood-red veils and cocaine-fueled performances across Weimar Berlin, embodying the grotesque glamour of resistance.
She staged Eurhythmic-expressionist performances like Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy (1922)—blending eroticism, horror, and modernist rage into an unapologetic gesamtkunstwerk. Berber was a feminist rebel long before the movement had a name. Her body was the manifesto.
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Click HERE for part one of the Through Her Eyes series or HERE for part I of the Pornotopia series!
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