Painting Blood: Visualizing Menstrual Blood in Art

Abstract

While there are isolated cases of reverence for menstruation, many societies impose a strict set of rules about the visualization of menstrual blood in art and visual culture. Green-Cole examines these hegemonic and patriarchal codes controlling discussion, commemoration, or visualization of menstruation, which have been internalized by millions of women worldwide as negative and shameful. One of the main tools used to maintain menstrual stigma is to erase the presence of the scene of menstruation in speech, image, and representation. Green-Cole argues that by publicly acknowledging menstruation and making it visible, the artworks discussed in this chapter are instrumental in undermining this stigma. She demonstrates how this process of undermining also changes what we assume to be the function and value of art. Finally, Green-Cole analyzes the ways in which artists have used paint to signify or stand in for blood as a challenge to the decorum of modernist formalism, which conveniently erased women’s issues.