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The field of Los Angeles urban art: gendered stereotyping and opportunities for change

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The field of Los Angeles urban art: gendered stereotyping and opportunities for change

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The Field of Los Angeles Urban Art:

Gendered Stereotyping and Opportunities for Change
by
Lizy Dastin

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

May 2022

© Copyright by Lizy Dastin 2022
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Lizy Dastin certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Zoë Corwin

Jenifer Crawford
Corinne Hyde, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022

iv

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the degree to which Sigmund Freud’s reductive Madonna/whore
complex, which is so prevalent in traditional and historical art, manifests in contemporary urban
art renderings of female subjects throughout Los Angeles. Furthermore, this study attempts to
unravel the relationship between the gender identity of the urban artist who creates images of
women and the nature of their portrayal of the female subject, in addition to the relationship
between the gender, race and age of the viewer of this same artwork and their interpretation of its
message. A mixed methodological approach was utilized to execute the study, synthesizing
survey data analysis of a broad swath of Los Angeles residents with targeted interviews with
viewers and artists. Findings indicate that not all aspects of the way Freud compartmentalized
women in the early 20
th
century maintain contemporary consequence to how female subjects of
urban art are painted or perceived today. Specifically, contemporary female urban art subjects
who were seen as sexual were not regarded as empowered or strong, even though those two
concepts were aligned during Freud’s original positioning. However, findings also suggest some
lingering traces of Freud’s categorization of women, particularly with regards to maternal fitness
and sexuality being perceived as mutually exclusive identities. Ultimately, data reveals that a
given participant’s varying identities do impact the way they view female subjects in art, and that
a given artist’s gender identity does impact the way they paint their female subjects. Implications
of this study are consequential to consider since urban art is regarded as a reflection of society
and by better understanding the gender biases within the urban art space, we can glean more
insight into the gender biases within society more broadly.

v

Acknowledgements

The pages that follow would not have been possible without the tremendous support,
guidance, vision, and love of the USC community. Thank you to the illustrious faculty I was
lucky enough to learn from—Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Donato, Dr. Fecht, Dr. Foulk, Dr. Kho, Dr. Lucas,
Dr. Lynch, Dr. Maddox, Dr. Martinez, Dr. Sanchez, and Dr. Wilcox—you all taught me more
than I thought my brain could hold. And thank you to my fellow cohort 15 colleagues for getting
me through each semester with your friendship, humor, study groups and phone dates.
To the formidable scholars who were generous enough to serve on my dissertation
committee, Dr. Jenifer Crawford, and Dr. Zoë Corwin, thank you for encouraging me,
challenging me, and sharing your deep wisdom with me. My project is so much better because of
your contributions. Thank you to Dr. Regur for your insightful edits and thank you Dr. Aguilar
for ushering me through the panic attacks I had about the statistics in this project.
Above all, thank you to Dr. Corinne Hyde, the kindest, most brilliant, spectacular,
supportive advisor any baby scholar could be lucky enough to work with. You are the model of
mentorship and I hope that I will be able to be for even one student what you have been for me.
Personally, I would not have been able to survive this experience without my family and
friends, you have been unwavering in your belief in me, and I will never be able to fully express
my gratitude. Thank you to Jono, the romantic love of my life, for writing comments like “the
patriarchy strikes again!” with no irony on my papers, and thank you to my Mama, the other love
of my life, for the boundless enthusiasm, love, wisdom and magic you show me every day.
This dissertation is dedicated to all the failures I have experienced—my, have there been
many—for propelling me to where I needed to go, and to Skipper, for being the most precious
part of where I’ve been.

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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x
Chapter One: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1
Introduction of the Problem of Practice .............................................................................. 2
Context and Background of the Problem ............................................................................ 3
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions .................................................................. 7
Importance of the Study ...................................................................................................... 8
Overview of Theoretical Framework .................................................................................. 9
Definitions........................................................................................................................... 9
Organization of Dissertation ............................................................................................. 11
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 13
A History of Women in Art, 1400s-1950s ........................................................................ 13
Women as Artists .............................................................................................................. 13
Women as Subjects in Portraiture ..................................................................................... 16
Women as Subjects in History Paintings .......................................................................... 18
Freud's Madonna/Whore Complex and Feminist Reimaginings ...................................... 21
The Madonna/Whore Complex......................................................................................... 21
Potential Consequences and Controversies ...................................................................... 21
Madonna/Whore Dichotomy in Art .................................................................................. 24
Microagression Theory ..................................................................................................... 27
The Intersection of Feminism and Art .............................................................................. 30
Women in 1970s Public Art .............................................................................................. 35
Los Angeles: Place and Placemaking ............................................................................... 35

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Womanhouse, 1972 ........................................................................................................... 36
The Great Wall of Los Angeles, 1976 ............................................................................... 38
A History of Urban Art ..................................................................................................... 40
Urban Art in Scholarly Studies ......................................................................................... 41
Women in Contemporary Urban Art ................................................................................ 42
Women Urban Artists ....................................................................................................... 42
Women as Urban Art Subjects .......................................................................................... 44
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 45
Overview of Methodology ................................................................................................ 45
The Reseacrher and Positionality...................................................................................... 46
Data Sources ..................................................................................................................... 48
Survey ............................................................................................................................... 49
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 50
Instrumentation ................................................................................................................. 50
Data Collection Procedures............................................................................................... 51
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 52
Interviews .......................................................................................................................... 53
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 53
Instrumentation ................................................................................................................. 54
Data Collection Procedures............................................................................................... 54
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 56
Validity and Reliability ..................................................................................................... 56
Ethics................................................................................................................................. 58
Chapter Four: Results and Findings .............................................................................................. 59
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 60

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Survey Participants ........................................................................................................... 61
Interview Participants ....................................................................................................... 64
Results and Findings ......................................................................................................... 65
Research Question One ..................................................................................................... 65
Surveys .............................................................................................................................. 65
The Madonna: Trustworthy and Maternal ........................................................................ 66
The Whore: Sexual and Empowered ................................................................................ 69
Interviews .......................................................................................................................... 72
Mister Sampson's Mural ................................................................................................... 73
Kristy Sandoval's Decolonized ......................................................................................... 74
Fin DAC's Upon Reflection .............................................................................................. 76
Research Question Two .................................................................................................... 78
Survey ............................................................................................................................... 79
Artist Interviews................................................................................................................ 81
Mister Sampson ................................................................................................................ 81
Kristy Sandoval ................................................................................................................. 82
Fin DAC ............................................................................................................................ 84
Research Question Three .................................................................................................. 86
Mister Sampson's Mural ................................................................................................... 87
Kristy Sandoval's Decolonized ......................................................................................... 90
Fin DAC's Upon Reflection .............................................................................................. 92
Summary ........................................................................................................................... 95
Chapter Five: Recommendations .................................................................................................. 98
Discussion of Findings ...................................................................................................... 99
Recommendations for Practice ....................................................................................... 100

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Recommendation 1: Diversify the type of women who are illustrated in urban art
murals .............................................................................................................................. 101
Recommendation 2: Diversify the type of women who are rendered as sexually
embodied in urban art murals ......................................................................................... 104
Recommendation 3: Generate more urban art pedagogy ................................................ 105
Limitations and Delimitations......................................................................................... 106
Recommendations for Future Research .......................................................................... 107
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 108
References ................................................................................................................................... 110
Appendix A: Survey Protocol ..................................................................................................... 131
Appendix B: Semi-Structured Interview Protocol ...................................................................... 141
Appendix C: Structured Interview Protocol for Instagram ......................................................... 143
Appendix D: Semi-Structured Phone Interview Protocol with Artists ....................................... 145

x

List of Figures
Figure 1: Hans Namuth, Painting one, Jackson Pollock—Lee Krasner, 1950 15
Figure 2: Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784 19
Figure 3: Francisco Goya, La Maja Desnuda, 1797 20
Figure 4: di Ciccarello, The Madonna of Humility with the Temptation of Eve, c. 1400 27
Figure 5: Conceptual Framework 29
Figure 6: Alberto Vargas, You Make Your Peace Sign, I'll Make Mine, 1969 31
Figure 7: Advertisement from Good Housekeeping Magazine, June 1960 32
Figure 8: Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, Womanhouse, detail, 1972 37
Figure 9: Judy Baca, The Great Wall of Los Angeles, 1976, detail 39
Figure 10: Distribution of the survey participants according to gender identity 62
Figure 11: Distribution of the survey participants according to age 62
Figure 12: Distribution of the survey participants according to race 63
Figure 13: Lydia Emily, There Is Always Hope, 2019 66
Figure 14: JR, Wrinkles of the City, 2012 67
Figure 15: El Mac, Abuela, 2015 68
Figure 16: Hopare, Untitled, 2017 69
Figure 17: Starfighter and Fanakapan, Face to Face, 2017 70
Figure 18: Shepard Fairey, Defend Dignity, 2020 71
Figure 19: Mister Sampson, Untitled, 2019 72
Figure 20: Kristy Sandoval, Decolonized, 2013 75
Figure 21: Fin DAC, Upon Reflection, 2014 77
Figure 22: Mister Sampson: Assessment of the figure’s sexuality by participant’s race 88

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Figure 23: Mister Sampson: Assessment of the figure’s empowerment by participant’s race 90
Figure 24: Sandoval: Assessment of the figure’s maternal fitness by participant’s race 91
Figure 25: Fin DAC: Assessment of the figure’s trustworthiness by participant’s race 93
Figure 26: James Bullough, Untitled, 2020 102
Figure 27: AxelVoid and escif, Hyuro, 2020 104

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Chapter One: Introduction
The history of art and its Western canon is a well-established educational field. Less
established, and as a result perhaps even more rich with opportunities for higher education,
individual learning, and societal discovery, is a subgenre of traditional art history: urban art. This
burgeoning field is comprised of a body of individuals with a shared mission and purpose,
collective knowledge, and engrained, hierarchical power structures amongst its members, and, as
such, is comparable to a formalized organization that is scaffolded by those same pillars (Alper
et al., 2000; Armstrong, 2017). To effectively support meaningful change within the field, as
change is supported within formalized organizations, one must first unstitch the existing
dynamics within its framework that are potentially problematic and then clearly express a new
vision to urban artists, educators, and viewers (Schneider et al., 1996). It is the purpose of this
dissertation to tackle both prongs, the interrogation of dynamics within the field that need to be
transformed or optimized, and the dissemination of the study’s findings to urban art stakeholders
and educators, as two proactive steps toward implementing change within urban art culture
(Costanza et al., 2016).
Artists included in the traditional lexicon are largely academically trained, wealthy,
White and male, whereas artists in the heterodox lexicon of urban art are largely autogenous, not
economically privileged, and diverse in their racialized and gendered positionalities. Urban art
and its makers are anchored to the broader field through history, aesthetic techniques, and some
narrative content; however, less governed by rules or the external pressures of the art market
(Cooper & Sandlin, 2020). In essence, urban art is a microcosm of art set within the macrocosm
of art history, operating from its own distinct set of expectations and adhering to its own laws
(Bourdieu, 1996). A field within a field, urban art is situated within the institutional contexts of

2

Art History, but nevertheless free to operate from a place of disruption (Gaztambide-Fernandez,
2013).
Urban art, frequently referred to as street art, is the most egalitarian form of visual art,
reflecting the ideals of the culture and society from which it is produced with an iconoclastic,
untamed authenticity (Merrill, 2015; Molnár, 2017). Broadly defined, urban art encompasses any
aesthetic medium that is semi-permanent, situated outdoors and charged with an urgency to
communicate (Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi, 2017). Although the spectrum of this definition can
technically include prehistoric cave drawings, the intentionality of urban art as it is understood
today is a modern phenomenon (Cooper & Sandlin, 2020; Visconti et al., 2010).
Part of the power of urban art comes from its physical distance from traditional institutions,
such as museums and galleries, that can feel economically inaccessible and psychologically
elitist (Ross et al., 2017). Art that rides on the streets does not require admission to see, is less
tethered to the expectations of those guiding the art market, and is often irreverent in narrative
(Hamanaka, 2018). This irreverence manifests in more provocative, culturally relevant subject
matter painted by a more diverse roster of artists than has historically been lionized by the
traditional artworld (Lossau & Stevens, 2015).
Introduction of the Problem of Practice
Despite urban art’s reputation for being subversive and more progressive than traditional
canvas art, urban art aligns with the mainstream artworld in its perpetuation of outdated and
reductive stereotypes surrounding women (Sharp et al., 2005). As will be outlined in greater
detail in Chapter Two, the desire to illustrate women and the female body is an urge as age-old in
art history as history itself. This is true for mainstream art hanging at the Louvre Museum in
Paris but also true for renegade urban art stenciled on the side of a building in Downtown Los

3

Angeles. Although women are represented with frequency within both contexts, the ways in
which they are represented are often myopic, emphasizing either sexualized bodies and moral
irreverence or emotional fragility and virtuous modesty (Patton, 2017). Aesthetically
categorizing women in such a dichotomized manner literalizes a Western cultural trope for
cisgender women: the Madonna and the whore, a theory rooted in male psychosexual fears
surrounding women that has informed depictions of women in art since the time of the
Renaissance (Gottschall et al., 2006).
This study questions the degree to which these dualistic groupings of women apply to the
female subjects of urban artwork currently extant on the streets of Los Angeles. Furthermore,
this study seeks to unravel the relationship between the gender identity of the urban artist who
creates images of women and the nature of their portrayal of the female subject, in addition to the
relationship between the gender, race and age of the viewer of this same artwork and their
interpretation of its message. Findings generated from this study can be a tool for higher
education art history professors who are attempting to reexamine and reconstruct the canon that,
as it is now, awards primacy to the White male voice, minimizing the ways in which diverse
voices might perceive the same artwork (Lovern & Swan, 2018).
Context and Background of the Problem
Urban art can often be politically motivated and charged, generating narrative content
that criticizes or supports various people in power, social systems, and political ideologies
(Gutiérrez-Colomer-Ruiz et al., 2021). The response from urban artists in Los Angeles to the
2016 U.S. Presidential election is an illustrative case in point that also serves as the genesis of
this project.

4

The election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton unfolded on the streets of Los
Angeles in canvassing, in protests, and in art. Beyond caricatures that cartoonists drew of Trump
in The New Yorker and newspapers around the world, Trump’s portrayal in urban art throughout
the city was uniquely scathing. For instance, artivist collective INDECLINE constructed a series
of statues of Trump—naked, swollen with fat and unconcerned about his exposed genitalia or
lack of testicles—and displayed them in densely populated outdoor areas; musician-turned-urban
artist Dave Navarro, under the moniker Life After Death, tagged dozens of electrical boxes with
the image of a Democratic donkey defecating Trump’s face; and the anonymous Plastic Jesus
encircled Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a 6-inch wall he constructed out of
concrete, complete with razor wire, warning signs and miniature American flags (Bellware,
2016; Holley, 2016). These renegade art activations, and others like them, were intended to
disempower and demean Trump and, considering the extensive international coverage of the
works, they were objectively successful in their efforts (Johnson, 2017).
However effectively these works conveyed contempt toward Trump, they concurrently
achieved something else: a complete removal of Clinton from the conversation, demonstrated by
the fact that not one work of urban art in Los Angeles was created to illustrate support for, or
even commentary on, her campaign (Kennedy, 2016). As most urban artists working in the city
lean politically liberal, their unspoken and collective decision to deride the candidate across the
political spectrum rather than promote the chosen Democratic candidate is unprecedented.
To fully understand how sizable of a departure the work urban artists created in 2016 was
from comparable art created during elections prior, it is useful to reconsider the 2008 election
between Barack Obama and John McCain. Dozens of prominent Los Angeles artists took to the
streets to propagate their enthusiastic support for the Democratic nominee. No image was quite

5

as galvanizing, or would become as iconic, as the poster that urban artist Shepard Fairey created
and wheatpasted throughout Los Angeles. Fairey’s image, entitled HOPE, depicts Obama—his
patriotic face half blue, half red and upturned in contemplative thought. Utilizing the relatable
aesthetic of propaganda posters, this depiction of a political candidate activated a generation of
younger viewers cum voters in their collective optimism for the future (Sturken, 2009). The
power of Fairey’s message, in part, derives from its positivity, its illustration of an American
ideology and identity that people were eager to see realized (Cartwright & Mandiberg, 2009). If
Fairey had chosen to create an anti-McCain poster instead of proliferating Obama’s campaign
message, the impact of his image on voters, which is understood by scholars as being
considerable, might have had a different effect (Medrano et al., 2021).
The invisibility of Clinton’s image in the Los Angeles urban art scene in 2016, the first
U.S. presidential election with a female candidate, is worthy of further exploration as it alludes to
systemic, gender specific microaggressions that extend beyond the artworld. Equally worthy of
exploration is how women are depicted in urban art when they are chosen as subjects. Early in
2017 before Trump’s inauguration, Fairey created a series, We the People, for the Women’s
March. Comprised exclusively of portraits of women—Indigenous Americans, African
Americans, Muslims, and Latinas—Fairey juxtaposed the images with phrases such as “Women
are Perfect” and “Defend Dignity.”
To mitigate his White, male authorial gaze, Fairey culled photographs of women for his
poster designs that had been taken by photographers who shared the cultural positionality of the
given subject (Bailey & Hanley, 2017). Hundreds of everyday people marching throughout the
country proudly held posters with Fairey’s images of women, indicating the impact and breadth
of his message. However, Fairey’s portraits have also been criticized for being culturally

6

reductive, and they raise additional questions in their stereotyping of gender (Zara, 2017). In
concepting this project, Fairey was intentional about only including women he believed to be
particularly vulnerable in Trump’s administration (Gelt, 2017; Screti, 2017). The artist did not
create any image in support of Clinton, an empowered, powerful woman, during her campaign,
only of women he perceived as being especially disempowered after her defeat. As the
widespread embrace of this series attests, being vulnerable to a political administration and being
empowered, or conveying empowerment, are not mutually exclusive concepts, but that Fairey
only chose to depict women he explicitly identified as marginalized, altogether omitting women
who already occupied leadership positions, is worth consideration.
These choices made by Fairey are even more consequential because of his role within the
Los Angeles urban art community. Although there is no official leader of this scene, with his
local gallery’s artworld renown, the popularity of his OBEY art and clothing line, the visibility of
his arrests for vandalism, and his unwavering public activism for fellow urban artists, Fairey is
arguably the community’s unofficial leader (Blume, 2018; Knight, 2018; Stewart, 2018). As
leadership embodies the culture and core values of any given organization, Fairey as an
understood leader of the urban art field guides beliefs held by, and artistic choices made by, his
colleagues through his own example (Senge, 1990). As this example relates to portrayals of
women, the type of woman Fairey decided to depict in 2017, and the type of woman he decided
to denounce through omission in 2016, is potentially predictive of gender biases that have been
habituated within the larger field (Buckingham & Coffman, 2014). To support change within the
field regarding gender diversity, equity and inclusion, there must first be recognition of blind-
spots and gender biases (Stevens et al., 2008). Leadership can greatly enhance or harm any
organization, and, accordingly, Fairey’s choices with regards to his female subjects have

7

possibly set a harmful tone for other Los Angeles urban artists to follow (Burke, 2018; Elmore,
2005).
Purpose of the Project and Research Questions
Even in 2022, there remains a societal and organizational anxiety surrounding women who
have ambition to occupy leadership roles, not to mention the fear felt by many that to treat
women equitably will come at the expense of men or the normative American family structure
(Andersen, 1991; Amanatullah & Morris, 2010; Smith, 2006). As political urban art produced in
2016 attests, these fears were echoed, consciously or not, in whom the artists chose to portray,
and whom they chose to disregard. Using the urban art response to the 2016 election as a
propulsive case study, this dissertation questions the subtle, subconscious drives that might affect
how women are habitually illustrated in the Los Angeles urban art scene. This line of questioning
is consequential to consider since urban art is regarded as a reflection of society and by better
understanding the gender biases and microaggressions within the urban art space, we can glean
more insight into the gender biases and microaggressions within society more broadly (Molnár,
2017). The questions listed below collate the themes of the study and undergird its research
focus.
1) What effect do traditional art historical norms for women’s portrayal in art—namely,
Sigmund Freud’s Madonna/whore dichotomy—have on how women are portrayed in
urban art?
2) How does the urban artist’s gender identity affect their renderings of their female
subjects?
3) What is the relationship between the gender, race and age subgroups of the viewer and
their interpretation of the female subjects of urban art?

8

Importance of the Study
In the hopes of offering a meaningful contribution to organizations and institutions
invested in operationalizing gender equity, this study seeks to understand the interplay between
gender identity and gender perception, utilizing urban art as an inroad to disentangle how women
are portrayed, valued, and expected to exist in society. Specifically, this study seeks to
understand the degree to which the reductive Madonna/whore binary, which is so prevalent in
traditional and historical art, manifests in contemporary urban art renderings of female subjects
throughout Los Angeles. Furthermore, the study aims to identify the differing ways in which
male and female urban artists in Los Angeles render women as subjects, and the ways in which
the gender, race and age of the artworks’ viewer shapes their perception of how the women
subjects are portrayed. The overarching purpose of this project is to ascertain how women are
regarded in society by better understanding how they are depicted in urban art.
Studies on the gallery, the museum and the art history classroom as integral arts
organizations have been plentiful. Urban art is an extension of these efforts; however, since the
field is burgeoning, disruptive of the establishment and uncontained by the concept of interiority,
it, as a field, has been too often overlooked by scholars of organizational change. As art made
and displayed on the streets continues to proliferate, the relevance of academic curiosity
regarding what individuals and traditional institutional spaces can learn from urban art becomes
increasingly apparent. In questioning how identity impacts what, ultimately, we see, we have the
opportunity to implement meaningful change within our shared values, beliefs and attitudes at
the cultural, educational and organizational level (Stevens et al, 2008).
Lester and Kezar (2012) offer tangible insights regarding how to go about enacting
change within a grassroots field, like urban art, that are relevant to this study. For instance, their

9

research asserts the value of establishing a common language, describing the state of preexisting
research, building a robust body of knowledge, and implementing change initially on a small
scale (Lester & Kezar, 2012). Accordingly, this study offers definitions of key and often
ambiguous terms later in this chapter, presents a thorough history of the field in Chapter Two to
build and amplify reader knowledge, and, finally, generates suggestions for change in Chapter
Five. The scale of these suggestions is small to the degree that they are directed toward urban
artists in Los Angeles rather than artists operating in the field as a whole.
Overview of Theoretical Framework

To understand why urban artists might be inclined to render their female subjects as
dichotomized tropes, theories surrounding Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual Madonna/whore
complex, and its feminist reimaginings, provide useful inroads through which to maneuver
around these stereotypes (Hartmann, 2009; Kahalon et al., 2019). The basic premise of Freud’s
complex is that society reduces cisgender women into two binary categories: the Madonna, or
the virgin, and the whore. Illustrations of women in traditional art often conform to these tropes
and this study aims to determine the degree to which portrayals of women in urban art serve as
cultural reproduction of these categories. To explore the liminality between Freud’s binary
framing of women, literature surrounding gender specific microaggressions add critical
complexity and nuance (Sue et al., 2009; Sue, 2017).
Definitions
The following definitions are meant to provide further information and clarity to the
reader to assist in domain-specific language and concepts.

10

Urban Art
Broadly defined, urban art refers to art that is outside, disruptive, ephemeral, and
strikingly distinctive from the mainstream (Campos & Sequeira, 2020). The use of the phrase
“urban art” within this dissertation aligns with the definition Campos and Sequeira (2020)
articulate in that urban art is a broad, flexible container that encompasses aesthetic
subcategories—namely, public art, street art and graffiti—that overlap with each other in certain
ways and are distinctive from each other in other ways.
Public Art
According to public art historians Senie and Webster (1992), public art is work that is
commissioned, often sculptural, and located outdoors with attention to site-specificity. Content
wise, public art echoes the ethos of its time more faithfully, and attracts a larger audience, than
traditional art contained within museums.
Graffiti
Derived from the latin word graffito, meaning “to scratch,” graffiti refers to illegal
painted markings, often made from aerosol paint, emblazoned on a variety of public spaces
(Young, 2012). Terms to describe graffiti include: tagging, the act of writing one’s name or
image with aerosol paint; throw-ups, a word to describe a hasty scribble of one’s name or image;
piece, shorthand for “masterpiece” and used to label more elegant graffiti lettering; and
wildstyle, a word to identify complicated and intricate examples of graffiti (Fransberg, 2019;
Lombard, 2013).
Street Art
A subsidiary of graffiti, street art can also be illegal but is just as likely to have been
commissioned by building owners, developers, and individuals. Street art is generally considered

11

less raw and visceral than graffiti and more universal in its message and more palatable and
refined in its aesthetic (Riggle, 2010; Vanderveen & Eijk, 2016). Street art refers to more than,
simply, art placed on the street, but to art that utilizes some aspect of the street as an artistic
resource (Riggle, 2010). A more in-depth discussion of the accepted differences between street
art and graffiti are outlined in Chapter Two.
Self-sanctioned
A sizeable amount of urban art is illegal; however, the researcher created the term self-
sanctioned to describe un-commissioned art to take away the stigma and assumed harm of the
illegality of this art form.
Organization of Dissertation

Chapter One provides a broad overview of the problem of practice, its context in the form
of an illustrative case study, the importance of the project and research questions that guide its
inquiry. Chapter One also introduces the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and domain-
specific definitions. Chapter Two provides a literature review summarizing the complicated
history of women in art as subjects and as artists, culminating in a review of the nascent history
of urban art and the role women have occupied within this developing field. Chapter Three
describes and justifies the mixed methodological research design. This includes a description of
the selection process for the artworks included in the survey, and featured in the viewer and artist
interviews, the formulation of the survey and interview questions, specific attributes of the
various participant samples, and strategies for collecting a diverse sample that reflects the
diversity of the city itself. Chapter Four discloses the results of the image-based survey, and
viewer and artist interviews, each conceptualized to disentangle the gender dynamics between
artist and viewer and the gender, race and age dynamics between viewer and art, as outlined in

12

the research questions. Chapter Five offers an analysis of the results, buttressed by the existing
literature and theoretical foundations, tethering them back to the study’s problem of practice.
This section includes discussions of design shortcomings, as well as recommendations for
improved practice and future research.

13

Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
To better understand the ways in which gender shapes portrayal and perception within
contemporary depictions of female bodies in urban art throughout Los Angeles, it is critical that
we first turn to history. Accordingly, this literature review examines how women in the
traditional field of art have been historicized as artists, and represented as subjects, starting with
the Italian Renaissance in the 1400s and sweeping through to American Abstract Expressionism
in the 1950s. Next, this review turns to theory as a means of framing why women were so often
portrayed in art as certain tropes, in certain ways, and for whose benefit, to identify what urban
artists might have subconsciously inherited from the past. Specifically, this section draws upon
Sigmund Freud’s Madonna/whore complex, and its feminist reinterpretations, as a theoretical
scaffolding with which to undergird the positioning of women in historical and contemporary art.
This section culminates in a discussion of microaggressive theory as a conceptual framework
which offers nuance to Freud’s binary categorization of women. Next, this review explores the
changing consciousness of women’s roles in the artworld that occurred during the late 1960s
when the methodology of feminist art history emerged, summiting with two exemplars of 1970s
Second Wave feminist practice in Los Angeles in the public space. Finally, this review examines
the history of street art and pertinent literature related to gender and the urban space.
A History of Women in Art, 1400s-1950s
Women as Artists
The era of the Italian Renaissance during the 14
th
century sparked a curiosity from art
critics, collectors and viewers alike surrounding who created a given artwork when no such
curiosity had existed before (Vasari et al., 1998). The cult of the artist was born, but a cult that
only welcomed an exclusive kind of member. Echoed in art history survey textbooks, museum

14

exhibitions and art criticism, art tastemakers perpetuated the belief through the 1960s that the
“great” artists of the past are all men (Hopper, 2015; Parker & Pollock, 1982). Their argument
was that if there had been women artists of note, then why were these figures omitted from major
surveys of the history of art, such as the standard texts by Janson (1962) or Gombrich (1961)? In
the original printing of the Janson text, there was not a single woman artist listed in the index,
and of the 87 illustrated color-plates there was not one image printed that had been created by a
woman artist. Such an exclusion suggests that women artists either did not exist or were so
underwhelming as creators that they did not merit even a mention in the formidable canon.
Since the 1960s when those benchmark textbooks were published, scholars within the
space of revisionist history have made considerable efforts to further investigate the assumptions
of women’s absence from these sources, and others. Asserted through dozens of examples, there
have been successful women artists since the Renaissance who were acknowledged and
celebrated in their time; however, these women were eventually removed from the master
narrative for a host of assorted reasons (Nochlin, 1988; Parker & Pollock, 1982; Quin, 2012).
Among these reasons is that when heterosexual artists were embroiled romantically with each
other, to empower her husband, the female artist inevitably ended up disempowering herself. A
model of this gendered negotiation is the romantic relationship between Lee Krasner and Jackson
Pollock.
Krasner and Pollock, both American painters active in the 1950s, exemplified traditional
expectations of gender roles that were held at the time. In an article she published about the
couple in 1993, feminist art historian Anna Chave notes that Pollock was famously laconic, so
Krasner often spoke to gallerists, reporters, and collectors on his behalf. Krasner even titled
Pollock’s drip paintings for him to make their lack of narrative content less perplexing to

15

consumers and increase their market value (Chave, 1993). Krasner, in turn, sacrificed the time
she needed to devote to her own creative practice and innovations in painting so Pollock, in
essence, painted for her (Chave, 1993). This dynamic can be inferred from action shots
photographer Hans Namuth took of Pollock in his studio for an issue of ARTnews. In one
particularly insightful image, Painting one, Jackson Pollock—Lee Krasner, 1950, Figure 1,
Pollock is shown actively dripping paint on his horizonal canvas while Krasner scrutinizes the
process in the background. She is shown seated, a conventional artistic technique to emphasize a
woman’s inferior power holdings in comparison to her husband, while Pollock’s body is
activated in work and upright (Heuer, 2016). This spontaneously photographed image seems to
literalize contemporary gendered expectations where Pollock is lost in his act of painting while
Krasner is lost in thought about her husband’s painting.

Figure 1
Namuth, Painting one, Jackson Pollock—Lee Krasner, 1950

16

An additional dynamic that Chave argues might have negatively affected Krasner’s
success was how well she concealed her gender positionality by utilizing the painterly language
of abstraction (Chave, 1993). To better understand why Krasner, and so many other women
artists, were eager to minimize or obfuscate their gender in their art, the work of cultural analyst
Griselda Pollock is a useful inroad. Pollock examines the common belief held by women artists
during the 1950s and 60s that if they cloaked their gender through abstract imagery, that their
work would be more likely to be included in the male-dominated canon. As Pollock argues, this
belief system is not useful since neutralizing one’s experiences with gender is not actually
possible, so any attempt is a submission to pre-existing power structures (Pollock, 2013).
Krasner adopted her visual language of nonobjectivity in part because it was avant-garde and
innovative, but also in part because masking her female gender made her work more likely to be
exhibited. Lee, born Lena, even changed her name to read as more masculine to the artworld and
be perceived as an “equal” artist to her male colleagues and husband (Levin, 2011). Two decades
later, as a byproduct of Second Wave feminism, women artists began to embrace the opportunity
to illustrate their different narratives and challenge the construct of gender equality (Freeman,
1973).
Women as Subjects in Portraiture
Since the birth of aesthetic representation, the female body has been one of the most
frequently represented themes. The ways in which female bodies have been portrayed or
reduced, and for whose benefit or gaze, is especially stimulating to explore (Pollock & Parker,
1982). The Renaissance saw a proliferation of art depicting female subjects, most commonly in
the form of wealthy patron portraits, history paintings, and depictions of religious figures,
specifically Mary Magdalene and Judith. Each of these three categories reveals a useful trope

17

that, understood together, supports a scholarly understanding of how women have been
traditionally illustrated in art.
Utilizing Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, 1503, as an illustrative testament, portrait
painters rarely painted or paint the faces of their sitter head-on. Instead, faces are often
represented at a slight angle, with one of the sitter’s cheeks rendered in fuller view than the
other. Scholars and art historians have traditionally attributed this decision to paint faces at an
angle as a means of indicating the given painter’s technical prowess and ability to render space
and depth (Chatterjee, 2002). However, if artistic prowess was the only factor at play, there
would be an even number of left-oriented and right-oriented portraits in the art historical lexicon,
which there are not. In 1973, scholars McManus and Humphrey offered a more nuanced
interpretation of facial angles in portraiture, arguing that portraits depicting the right side of faces
are perceived as potent, active, and empowered and, contrarily, that portraits depicting the left
side of faces are perceived as more submissive with low agency (Suitner & Maass, 2007).
Adding a gendered analysis to this general interpretation, a 2002 study of 1,474 portraits of
women painted between the 16
th
and 20
th
centuries in Western Europe revealed 68% left-oriented
with the subject’s left cheek angled toward the viewer (Chatterjee, 2002). Implications of these
findings suggest a cultural bias to consider women as less active agents than men, resulting in a
greater likelihood of women subjects painted with their left cheek exposed. As this cultural
preconditioning has shifted and softened in more recent centuries, the bias to depict women’s
faces with their left cheeks angled toward the viewer has slowly begun to wane (Chatterjee,
2002).

18

Women as Subjects in History Paintings
History paintings were the dominant, most revered mode of visual representation in
European art from the time of the Renaissance to the nineteenth century (Phillips & Bear, 2019).
This genre of painting is classified by the monumental scale of the physical canvas and the moral
lessons of the narratives illustrated through ambitious historical, mythological, or biblical scenes
(Carrier, 2020). How women have fit into these edifying history paintings as story elements
reaffirms the gendered stereotypes evident in portraits of women. For instance, presented with
Jacques-Louis David’s iconic history painting, Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Figure 2, the viewer is
invited to absorb trenchant political and social lessons. On the one hand, the narrative of the
painting illustrates male members of the Horatii family holding up their swords to represent and
defend their homeland, Rome. Their hands are each outstretched and, from the foreground to the
middle-ground, ascend higher and higher ad seriatim. This gesture asserts their courage and their
resolve to die for their country. The men’s bodily stances are similarly rooted and unwavering.
Politically, viewers are encouraged to see value in putting the needs of one’s nation over the
health and comfort of oneself (Heuer, 2016). This painting concurrently tells a story of a more
social ilk and in this one image, gender roles and expectations are didactically illustrated. The
men are identified with their bodies, standing, erect and muscular, indicating the stalwart nature
of their commitment to country. The women, contrarily, are identified with their emotions,
crumpled limply on the floor, indicating their physical fragility and sensitive, internal
compassion for their families (Heuer, 2016).

19

Figure 2
David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784

Spanish history painter, Francisco Goya, illustrates a different kind of female stereotype.
In his La Maja Desnuda, 1797, Figure 3. Goya paints a more intimate history scene comprised
only of one figure, that of a lower-class nude woman reclining on a chaise with plumply filled
pillows. Nearly all the famed history painters depicted bodies of nude women in their
compositions; however, Goya’s rendering departs from tradition in two significant ways: his
woman is a contemporary one, not a figure culled from history, mythology, or the bible; and his
woman’s gaze directly confronts her viewer rather than shyly avoiding him (Murphy, 2010). In
resisting the conventions of representing a nude woman as an objet d’art to be admired, desired
and collected by a male viewer, Goya instead illustrates a woman with her own sexual agency
(Soyer, 2018). Such blatant sexual empowerment was, at the time, perceived as pornography,
heretical to the church, and the painting was eventually seized by the Spanish government in
1814 during the Inquisition (Tomlinson, 1991). The question surrounding why David received
such support for his portrayal of women and what, exactly, about the nudity in La Maja Desnuda

20

made the figure in the painting so amoral and unfit for viewing, sparks discourse surrounding the
Madonna/whore complex.

Figure 3
Goya, La Maja Desnudai, 1797

21

Freud’s Madonna/Whore Complex and Feminist Reimaginings
The Madonna/Whore Complex
The fundamental tenet of the Madonna/whore complex, also understood and described as
the virgin/whore dichotomy, is that society reduces women into two binary categories: the virgin
and the whore. This polarizing complex was first conceptualized in 1905 by psychologist
Sigmund Freud to better understand male psychosexual dysfunction, and it continues to iterate in
contemporary society (Hartmann, 2009; Kahalon et al., 2019). In psychoanalytic terms, the
complex is formed when men start to transmute the affection they once felt for their mothers for
women they, as adults, find sexually attractive. To manage the anxieties surrounding conflating
feelings for one’s mother with feelings for one’s lover, some men compartmentalize women into
two distinctive types—women to admire and women to desire (Hartmann, 2009). In a 1912 essay
titled “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,” Freud elaborates on
his Madonna/whore dichotomy, specifically on the mutual exclusivity between love and lust
concluding that “where [men] love they cannot desire, and where they desire, they cannot love”
(Freud, 1912, p.180).
Potential Consequences and Controversies
The consequences of Freud’s theorizing a schism between admiration and desire are
wide-reaching. As it affects men, this complex can negatively shape a man’s ability to see his
female partner as a complete, autonomous being if he only perceives her as either virtuous or
sexual, but not both. Male infidelity can result from this when men are not able see their spouses,
whom they respect, as sexual and, subsequently, redirect their desires elsewhere toward a woman
outside of their marriage whom they devalue yet find attractive (Josephs, 2006). Another
potential consequence is women’s anxiety surrounding external judgement, which could result in

22

a hesitancy to authentically express her sexuality to partners for fear of negative judgement
(Kahalon et al., 2019). In addition to fear of external shaming, Freud’s complex can result in
women experiencing internalized self-inflicted shame for possessing a sexuality they perceive as
negative or wrong (Kahalon et al., 2019).
Elements of the Madonna/whore complex that are controversial or problematic to a
contemporary consumer are manifold. For instance, through a feminist identity lens,
dichotomizing women using this binary language operates as a tool in service of the patriarchy
(Kahalon et al., 2019, Irigaray, 2004). If a woman is only allowed to be either a loving mother or
a sexual being, the fullness of her identity becomes controlled in stifling and oppressive ways
(Friedman et al., 1998). Amplifying this oppression, the phallocentrism of Freud’s complex, or
the ways in which his theory centers around the male experience at the expense of the female,
reinforces the connection between the Madonna/whore complex and the patriarchy (Irigaray,
2004; Koziej, 2019). The problematic nature of psychoanalysis as a practice has also been raised,
specifically regarding its ideological relationship to White Supremacy (Hartman, 2020; Lara,
2002). Psychoanalytic inquiry champions thoughts over feelings or intuitions, and thinkers
within this framework, ala Auguste Rodin’s quintessential sculpture, are perceived as White and
male whereas feelers or intuitives are regarded as people of color and women (Herrera & Gloria,
2021).
Significant feminist scholars have taken Freud’s misogynistic complex to task using
different theoretical strategies, two of the most salient of which are through language and
viewing. French feminist critic Hélène Cixous propels this former idea offering that when
women lack a language of their own, an écriture féminine, they become trapped in their bodies
by a patriarchal language that prevents them from expressing themselves in a manner that feels

23

faithful to their unique experiences (Cixous, 1976). Subverting Freud’s notion that men derive
their creativity from their bodies, specifically from their phalli, Cixous encourages women to
write from their individual, gendered bodies as well to find their own creative language, thus
initiating an authentic celebration and acceptance of self (Cixous, 1976). Extending Cixous’
metaphor of language as an integer of feminist activism, French cultural theorist Luce Irigaray
opines that when women lack a language of their own outside of the language of the patriarchy,
that mimicry is the only available form of critiquing its values (Irigaray, 2004).
Film theorist Laura Mulvey also destabilizes Freud’s complex in her work with feminist
intent, albeit through the lens of viewing. In her pivotal article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema” (1975), Mulvey analyzes Hollywood cinema, linking different types of looking with
pleasure in order to expose the ways in which unconscious patriarchal structures drive cinematic
narratives and the viewers’ experiences in consuming these narratives. According to Mulvey, the
movie camera is a tool in service of the neurotic needs of the male ego, needs that manifest
through voyeurism. The unseen and active spectator of any given film, or the audience for whom
the film was made, is subconsciously assumed to be male since the passive object of the
searching gaze and desire is inevitably female. By exposing the gendering of spectators, who is
looking and the gendering of the gaze, who they are looking at, Mulvey intends to conceptualize
a new language of desire (Mulvey, 1975). Applying Mulvey’s theory back to Freud, Mulvey’s
reimagined viewer and her reimagined desire undermines the presumed maleness of the
Madonna/whore complex.
Despite feminist scholars arguing that the complex is demeaning to women, many
women continue to internalize these beliefs and self-objectify (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005;
Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The lure of the Madonna/whore dichotomy for some is that the

24

women who are idealized as “Madonnas” are elevated on such a lauded pedestal that they
believe the complex is supportive of women since it feels so supportive of them (Jackman,
1994). Since sexism manifests in more subtle, seemingly benevolent ways in this scenario,
women who receive feedback of this seductive ilk are less likely to recognize patriarchal
behavior than women who are overtly shamed or stigmatized for their sexuality (Becker &
Wright, 2011).
In addition to Freud’s concept being limiting to women, its centering of heterosexual
cisgender men fails to consider queerness or relational dynamics outside of heteronormativity
(Hoskin, 2020; Gottschall et al., 2006; Kahalon et al., 2019). Although the Madonna/whore
complex is actively oppressive to women, that it only applies to cisgender heterosexual dynamics
is, as feminist scholars have argued, indicative of the passively oppressive erasure of bodies who
are outside of patriarchal femininity (Hoskin, 2019; Hoskin, 2020).
Madonna/Whore Dichotomy in Art
This dichotomized grouping of women in storytelling generally can also be understood as
protagonist versus antagonist. The protagonist is the character who plays a significant role in the
narrative and for whom the audience is conditioned to root. The antagonist is the character who
also plays a vital role in the narrative but who serves as an obstacle impeding the success of the
protagonist, and against whom the audience roots (Gottschall et al., 2006). As it manifests in
storytelling through art, the Madonna/whore dichotomy presupposes a male viewer who
subconsciously decides whether the female subject is one to revere or one to sexually objectify
(Wolf, 1997). The “virgin” group includes women who are nurturing, virtuous, devoted wives
and mothers who express their sexuality within sanctioned environments, such as marriage. The
“whore” group identifies women who fail to exemplify the virginal ideals and who are overtly or

25

symbolically amoral, and concupiscent in a manner that threatens marriage (Gottschall, et al.,
2006). These tropes are pervasive throughout art historical renderings of women across history.
David’s portrayal of women in Oath—grief stricken, physically weak and each the emotional
tether of her family—exemplify the virginal ideals. Goya’s portrayal of his female subject in La
Maja Desnuda—nude, assumedly unmarried, empowered, and sexual—typify the character traits
of women illustrating the whore.
Other iterations of this dualistic categorization of women in art are manifest in religious
paintings and inform the ways in which the women within these narratives are intended to
function. Specifically, the central female subject in the Old Testament, Eve, and two central
subjects in the New Testament, Judith, and the Virgin Mary, serve as representative examples.
Depictions of Eve and Judith in art emphasize each woman’s sexuality as she lures Adam and
Holofernes to sin and decapitation respectively with her feminine wiles. As with other history
paintings, these women operate as moral warnings to their viewer, once again presumed male, to
not fall victim to the temptations of duplicitous women outside of marriage (McNamara, 2017).
In sharp contrast to these two sexual temptresses is the Virgin Mary, typifying two seemingly
paradoxical elements of the virgin/Madonna category: she is both a devoted mother and a
sexually virtuous woman. Artistic renderings of the Virgin Mary showcase her reverence to God,
her submission to the archangel Gabriel, and her deep sorrow upon the loss of her son. Women,
like Eve and Judith, not only serve as a moral warning to men regarding which type of woman to
avoid but also provide women with messaging as to what type of woman they should hope to
never become. Concurrently, women like the Virgin Mary not only provide an archetype of the
kind of woman a man should value as a wife or mother but also the kind of woman a woman
should aspire to be.

26

In di Ciccarello’s painting, The Madonna of Humility with the Temptation of Eve, c.
1400, Figure 4, viewers are presented with an image of the virtuous Madonna and the duplicitous
Eve in one composition, amplifying the differences between the Madonna and the whore. This
proto-Renaissance panel depicts the Virgin Mary breast feeding the infant Christ child. Her body
is shown seated, emphasizing her subservience, and her face is downcast and sharply angled
toward the left, indicating, once again, her humility and deferential nature (Chatterjee, 2002).
Caught in the literal act of sustaining her child, the Virgin Mary is the epitome of nurturing,
purity, and maternal devotion. In contrast, the figure of Eve is shown at the bottom of the
composition, underneath a piece of furniture that the Madonna rests upon. Eve is fully nude with
a serpent and fur around her hips and legs, representing sexual lust and temptation (Stefanacci,
2020). With Eve here literalizing the “whore” in Freud’s complex, her past actions of being
disobedient and instigating sin and chastisement add historical context and layers of complexity
to modern manifestations of this trope (Stefanacci, 2020).

27

Figure 4
di Ciccarello, The Madonna of Humility with the Temptation of Eve, c. 1400 1784

Microaggression Theory
The Virgin Mary and Eve in di Ciccarello’s painting illustrate Freud’s binary thinking
about gender, and theories surrounding microaggression support the liminality between this
dichotomy. Microaggressions, or invalidations that are most commonly used to explain the
experiences of racialized individuals or groups, are often unintentional, and part of a larger
system of subtle oppression that undermines the well-being of marginalized groups, including
women (Sterzing, et al., 2017). These microaggressions help maintain cultural dominance and
imperialized divisions of power to reinforce dominant-group characteristics as superior, while
others are conveyed as inferior (Sue, 2017). For instance, that Freud’s genesis in formulating the
Madonna/whore complex was a tool in service of male dysfunction reinforces patriarchal

28

dominance, while the division of power within his complex reinforces how superior and virtuous
the Madonna is compared to the inferiority and sexual depravity of the whore. Despite the
smallness suggested by the “micro” of “microaggressive,” scholarship surrounding the theory
affirms that microaggressive behaviors and responses are filled with big, pernicious stereotypes
and the weight of generational trauma (Sue et al., 2009). More insightful still, microaggressions
are often reflections of a general worldview regarding inclusion and exclusion, normality and
abnormality, and superiority and inferiority (Torino, 2019).
Gender identity microaggressions specific to cisgender women often come in the form of
physical objectification and assumption or subtle positioning of inferiority of some kind. With
regards to the art referenced in this chapter, the viewer of Goya’s La Maja Desnuda lustily and
unabashedly objectifies the woman’s body as if her nudity is a presumed offering. The viewer of
David’s Oath of the Horatii, in being presented with a juxtaposition between the upright, robust
bodies of men with the crumpled, weakened bodies of women, assumes the inferiority of the
women. These unconscious, likely undiscussed and un-acted upon, assumptions speak to
microaggressive societal beliefs about women: their offerings and their ineptitudes.
Freud’s Madonna/whore complex lays the structural scaffolding to develop an awareness
that women are portrayed as certain subjects in art and why, and microaggressions theory fills in
this scaffolding with nuanced and concrete ways in which the complex iterates in the art itself
(Sue et al., 2009; Sue, 2017). As gender identity microaggressions are unconsciously invoked to
make women feel sexualized, demeaned, and confined by Freud’s heteronormative and limiting
gender roles, use of this theory amplifies the sensitivity of any given study on equity (Torino,
2019). This particular study aims to assess the degree to which Freud’s binary positioning of
women manifests in urban art by gauging the relationship between the gender of the urban artist

29

and their rendering of female subjects, but also the relationship between the gender of the viewer
and their interpretation of this same art. Based on the literature surrounding the Madonna/whore
complex and its feminist repositioning, six consistent adjectives or character traits emerged to
identify women who fall within Freud’s binary positioning: highly sexual, untrustworthy,
amoral, vulnerable, maternal and virtuous. These descriptive terms, illustrated above, Figure 5,
represent a means of assessing which artistic renderings of women subscribe to unconscious, or
conscious, patriarchal frameworks in the underlying messages they convey to viewers.

Figure 5
Conceptual Framework

30

The Intersection of Feminism and Art
To fully understand the significance of public art made by women artists in the 1970s, it is useful
to historically acculturate to the 1960s to better contextualize the later efforts that will be
discussed. Turning to popular periodicals at the time, one geared toward a stereotypical male
audience, the other a stereotypical female, provides this context. In 1963, Hugh Hefner released
his first issue of Playboy Magazine. The magazine disseminated, and disseminates, provocative
images of women, literalizing the trope of Freud’s sexualized whore who seductively lures, but
never marries, the men who gaze at her. If images from Playboy function as a mirroring of the
stereotypical, lusty woman-of-the-day, then the illustrations Alberto Vargas made for the
magazine during the 60s typify societal expectations men had for women during that decade.
In Vargas’ You Make Your Peace Sign, I'll Make Mine, 1969, Figure 6, a woman is
shown nude, with an exaggeratedly voluptuous figure, lying on her back. Her legs are splayed
open and a caption to the left of her body reads: “you make your peace sign, I’ll make mine.” A
blatant reference to the Vietnam War, this image presents viewers with a woman who is neither
politically engaged nor socially conscious, but, rather, passively displayed and sexually
available. That she references a peace sign at all suggests she is not ignorant of the Vietnam War.
Rather, her distinction between “your” peace sign—the male peace sign—and “mine”—the
female peace sign—suggests a conscious choice to distinguish the mind from the body, or men’s
societal awareness from women’s sexuality for the prophet of the male gaze.

31

Figure 6
Vargas, You Make Your Peace Sign, I’ll Make Mine, 1969

Published in Playboy, Vargas’ illustrations of women were primarily seen by a male
audience. Therefore, the messages they communicate regarding the “ideal” woman can be
regarded as masculinized fantasies separate from female reality. However, advertisements in
Good Housekeeping Magazine, a periodical primarily targeting women, also dichotomize
women’s identities, albeit championing a different female modality. For example, in an
advertisement for Hotpoint refrigerators published in Good Housekeeping in 1960, Figure 7, an
elegantly dressed housewife is shown removing food from a refrigerator fully stocked with
nutritious foods and juices. Her face is demurely downturned; she wears a green dress with green
pumps and is standing in her kitchen in front of green cabinets. That her dress is the same color
as the kitchen cabinets creates a visual association between her female identity and the domestic
commodification of the kitchen and its accoutrements. Reminiscent of the protagonist in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, the woman in this
advertisement seems to emerge from the green cabinets behind her as if she is a physical
extension of her domestic environment. Seen together, these images created in the 1960s for
mass distribution, one targeting men, the other targeting women, position women as either

32

submissive, inextricably bound to the domestic space and concerned with the needs of her
husband, or as sexually available and unmaternal: the Madonna and the whore.

Figure 7
Advertisement from Good Housekeeping Magazine, June 1960

33

Society’s adherence to this dichotomy during the 1960s did not just affect how men and
women were told to view women through media imagery, but also affected the degree to which
women artists had access to the art scene. For instance, in 1969, the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York City included a scant number of women in its Biennial Exhibition. In
the nine Biennials, 1960-1968, before this exhibition, an average 10% of the artists shown were
women. And out of 143 artists shown in the 1969 biennial, only seven of them—5%—were
women (Armstrong & Zegher, 2006). With women artists being excluded from museum
exhibitions, like the Whitney Biennial, and with the publication of images of women conforming
to Freud’s binary understanding of women’s identities, like those published in Playboy and Good
Housekeeping, burgeoning feminists had an arsenal of content to subvert.
Enlivened and enraged by these gendered inequities, members of the artworld throughout
the country began publicly protesting the scarcity of work by women artists in museum
exhibitions, permanent collections and commercial gallery shows. However, most of this
feminist activity only addressed and benefitted artists who were White (Reilly & Nochlin, 2007).
In 1970, frustrated by the lack of inclusion of artists of color, activist organizations championing
racial diversity began to emerge. For instance, artist Faith Ringgold and her daughter Michele
Wallace founded the group, Women, Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL),
to initiate a more equitable art dialogue that included women of color. One year later, WSABAL
organized an exhibit, Where We At: Black Women Artists, which was the first Black women’s art
exhibition in recorded history (Brown, 1971).
At the same time, feminist writers extended the WSABAL activism to combat White
myopia in the artworld. Frances Beale, in arguing that feminism in the art space was tainted by
the residue of colonialist attitudes and imperialist projects, re-languaged the women’s art

34

movement, the “white women’s movement” (Beale, 2008, p. 174). Artist Ana Mendieta, writing
on behalf of the non-White immigrant women’s art community, asserted that the movement
“failed to remember us” and feminist activist Audre Lorde criticized the solipsistic agenda of
mainstream White feminists to universalize the feminist experience as a White experience
(Mendieta, 1980, n.p.; Lorde, 1984).
As integral as these, and likeminded, exhibitions and statements were to the increase of
racial visibility and promotion of a multiplicity of feminist perspectives, the efforts were met
with resistance by the Second Wave White feminist art community (Mane, 2012). Instead of
addressing the nascent race-related schisms within the feminist community outright, White
female artists acted with insidious passive aggression instead, limiting the inclusion of non-
White artists in exhibition efforts and minimizing the degree to which artists of color were
encouraged to contribute opinions and ideas (Reilly, 2007). When artists of color were asked to
participate in group shows or invited to join artist collectives, the invitations were impelled more
by the optics of tokenism than by an authentic desire for involvement (Brodsky, 1994).
Consciousness about race and inclusion within the feminist art community did not take
hold broadly until the 1990s (Mane, 2012). And although the tendency of White female artists to
minimize the presence of their non-White contemporaries has improved since then, female artists
of color continue to be otherized in scholarship and exhibitions (Mann& Huffman, 2005). For
instance, when the work of non-White artists is included in broader feminist texts, it is often
segmented into its own isolated diversity chapter, or else published as a segregated monograph
on a particular artist or theme related to race (Armstrong & Zegher, 2006; Butler & Mark, 2007;
Powell & Powell, 2002).

35

Museum and gallery exhibitions treat art made by non-White artists with similar
separatism as work by artists of color is still not well-integrated into group exhibitions (Rice,
2017). In 2007, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles mounted WACK!: Art and the
Feminist Revolution—the first, and most comprehensive to date, exhibition on feminist art. Of
the 67 artists included in the show, only seven women, or 9.5%, were artists of color (Cotter,
2007). In more recent years, as awareness surrounding non-White artists continues to deepen,
when the work of these artists is more centralized, it is generally exhibited in solo exhibitions as
opposed to being integrated into group shows (Wortham, 2019; Valentine, 2019). Despite the
career prestige of a solo show, there remains a pernicious dynamic of segregation and
unwillingness on behalf of scholars and curators to incorporate work by artists of color
sensitively and meaningfully within the trajectory of work by their White peers (Rice, 2017).
Women in 1970s Public Art
Los Angeles: Place and Placemaking
When World War II ended in 1945, New York City became the global epicenter of the
artworld. This occurred, in part, because influential European avant-garde artists immigrated to
New York to flee their war-torn countries and, in part, because of the artistic innovations of the
next generation of artists they taught (Hobbs & Levin,1981). New York remained the touchstone
of the artworld throughout the 1950s; however, starting in the 1960s, significant and disruptive
art began to emerge, out of all places, from Los Angeles (Whiting, 2006). Andy Warhol had his
first exhibition of the Campbell’s Soup Can series at the L.A. Ferus Gallery in 1962; Simon
Rodia’s Watts Towers, although extant since the mid-50s, became a locus of cultural and
racialized controversy in 1965; and established artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Allan
Kaprow enacted loosely scripted Happenings throughout Los Angeles neighborhoods (Whiting,

36

2006). What connects these disparate artists, and their work is an acute interest in decentralized
placemaking and the changing urban landscape of Los Angeles.
The tightly gridded, densely packed nature of Manhattan is beneficial to the art scene in
that studios, galleries and auction houses are easily discoverable and accessible by foot. Los
Angeles is not known for either its centralized city layout or its walkability; however, as
architectural critic Reyner Banham described in 1971, its inhabitants have “room to maneuver”
(Banham, 1971, p. 242). Banham was specifically referencing the literal free space in the city
that he hoped architects would take advantage of, but his observation can just as easily speak to
the figurative freedom that Los Angeles artists have because of the inherent nature of the city and
its physical distance from New York (Banham, 1971). As scholars note, the New York art scene
during the 1970s was heavily market-driven and overwhelmed by ambitions of money, power,
and individual recognition (Taylor, 2006). Women artists, such as Lee Krasner, who worked in
New York were doing what they could to survive in this male-dominated artworld but women
who worked in Los Angeles were detached from that mindset and more interested in establishing
their own artistic curiosity on their own terms. Furthermore, since Los Angeles did not have the
reputation or resources that New York did, there was room for unselfconscious experimentation
and opportunity to challenge the dealer-critic system.
Womanhouse, 1972
One of the most experimental art installations that took place in Los Angeles during the
1970s was Womanhouse, organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in 1972, Figure 8.
Prior to conceptualizing this work, Chicago had experienced a modicum of success in her career:
she was one of three women to be included in the Primary Structures exhibit at the Jewish
Museum (1966) and she developed the first feminist art program at Fresno State in 1970, which,

37

like contemporaneous consciousness-raising groups, was committed to raising awareness
regarding women’s issues and ennobling its participants’ personal experiences (Levin, 2018).
Chicago invited Shapiro, also an artist exploring gendered, feminist themes, to guest lecture at
Fresno State and after that experience, the two artists developed their idea for a collaborative,
large-scale installation unlike anything that had been mounted before (Gerhard, 2011).

Figure 8
Chicago and Schapiro, Womanhouse, 1972, detail

38

Chicago and Shapiro located a house on Mariposa Street in Los Angeles that was about to be
demolished and transformed it into a performance space and group of installations addressing
gender inequity and the invisibility of women’s domestic labor (Bloch & Umansky, 2005).
Womanhouse was a temporary installation supervised by the two artists that filled an entire house
with feminist art, activations, and performances. This work is a touchstone for feminist art as it
among the first gendered safe spaces for women in the artworld (Bloch & Umansky, 2005). In
their reactivation of the house into an immersive feminist exhibition space, Chicago and
Schapiro literalized the credo “the personal is political,” and brought to life the harrowing world
of Betty Freidan’s housewife in her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique (Broude, et al.,1994).
Womanhouse remained open for one month, was experienced by thousands of visitors, and
continues to inspire artists by its iconoclastic, disruptive innovations, community engagement
and transformation of space (Kim, 2018).
The Great Wall of Los Angeles, 1976
Inspired by her own feminist activation and community engagement, Chicana muralist
Judy Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Los Angeles to
create opportunities for underserved students of color to express themselves through public art
(Lawton, 2019). As a byproduct of her activism, Baca and 450 racially and ethnically diverse
youth involved in SPARC painted The Great Wall of Los Angeles, 1976, Figure 9, the largest
public art mural in the world (Lawton, 2019). The mural itself spans a half of a mile and is
located along the Tujunga Flood Control Channel wall of the San Fernando Valley. Baca’s
placement of the mural along the depleted Los Angeles riverbank was intended to raise
awareness of the damage civilization has done to California’s natural resources, but also to
memorialize the economic inequity within the city’s lowest income communities through which

39

the river flows (Lepage, 2017). The narrative of The Great Wall of Los Angeles illustrates the
often neglected or ignored histories of ethnic communities in California spanning from the
prehistoric era to the 1950s (Butler & Mark, 2007). In total, the mural is comprised of over six
hundred figures, the majority of which are Black, Indigenous and people of color, including:
civil rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, Jewish poet Allen Ginsberg,
women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and local Pacoima Chicano WWII war hero, David
Gonzalez (Lepage, 2017).

Figure 9
Baca, The Great Wall of Los Angeles, 1976, detail

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In the process of creating this mural, the youth involved developed a community, cultural
pride, and a positive sense of identity (Lawton, 2019). Similarly, the women involved in creating
Womanhouse established a collaborative group of likeminded artists with similar domestic
experiences and setbacks, and began to formulate their own sense of self-worth (Balducci, 2006).
Both Los Angeles installations provide illustrative examples of the intersection between social
activism and community building and empowerment within the space of public art.
A History of Urban Art
Since the beginning of the 20
th
century, artists have treated the streets as their canvas and
political platform. For instance, in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, members of the Russian
avant-garde relied on innovative posters to inspire, gather, and activate the new, working citizen
(Starks, 2017). As the next few decades were riddled with war, the popularity of poster art as
tools of mass communication and persuasion grew with equal fervor (Bowles, 2017). In the
1960s there was an enthusiastic initiative by artists to push beyond the barriers of the enclosed,
myopic gallery and museum world to the streets and to nature. Earth artists such as Robert
Smithson and Michael Heizer began to utilize natural elements like dirt and rocks as their artistic
materials and the outdoors as their exhibition space. At the same time, alternative performance
artists like Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Allan Kaprow began enacting happenings on
the streets as if they were a stage.
During the late 1960s, self-sanctioned outdoor graffiti writers, such as Cornbread in
Philadelphia and Taki183 in New York City, began to tag every corner and crevasse of the urban
space with their self-selected monikers, forging yet another iteration of communication in the
public sector (Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi, 2017; Visconti et al., 2010). Since then, urban art has
been on the forefront of contemporary mores—providing an integral outlet for psychological and

41

social issues and, as Shepard Fairey’s 2008 HOPE campaign attests, trenchant political activism
(Cartwright & Mandiberg, 2009; Sturken, 2009).
Although the sub terms public art, graffiti and street art are all encompassed by the
broader container “urban art,” scholars and artists within the community continuously address
the schism between graffiti writers and street artists (Davies, 2020). Graffiti writers consider
themselves, and are considered by scholars in the field, more uncontained, untamed, and raw
than street artists with more frequent arrests and social urgency in their messages (Fransberg,
2019; Lombard, 2013). Graffiti tags, throw-ups and pieces are nearly always illegal, whereas
street art can be self-sanctioned but is far more likely to be commissioned (Young, 2012). The
aesthetic of graffiti is less culturally accepted, often signaling to those outside of the urban art
community an unsafe neighborhood in economic disrepair (Austin & Sanders, 2007; Binken &
Blokland, 2012; Weisburd et al., 2012). On the contrary, the aesthetic of street art signals urban
renewal and elicits more Instagram selfies from passersby than it does taxpayer dollars for the
work’s removal (Kramer, 2010; Young, 2012). Street art emerged as a tributary effort from
graffiti but since graffiti is primarily text-based rather than image-based, the urban art observed
and included in this study will exclusively consider street art (Riggle, 2010; Vanderveen & Eijk,
2016).
Urban Art in Scholarly Studies
In the last handful of years, there has been a proliferation of scholarly studies on various
aspects of urban art across the globe that can be loosely grouped into three categories:
educational, intersectional, and individual. Within educationally framed studies, such one
conducted by Low and Proietti in 2021, and another by Santos and Varandas in 2010, the
question of how urban art can be integrated into traditional curricula and positively affect

42

students within these educational spaces is often addressed. Cross-disciplinary studies are also
prevalent since urban art is, by nature, an interdisciplinary practice that collapses the experience
of viewing with the experience of being in public space and having public discourse. In 2012,
Young examined the intersection between illegal art and criminal retribution in Australia; in
2015, Riffaud et al. explored the relationship between street art and street sports as mutual
integers of redefining public space in France; and in 2021, Johnson explored the relationship
between public art and Marxist-oriented activism in Mexico. Individual studies tend to focus on
a small group of street artists and delve into their histories, the intricacies of their work and their
experiences making nonconformist art. When women in street art are the subject of these studies,
the overwhelming majority are interview-based and centered around the experience of the artist
(Beattie, 2017; Daichendt, 2013). Implications of this methodology of research assert through
persuasive testimony that women in the contemporary street art space are creating meaningful
work, gaining prominence, building community with other women artists, and facing
discriminatory setbacks because of their gender (Fransberg, 2019; Patton, 2017).
Women in Contemporary Urban Art
Women Urban Artists
The gender inequities in graffiti culture are wide-reaching and well-documented (Patton,
2017). From its inception, graffiti has been a male dominated world with, historically, few
women involved due to the physical dangers and limitations of the practice, but also the
hyperbolically masculine nature of its culture (Davies, 2020). Street art, however, is more
inclusive to women since there are less harrowing physical expectations of its makers. Where
graffiti writers scale freeway signs and billboards to go “all-city” and tag their name in the most
impressive and impactful way they can, street artists utilize walls, sidewalks, and electrical boxes

43

as their canvases, which are safer to physically maneuver (Davies, 2020). Although there are
women who are attracted to the dangers of graffiti writing, markedly more women align with
street art because of the increased physical safety embedded in its practice (Ganz, 2004).
Apart from the physicality of painting, women artists tend to be more likely to
aesthetically align with street art than graffiti due to the ever-increasingly use of social media in
street art practice as a digital archive, e-commerce marketplace, and means of gauging merit or
popularity using numbers of followers and active post engagements as metrics (Beattie, 2017;
MacDowall & de Souza, 2018). Platforms such as Instagram not only increase the visibility of
these female street artists to viewers and potential collectors, but also provides an opportunity for
them to find and access other women within the space (Patton, 2017). This latter piece is critical
as it results in role-modeling and community building despite geographical distance (Davies,
2020). The Instagram era has also proven a challenge, particularly for female street artists, who
post images of themselves with their work, or in the process of making their work, and are
subject to criticism and vulnerability as a result (Davies, 2020).
In 2018, Whitty et al. conducted a study measuring the relationship between personality
and online patterns on social media platforms, finding a correlation between narcissistic
tendencies and extensive posts including one’s self-image. Although all artists regardless of their
gender identity are likely to post images of themselves on social media platforms, Ghos and Basu
(2018) and Murray (2020) found that women are more likely to engage in narcissistic online
behavior than men, posting an increased number of photographs that emphasize their physical
attractiveness. Women artists in the traditional art canon—Hannah Wilke, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko
Ono, Eva Hesse, and Marina Abramović, to name salient examples—have a long and
problematic history being labeled as narcissists and this digital era iterates this tendency to

44

collapse self-promotion with narcissism (Lippard. 1995). The concept of narcissism, as defined
by the two social media studies referenced above, surrounds a public portrayal of physical
attractiveness; however, that same act of self-representation could be framed as empowering or
courageous, and often is when the subject performing her sexuality does not conform to
normative attractiveness (Meyers, 2002). As narcissism is a label more liberally applied to
women artists than it is to men, its usage in studies and scholarship could be, in part, informed by
subconscious gender bias.
Women as Urban Art Subjects
Far less critical attention has been directed toward the ways in which women in street art
are rendered as subjects than it has toward the experience of women as street artists.
Commenting on female representation in the arts generally, de Lauretis (1987) points to the
tension between how women are portrayed and how they are not portrayed, the dialectic between
revealing and concealing. Speaking to what character traits are revealed in depictions of women
in street art, Grossman-Thompson and Salmi (2021) highlight vulnerability as a recurrent
trope. In unpacking what vulnerability means in this context and how it can be visually
identified, the authors distinguish between vulnerability as objectification and ability to be
harmed by others from vulnerability as an emotional ethos of openness, empathy, and
desire for connection (Grossman-Thompson & Salmi, 2021).

45

Chapter Three: Methodology
Despite the iconoclastic reputation of the field of urban art and its renegade makers in
Los Angeles, the ways in which women are depicted as subjects are often reductive and pander
to traditional gendered stereotypes. To effectuate change within the field that is both
substantiative but also sustainable, data is needed to measure the interrelationships between the
gender identity of the urban artist and the various identity positionalities of the viewer,
ultimately, to compare predictions of how specific images of women might be interpreted with
factual metrics. The findings of this study contribute to the current extant knowledge and
literature surrounding the role of women in art as subjects and as artists. More broadly, as urban
art functions as a mirror of society, these findings offer insight into the societal identities women
are expected to embody, the roles they are expected to occupy, and the identities and roles that
are undervalued by omission. This chapter begins with a revisitation of the study’s central
research questions, then introduces and justifies the mixed methodological research methods that
shape how the study itself was conducted. Finally, the study participants are identified and the
methods for data collection are described.
Overview of Methodology
This study utilized a mixed methodological approach, synthesizing quantitative survey
data analysis with qualitative interviews, to include as many salient perspectives as possible, and
broaden the scope of the study’s findings. Nearly all empirical studies related to urban art center
around the experience of the artist and are, accordingly, qualitative in design with rich, in-depth
interviews of artists relevant to the topic. As this study centers mainly around the experience of
the viewer, the research design methods needed to accommodate that shift by expanding the
exclusive use of curated qualitative interviews to include an extensive, uncurated spectrum of

46

survey participants. The in-depth interviews with targeted urban art enthusiasts and the artists of
these works were integral tools in sculping a deep narrative regarding how women are portrayed
in murals and why they are portrayed as such; however, to center the academic inquiry on
thoughtfully chosen interviews alone would have failed to honor the wide latitude of people who
have contact with outdoor art.
Since urban art attracts a broad range of viewers, not just those who have domain-specific
knowledge, including a quantitative research design element with a large sample of subjects
echoes the breadth and diversity of the field (Johnson & Christensen, 2015). Furthermore,
introducing a quantitative element to the methodological design aligns with the subversion of
gender norms outlined in this dissertation. Ashmos Plowman and Smith (2011) conducted a
study on the predisposition of research method selection and the gender identity of the
researcher, finding that a disproportionate number of female scholars select qualitative designs
whereas an overwhelming majority of quantitative designs are executed by male scholars. As a
female scholar invested in disrupting gender expectations, utilizing a mixed methodological
design with a robust quantitative survey not only benefits the diversity of the study but also the
nature of its feminist activism.
The Researcher and Positionality

The intellectual and ethical lens to which I adhere most tightly is my sense of feminism
and that gendered lens has both predicted and filtered my academic curiosities. As a female
professional in the artworld, I have experienced firsthand the pervasive and pernicious biases that
can affect how women are seen and treated in the field. Echoing the ways in which feminist
scholars attempt to reconcile the Madonna/whore tropes, I have benefited from some of these
biases, and been disadvantaged by others. Regardless of the nature of the stereotyping, the

47

advantageous or the disadvantageous, the instinct to stereotype based on gender identity stymies
efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a scholar of organizational change and
leadership, it is my intent to unearth what the gender biases within the urban art field are, how
they visually manifest in the art itself, the ways in which these biases might be harmful to
women, and how leadership within the field might start to dismantle their predisposed patterns
and decision-making.
With my feminist positionality and sensitivity toward gender stereotyping comes a host
of my own biases that are ingrained and important to recognize. To gather data in the most
objective fashion possible for this study, it was essential that I work toward removing my bias
and proclivity to search for gendered stereotyping so that I did not interpret data in a teleological
manner, looking to prove what I already believed was true (Burton-Jones, 2009). Formulating
this study through a mixed methodological lens, rather than an exclusively qualitative one, was a
corrective measure to moderate my bias since once the survey was formulated, I was distanced
from the collection process and unable to unconsciously guide participants’ responses (Chenail,
2011). Before conducting the interviews, I formulated the questions alongside my advisor and
staff of the Internal Review Board to ensure ethicality and bias mitigation.
My unconscious feminist bias could have easily affected which murals I was drawn to
select for the survey, and a way to safeguard against this pitfall was to outsource the mural
selection process to a group of informed, local experts in the field (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).
Specifically, the works illustrated in the survey were chosen by a group of seven Los Angeles
urban art tastemakers from a comprehensive illustrated list of murals in Downtown, Los
Angeles, Pacoima and South Central (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). The group was comprised of
three artists, one gallerist, one art advisor, one employee of the Los Angeles County Museum of

48

Art (LACMA), and the president of a local mural conservancy organization. Members of the
group embodied a range of racialized, gendered and age positionalities and were selected based
on their prominence and fluency in the field. Each member was presented with a deck of images
of every mural that fit the study’s criteria and was asked to select the ten images they believed to
be the most significant among the group. Participants in this incubator group had no prior
knowledge of the study’s problem of practice and were intentionally given the vague identifier,
significant, as their selection prompt to lessen the potential of language bias that might have
otherwise guided their choices. The nine murals in the final survey were the works which
received the majority number of selections from the incubator group.
Apart from my gender informing decisions throughout the process of conducting this
study, I have become increasingly aware of the impact my racialized identity has had on my
work. As a White woman, I have benefitted from my White privilege within the artworld,
receiving opportunities others might not have had access to, and, even more profoundly, have
benefitted from an intellectual freedom to focus my academic lens on gender alone since I have
never felt the oppressive trauma of being racially minoritized. In unraveling the complexities of
this topic in the pages that follow, it is critical for me to be transparent about when my
positionality aligns with this problem and when it might contribute to its weight.
Data Sources
As this study is both quantitative and qualitative by methodological design, the two
central data sources are interviews and a survey. The survey was broadly distributed and culled
the participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and feelings related to nine curated urban art murals in Los
Angeles (Robinson & Leonard, 2019). Once participants consented to take the survey, they were
asked closed questions to clarify their age, gender identification and racial positionality before

49

being asked for their opinions regarding the featured murals selected by a group of domain
experts. Once the survey results were analyzed, three of the nine murals were selected for more
nuanced inquiry, and interviews of enthusiastic viewers of these murals were conducted, as well
as interviews of the three artists of each of those selected murals.
Survey
To be eligible for inclusion in the study, each of the murals had to be currently extant at
the time of the data collection, had to feature a portrait of a woman as its entire compositional
element, and had to have been painted on a wall in either Downtown Los Angeles, Pacoima or
South Central. These three specific neighborhoods were purposefully selected as they
demographically iterate the racial and economic diversity of the city’s population (Harris et al.,
2019; Shamasunder et al., 2015).
Using a 5-point Likert scale, the survey measured the degree to which the participant
believed that the women in the nine selected murals were maternal, trustworthy, sexualized or
empowered, to ascertain the relationship between the gender, race and age of the participant and
their perception of the female urban art subject. The concepts of being empowered/strong,
sexual/sexualized, a good mother, and trustworthy were distilled from the literature surrounding
the Madonna/whore tropes as outlined in Chapter Two (Gottschall, et al., 2006; McNamara,
2017). The gender identity of the artist of each mural was purposefully excluded in the survey
questions to faithfully recreate the experience of an average passerby happening upon a local
mural without any prior information or knowledge surrounding what they were seeing. Select
participants might have recognized some of the murals in the survey and known more about the
artist than other participants, as select people who walk the streets and pass a mural at any given
time might have access to more information about a work than others. Unlike art hanging on

50

museum walls which are traditionally labeled and thoroughly contextualized, outdoor art in
urban spaces can be signed, unsigned or signed by self-created monikers. When present within
the work, the artists’ signatures were included in the photographs illustrated in the survey;
however, no additional information, such as the gender positionality, was provided for the
participant.
Participants

There were two criteria for involvement in this study: that the participant in question be
18 years of age or older and must be a Los Angeles resident at the time of the collection. The
former criterion was in service of protecting minors and the latter was to best recreate the
experience of walking around the city in which you live and stumbling upon a mural intended for
your city’s community. Despite the proliferation of urban art on social media, and subsequent
ability to access and digitally view art from any corner of the world, there remains a distinctive
impact and power in viewing art in situ (Leder & Nadal, 2014). This power is amplified in the
urban art field since outdoor art is inherently site-specific and an integral determiner of
placemaking (Lennon, 2020).
Instrumentation
The survey was built and formatted using the Qualtrics program and consisted of 51
questions, two questions pertaining to the eligibility of the participant, four questions related to
their gender, race, and age, and 45 questions gathering the participant’s experience of the murals.
Appendix A clarifies these questions and showcases the survey instrument. A 51-question survey
is admittedly cumbersome, and to assuage the effects of survey fatigue, the same five questions
were repeated for each of the nine illustrated murals, in different orders so that participants had
to slow down enough to read the questions even if these questions were familiar (Robinson &

51

Leonard, 2019). During peer review and pilot testing of the survey, participants cited
experiencing a flow state when providing their responses since they could anticipate the
questions for each new mural that appeared in the survey. That nine different works were
illustrated over the course of the survey minimized reading fatigue and provided energizing
visual stimulus (Van Mol, 2017).
The questions themselves were a series of closed, ordinal questions meant to gauge the
participant’s insight into the female subject in question and disentangle any potential
relationships that might emerge between their own gender, race and age identification, the
gender identification of the artist, which could be unknown to participants, and their instinctual
observations about the work. The questions themselves interrogated the degree to which
participants agree that the female subjects are maternal, trustworthy, sexual, and empowered.
Each survey question was iterated to ensure its alignment to two of the three of the study’s
overarching research questions (Robinson & Leonard, 2019; Rosenberg, 2017). The adjective
listed in each of the closed questions related to a distillment of the Madonna/whore dichotomy,
addressing the first research question, and the relationship between the gender, race and age of
the participants and their perception of the work aligns with the third research question. The
second question regarding the relationship between the gender identity of the artist and their
portrayal of the female subject was not explicitly addressed in the survey since the gender of the
artist was information that was consciously excluded. This second research question was
explored through subsequent interviews with the artists and targeted viewers.
Data Collection Procedures

The survey yielded 402 responses, 392 of which were taken in their entirety. Despite the
survey itself being long, it garnered a 97.5% completion rate. The type of survey was a census

52

since each inhabitant of Los Angeles is equally likely to impart insight into the problem of
practice at hand, and the sampling likely began as a snowball sample since the initial circle of
respondents distributed the digital survey to their circles, ad seriatim (Robinson & Leonard,
2019). The primary distribution method for the survey was digital, either through the snowball
sampling or through posts on professional and social networks, for potential participants with
easy access to computers and the internet. For city residents who might not have equitable access
to computers or the internet, 50 pens and physical copies of the printed survey were distributed
and collected by the researcher at various publicly accessible locations across Los Angeles. As
an additional grassroots collection method, a unique QR code was displayed on the same wall of
each of the nine included murals which directed interested parties to the digital survey. To gather
as diverse a population as possible, over 100 flyers with this same unique QR code were posted
on the bulletin boards of civic buildings, public libraries, and housing insecurity facilities.
Data Analysis
Survey responses were sorted using the Qualtrics program, which generated descriptive
statistics by migrating the raw survey data into discernable patterns, tendencies, and variations
(Creswell & Creswell, 2018). These statistics were formatted into graphs to better visualize the
relationships between the given variables as they pertained to each featured mural. Weaving
numbers into stories, this program was a critical tool in revealing the relationship between the
study’s variables through cross-tabulation analysis.
Once the data were analyzed, the researcher selected the three murals with the most
engaging findings, in the form of different populations holding diverging opinions about the
female subjects, that had been painted by artists who mirror the diverse makeup of the urban art
space. The first mural was painted by an African American male artist, who goes by Mister

53

Sampson, of a racially ambiguous woman; the second mural was painted by Latinx female artist,
Kristy Sandoval, of a Latinx female subject; and the third mural was painted by a White male
artist, who goes by Fin DAC, of an East Asian female subject. The results of the survey data
collected on all nine murals are analyzed in Chapter Four, as are the interviews that further
investigate the three specific murals listed above by Mister Sampson, Sandoval, and Fin DAC.
Interviews
The second phase of the study consisted of structured and semi-structured interviews with
14 participants, purposefully selected based on their active relationship to one of the three
murals. Three of the 14 participants were the artists of each work, and the remaining 11
interviewees were people who exhibited a deeper level of enthusiasm for one of the highlighted
works. This level of enthusiasm was determined by the participant having posted a photograph of
the mural on their public Instagram account, digitally attributing the work to the proper artist by
tagging their platform in the post. The interviews themselves were inductive to observationally
search for patterns within the trope of female representation in art, using a handful of curated
voices to generate broader societal truths (Cresswell & Cresswell, 2018). The interviews helped
to triangulate the results of the survey, as well as to illuminate, diversify, and nuance what drives
could have motivated how certain participants responded in the survey (Bergin, 2018).
Participants
A purposeful sample of 14 participants was selected to share their knowledge and
opinions in this study. Eleven of these interviews were with people who were so captivated or
inspired by one of the three featured murals that they were compelled to post a self-taken
photograph of the work on their public Instagram social media platforms. The final three
interviews were with the artists of the three murals selected for further inquiry: Mister Sampson,

54

Kristy Sandoval, and Fin DAC. These three interviews were conducted to share the results of the
survey data and viewer interviews and to discuss the ways in which the findings were aligned, or
misaligned, with the artist’s intent for their work.
Instrumentation
When this study was first conceptualized, the design was to physically stand in front of
each of the three featured murals and interview passersby who stopped to observe the works for
more than five seconds. The interview format was going to be semi-structured to allow room for
the conversations with participants to be more exploratory than rigidly bound to an intractable
protocol script (Gibbs, 2018). Appendix B presents this intended interview protocol. Each
question was purposefully written to ascertain the viewer’s reasons for stopping to look at this
particular mural, their opinions regarding the woman in the mural, and the takeaway message
with which they left the viewing experience. The concept of a semi-structured format enhances
how agile a researcher can be in their ability to listen, pivot and further probe the interview
participant when necessary, which would have been ideally suited for these kind of spontaneous
conversations in front of murals (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). Ultimately, this data collection
method was intended to enrich the survey results with the energy of in situ dialogical
conversation; however, in-person exchanges of this manner ended up not being possible to
obtain.
Data Collection Procedures
I stood in front of each mural for over two hours and did not have the opportunity to
collect interview data from even one person walking by. This could have been a consequence of
COVID-19, and the pervasive spread of the Omicron variant, since very few people were
walking on the streets during the hours I posted in front of the murals, and those who did walk by

55

did so with such purpose that there was no occasion to speak. This could also have been a
consequence of the placement of the murals, which were not in areas where viewers stand and
luxuriate: one mural is on a wall adjacent to an elevated parking lot, one is tucked away in an
alley, and one is on the side of a business in a low foot traffic neighborhood. Whatever the
reason, I had to be creative in concepting how to find people who were inspired by these works
and how to communicate with them.
If viewers no longer exclusively access murals while walking in front of them, how is this
art form found, reveled in, and shared with others? Social media, specifically the imaged-based
platform Instagram, has become the primary distributor of urban art, so Instagram is where I
journeyed to find my interview participants. Scrolling through every image that Mister Sampson,
Kristy Sandoval, and Fin DAC had been publicly tagged in, I added a comment to each post of
the three murals in Los Angeles I stood in front of, introducing myself and sharing preliminary
information about the study. Once the accounts who posted the photographs granted written
consent, I contacted them through direct message with a list of four questions pertaining to the
mural they posted and one question pertaining to their identity positionalities. Appendix C
presents the script of my initial communication posted as a comment on each person’s public
page, and the subsequent questions I shared in direct messages once granted consent. Since these
interviews were digital rather than live and in-person, the interview format had to migrate from
semi-structured to structured.
Eleven people answered my questions posed on Instagram and once the results of these
conversations were analyzed, I conducted semi-structured interviews with the artists of each of
the murals: Mister Sampson, Kristy Sandoval, and Fin DAC. These interviews were on the
phone since the artists were either in different cities when they were approached or

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uncomfortable meeting in person due to COVID-19. Appendix D presents the artist interview
protocol.
Data Analysis
Transcripts of the social media interview responses were analyzed through a qualitative
lens, tethering emergent themes to the conceptual framework of the study and aspects of the
specific research questions. Since these structured interviews were all conducted in a digital
space, as participants responded on Instagram, each interviewee created their own transcript of
the exchange that became the foundation upon which further analysis and unraveling was built.
These exchanges on Instagram not only ensure the accuracy of the transcript since the text
generated came directly from the interview participant, but also maximized the credibility of the
data. Using a codebook, the researcher broke down the interview content into a priori codes that
were created prior to the data analysis and aligned with preexisting research questions, and
emergent codes that were generated through data analysis (Gibbs, 2018; Merriam & Tisdell,
2015). These codes were generated through careful scrutinizing of the text to unearth themes,
patterns, and any explicit or implied references to the four adjectives explored in the survey:
trustworthy, maternal, empowered, and sexual.
Validity and Reliability
Since no empirical, quantitative studies on viewer reactions to urban art had been
conducted at the time of this study, there were no preexisting surveys from which to draw. After
building a survey that centered around the viewer experience, and the ways in which that
experience related to gender stereotyping and biases, steps had to be undertaken to protect the
survey’s validity and reliability and hold the research and researcher ethically accountable.

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To gauge content validity is to determine the degree to which the survey measured what
it was intended to measure (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Toward this effort, each question on the
survey was aligned with at least one of the three central research questions of the study to ensure
that what was asked of participants was directly related to the objectives of the research
questions (Boone & Boone, 2012). Additionally, the language of the survey was internally
piloted and workshopped with expert peers to ensure the wording was accessible and
unambiguous.
To uphold the reliability of the survey, the questions had to elicit the same type of
information from participants if prompted again, and under the same conditions (Salkind, 2014).
Along these lines of consistency, the same language was utilized in the set of questions
pertaining to each of the nine murals to maintain reliability throughout the survey experience.
Furthermore, the results of the pilot tests were compared to data from the final test to
numerically assess reliability.
To safeguard the validity and trustworthiness of the interviews, several measures were
undertaken. Before any of the interviews were conducted, the questions were shared with expert
peers to ensure each one related back to one of the three central research questions (Creswell &
Creswell, 2018). To uphold the trustworthiness of the findings, the researcher conducted
interviews until the point where saturation was achieved (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). In
Chapter Four, qualitative findings from the interviews were analyzed alongside data that were
generated from the quantitative survey to triangulate, illuminate, and diversify each of the
solitary methodological approaches (Bergin, 2018).

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Ethics
A critical component of any study is that it is conceptualized and executed with
ethicality. As such, survey and interview participants for this study were asked for their informed
consent before participating in any way and were given the opportunity to remove themselves at
any time for any reason. Apart from the participant’s age, gender and race, no personal
information was collected, further safeguarding the anonymity of the survey and interviews, and
ensuring that no personal or professional harm would be done. None of the participants received
compensation of any kind, which assuaged the possibility that responses were guided toward a
given direction. The study proposal went through two in-depth IRB reviews—one as the version
in which the study was originally conceptualized with in-person viewer interviews, and one as
the new version introducing the social media component—before participants were contacted for
interviews or surveys were released and distributed.
To maximize ethicality, the bias and feminist predilections of the researcher had to be
minimized (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). As such, a group of experts in the field, who are not
experts in this topic, were given a comprehensive and illustrated list of all eligible murals in
Downtown, Los Angeles, Pacoima and South Central from which to make their selections. The
mural selection for the survey and subsequent interviews were based on these calibrated results.

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Chapter Four: Results and Findings
Treating the field of urban art as analogous to a formalized organization, this study seeks
to ascertain any preexisting and stereotypical patterns in the way women are portrayed as
subjects of outdoor murals, and perceived by viewers (Alper et al., 2000; Costanza et al., 2016).
These patterns are identified, described, and summarized in this chapter. The framework for
understanding the gender specific stereotypes is scaffolded using a distillation of Sigmund
Freud’s Madonna/whore complex and assessing, through broadly distributed surveys and
targeted viewer and artist interviews, the salience of these early 20
th
century themes to
contemporary urban art renderings. Adding complexity to this pursuit, a secondary element of
the study is to dissect viewers’ recognition of gender bias in urban art through a latitudinal
awareness of not only these viewers’ gender identities, but also their race and age. Collecting this
swath of knowledge related to the viewer adds nuance to how certain facets of self might inform
one’s beliefs about the female subjects. This chapter begins with a review of the survey and
interview participants, then outlines the results and findings of the data collection strategies, all
in service of addressing the three fundamental research questions that undergird the study:
1) What effect do traditional art historical norms for women’s portrayal in art—namely,
Sigmund Freud’s Madonna/whore dichotomy—have on how women are portrayed in
urban art?
2) How does the urban artist’s gender identity affect their renderings of their female
subjects?
3) What is the relationship between the gender, race and age subgroups of the viewer and
their interpretation of the female subjects of urban art?

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To attempt to answer the research questions, the researcher created a 51-question digital
survey that was widely distributed to attract as diverse a spectrum of respondents as possible. To
obtain the 402 responses, of which 392 were completed in their entirety, the survey portion of the
data collection took place over a three-week period. On average, the survey took 12 minutes to
complete. After the data were collected and analyzed, three murals with the most engaging
results, painted by the most representatively diverse group of artists, were selected for deeper
investigation. The researcher then conducted 11 structured interviews with people who were so
intrigued by one of the three murals that they were impelled to photograph the work and post an
image on their public Instagram page. It is difficult to quantify how long, on average, these
interviews took since the pre-determined questions were sent via direct message to relevant
Instagram users and were answered asynchronously by the user on their own time. Some of the
responses were more thorough and thoughtful than others but, based on the time it took to retype
the messages, the questions took roughly nine minutes to answer. Finally, the researcher
conducted semi-structured interviews with the artists of the three featured murals: Mister
Sampson, Kristy Sandoval, and Fin DAC, to share the results of the surveys and viewer
interviews, and gauge how aligned these reactions were with the artists’ intentions for their work.
Unlike the interviews on Instagram, which were static and structured, these conversations with
the artists were more organic and took, on average, 70 minutes to conduct.
Participants
Starting with the broadly distributed survey and funneling to the curated viewer
interviews to the specific artist interviews, the participant group began as a diverse group and
became increasingly whittled down and targeted. The purpose of this funneling from any adult
living in Los Angeles, to any urban art enthusiast particularly motivated by one of three murals,

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to the sole artist of specified murals was to recreate the broad range of people who interface with,
and generate reactions to, urban art. From the rarefied aficionado to the disinterested passerby to
the creator of the work, a considerably wide-ranging swath of people with differing levels of
knowledge of, and interest in, art absorb the messaging of urban art on a daily level, consciously
or not. In better understanding the impact of this form of public art, the study had to incorporate
the fullness of this range of participants.
Survey Participants
The survey was primarily distributed digitally to a range of institutions and organizations
throughout Los Angeles, including four-year and community colleges, art staff at weekly and
monthly periodicals, management offices at retirement facilities and civic leaders. Physical
copies of the survey were additionally distributed and collected by the researcher throughout
accessible public facilities such as libraries and housing insecurity resource buildings. Finally,
with consent from the artists, the researcher generated a unique QR code and physically
displayed this code next to each of the nine murals that were included in the survey, guiding
interested people who had access to smart technology and the internet to the survey. A
combination of these collection efforts yielded 402 partial responses to the survey and 392
complete responses. Figures 10, 11, and 12 illustrate a demographic breakdown of the survey
participants, as divided into the three subcategories of gender identity, age and race.

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Figure 10
Distribution of the survey participants according to gender identity

Figure 11
Distribution of the survey participants according to age

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Figure 12
Distribution of the survey participants according to race

The study sought to develop as representative a sample of the Los Angeles population as
possible; however, the respondents skewed toward attracting a disproportionate number of White
women. Of the people who completed the survey, 71.55% were female, whereas the 2021 U.S.
Census Bureau cites 50.5% of the city’s population as being female identified (“United States
Census Bureau,” 2021). The Census Bureau lists 28.5% of the Los Angeles population as being
Caucasian, and over double that percentage, 61.29%, of the survey respondents were Caucasian.
Eight percent of survey respondents identified as Black, 9% identified as Asian, and 14.5%
identified as Latinx, compared to the Census percentages of 8.9%, 11.6% and 48.5% respectively
(“United States Census Bureau,” 2021). The percentage metrics related to Black and Asian
participants were moderately close to the stratification with the Los Angeles community;
however, the survey attracted a lower number of people identifying as Latinx, and higher
number of people identifying as Caucasian, than the city’s population estimates from 2021.

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The metrics of survey participants might not align with the gender or racial distribution of
the Los Angeles population; however, it does seem to reflect the demographic information of
people who pursue higher education in Art History. For instance, a data aggregate channel cited
that 83.6% of graduate Art History degrees granted in 2019 were earned by women, and 62.3%
of all degrees earned that same year were by students who identified as Caucasian (“Data USA,”
2019).
The age of survey participants ranged from early adulthood, or people within the 18 to 24
age category, to more venerably aged people between 75 and 84 years. The densest age category
was between 35 and 44, which comprised 28.32% of the survey respondents. The next most
frequent age category was people between 18 and 24, which made up 22.54% of the total
respondents. This category potentially reflects the student-aged communities which were
targeted during data collection, and the aged 35 to 44 could be a snowball result of the
researcher’s own community which falls within that age range.
Interview Participants
As described in Chapter Three, a total of 14 people were interviewed for the study: 11
urban art enthusiasts were interviewed digitally on Instagram and three artists were interviewed
over the phone. Eight of the 11 Instagram interviewees were male, which is a much larger
percentage than the men who elected to participate in the survey. Three of these men self-
described as Caucasian, two self-described as Black, and three as Latinx. Of the three women
who were interviewed, one self-identified as Caucasian and two as Latinx. None of these
participants chose to share their age. Among the artists, one is an African American male who
chose not to specify his age, one is a Caucasian, middle-aged male and one is a Latinx female in
her late 30s.

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Results and Findings
This section reports on the results of the survey and interviews to generate findings as
they relate to the research questions. The findings are filtered through the lenses of the
theoretical and conceptual frameworks to tether them closely to the research questions that serve
as the foundation of this study. The chapter concludes with a summary of the results and findings
of each disparate data collection method as it interrelates and triangulates with the other.
Research Question One
What effect do traditional art historical norms for women’s portrayal in art—namely,
Sigmund Freud’s Madonna/whore dichotomy—have on how women are portrayed in urban art?
Surveys
The language of the survey, specifically the distillation of Freud’s Madonna/whore
dichotomy into the four adjectives that were measured in each of the questions, by its very
existence already presumed a manifestation of these norms in urban art portrayals of women.
Despite efforts to be exploratory in the data collection, the range of results ended up being
teleological since the adjectives used to describe the women, adjectives moored to Freud’s binary
logic, were written into each of the questions. If the survey questions had been open-ended,
allowing participants to self-describe the women in the mural, this method would have better
measured the degree to which Freud’s tropes resonate in contemporary urban art. As the data
currently stands, looking at the neutral response option, the “neither agree nor disagree”
selection, reveals more about the salience of Freud’s theories regarding the Madonna trope in
today’s ideation of women than the other response options.

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Figure 13
Lydia Emily, There is Always Hope, 2019

The Madonna: Trustworthy and Maternal
When asked about Lydia Emily’s mural in Downtown Los Angeles, There Is Always
Hope, 2019, Figure 13, slightly over half of respondents said they neither agreed nor disagreed
that the subject was, or would be, a good mother. Reacting to this same mural, nearly half of
respondents, or 41%, said they neither agreed nor disagreed that the female subject was
trustworthy.
Commenting on French artist JR’s wheatpaste mural in the Downtown district, Figure 14,
44% of survey participants felt neutral about whether the subject of the work is, or would be, a
good mother and 34% neither agreed nor disagreed that this same woman would be someone
they could trust.

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Figure 14
JR, Wrinkles of the City, 2012

Reacting to El Mac’s mural, Abuela, Figure 15, participants shared similarly neutral feedback to
the questions relating to her fitness as a mother and trustworthiness as a person. Thirty two
percent of respondents said they neither agreed nor disagreed that she appeared to be a person
they could trust and 34% said they neither agreed nor disagreed that the mural subject is or
would be a good mother.

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Figure 15
El Mac, Abuela, 2015

More than the terms “empowered,” or “sexual,” the concepts of being maternal and
trustworthy proved challenging for viewers to visually assess, which manifested in a higher
percentage of ambivalent survey responses. Of all the terms, “trust” was the most difficult one to
visually identify as each mural on the survey received a minimum of 25% of respondents
selecting the neutral, neither agree nor disagree, response. The only mural illustrated on the
survey that yielded fewer neutral responses regarding maternal fitness was French artist Hopare’s
untitled mural in Downtown Los Angeles, Figure 16. This mural of a mother tenderly kissing her
swaddled child, explicitly exemplifies motherhood. As such, only 10% of respondents neither
agreed nor disagreed that the woman in the mural was a good mother, which seemed a high
percentage considering the unambiguous subject matter, but 70.55% strongly agreed that she was
a good mother.

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Figure 16
Hopare, Untitled, 2017

The Whore: Sexual and Empowered
The modalities empowerment and sexuality were more straightforward for viewers to
evaluate. It is unsurprising that participants seemed to easily measure subjects’ various sexual
identities since there is such a robust history in aesthetic culture generally, and visual art
specifically, of female bodies being on active display for the viewer (Horne, 2019). Female
subjects who were younger and bedecked in clothing that revealed their bodies were assessed as
being highly sexualized, whereas subjects who were older or dressed in clothing that was not a
focal point of the mural’s design were not regarded as being sexual. The women who were not
perceived as sexual were seen as something else: empowered.
Interestingly, survey results revealed a strong inverse relationship between the perception
of sexuality and the perception of empowerment and strength, with those subjects who were
viewed as sexual as not being viewed as empowered, and vice versa. In Face to Face by

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Starfighter and Fanakapan, Figure 17, the woman in the mural was identified as being
empowered with 49% of viewers strongly agreeing with that assessment. Only 10% of viewers
strongly agreed that this same female subject was sexual or sexualized.

Figure 17
Starfighter and Fanakapan, Face to Face, 2017

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Figure 18
Fairey, Defend Dignity, 2020

Commenting on Shepard Fairey’s mural, Defend Dignity, Figure 18, 62% of survey
participants strongly agreed that the female subject was empowered and strong, whereas only 6%
of participants strongly agreed that she was sexual. The women in these two murals, Fairey’s and
Starfighter’s and Fanakapan’s, are both illustrated in unrevealing clothing that is barely visible in
the composition.
Forty six percent of participants strongly believed that the elderly subject of JR’s work,
Figure 12, was empowered, with 0% strongly disagreeing, while 0% strongly agreed this subject
was sexualized, with 74% strongly disagreeing that she was. The inverse correlation between
sexuality and empowerment in the case of this mural seems to be a consequence of age, as older
bodies are seen as asexual in Western culture and are therefore regarded as being empowered
due to their perceived lack of sexuality (Paris, 2020; Rúa, 2021).
The mural by Mister Sampson, Figure 19, serves as an illustration of the counter narrative
that female subjects who were regarded by viewers as sexual, were not seen as empowered.

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Figure 19
Mister Sampson, Untitled, 2019

Specifically, 23% of participants strongly agreed that this subject was highly sexual,
whereas only 11% strongly agreed that she was empowered and strong.
Interviews
A shortcoming of the way this study was conceptualized and implemented with regards
to the first research question is that by openly listing the adjectives that emerge from Freud’s
Madonna/whore framework in the survey questions, the relevancy of those adjectives is
presupposed. Since the viewer interviews were more open-ended than the language of the
survey, any descriptions relayed about the three featured female subjects were autogenous and,
as a result, more accurately address the salience of Freud’s binary positioning of women in
contemporary urban art. The interview data pool from which to draw was smaller than that of the
surveys; however, several illuminating comments were shared by viewers who posted images of
one of the three murals selected for further study.

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Mister Sampson’s Mural
Three Instagram users who posted an image of Mister Sampson’s mural on their own
public accounts responded to questions related to their opinions of the piece. Overall survey data
revealed participants’ perception of the female subject as being low in trustworthiness, low in
maternal fitness, low in empowerment and high in sexuality. Interview data both confirms and
complicates these assessments. Two of the three interviewees were male, and both men made
comments that speak to the female subject’s sexual identity. One described her as “flirtatious”
and “promiscuous,” and the other classified her as being “sexually embodied” and “sexually
liberated.” The female interviewee did not reference the subject’s sexuality, instead commenting
on her pain, her vulnerability and, ultimately, her tenacity. Furthermore, this viewer related to the
female subject, explaining that she saw her own pain in the face of the woman.
Analyzing the mural itself, there are visual elements of both facets of self—the sexual
and the vulnerable. The female subject is shown in profile with her eyes closed, lips partially
open, and face upturned. Although the mural’s background is an evening sky, the woman wears
sunglasses to obscure the tears streaming down her face. The focal point of the mural is her face,
neck, outstretched hand and background and no discernable clothes are apparent. This presumed
nudity in a nighttime setting could add to the sexual interpretation of the subject, as could her
slightly open mouth, closed eyes, and expression of surrender on her face. This surrender equally
lends itself to an interpretation that the woman is in pain and exhibiting her vulnerability to the
viewer. She is crying, attempting to obscure her tears with sunglasses despite the evening setting.
Her open palm is compositionally emphasized, perhaps to indicate a metaphorical offering to the
universe, or symbolic request to receive from the universe (Cooperrider et al., 2018). Either way,

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this interpretation is more psychological than sexual and in balance with nature rather than in
erotic conversation with the viewer.
Kristy Sandoval’s Decolonized
Set in Pacoima’s Mural Mile, Kristy Sandoval’s mural, Decolonized, Figure 20, has been
a celebrated staple of the community since 2013 (Sonksen, 2021). The composition surrounds a
young woman standing in profile releasing butterflies and parrots from the cage that confined
them. Sandoval utilized the preexisting barred window on the building’s façade to represent the
cage and aesthetically transformed the awning above the building’s entrance into the female
subject’s voluminous skirt. The woman has blue dreadlocks with feathers sewn into them, and a
tattoo on her left arm of the Aztec Moon Goddess, Coyolxauhqui. The scene is set within an
abundant floral landscape against a sunburst golden background. Most contemporary urban art
murals are untitled and that this one has such a specific, evocative title solicits further inquiry.
The concept of decolonization evokes freeing that which should be independent, like the birds
and butterflies who were once held captive by the cage. The female subject, with her culturally
specific tattoo, seems to embrace her indigenous heritage bespeaking her own decolonization.

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Figure 20
Sandoval, Decolonized, 2013

Three Instagram users who posted an image of Sandoval’s mural on their own public
accounts responded to questions related to their opinions of piece. Overall survey data showed
participants’ perception of the female subject as being low in trustworthiness, low in maternal
fitness, low in sexuality, and high in empowerment. Interview data both illuminates and
diversifies these valuations. Only one of the three interview respondents was male, and he
described the subject of Decolonized as a creator, a “creator of freedom,” relating this freedom to
immigration. Nowhere in his interview was a suggestion of the female subject’s sexuality, only
her power as a creator of her own freedom and the freedom of the sentient beings she released.
The two women who responded to the interview questions also used the specific word
“freedom,” and referred to the independent, creative spirit of the central subject. One of the
interviewees tethered the type of freedom to a release of societal conventions and the other,
interestingly, to the freedom that motherhood engenders. Although the word “empowered” was

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not explicitly used in these interviews, the concept of empowerment—someone with the
confidence and authority to act—reverberates in all three interviewees’ explanation of the
subject’s creative freedom to release the butterflies and birds.
Fin DAC’s Upon Reflection
Born in Ireland, based in England and actively working around the world, Fin DAC has a
more international presence and practice than many of his contemporaries. Through his work,
which is largely comprised of female portraiture, Fin DAC seeks to generate diverse
manifestations of empowerment and demonstrate female beauty from a multifarious and global
perspective (Dastin, 2017). In Upon Reflection, Figure 21, Fin DAC illustrates his most prevalent
theme: an East Asian female body festooned in culturally specific clothing with a painted mask
splashed over her eyes. This woman’s body is in profile, yet her head turns to directly engage the
viewer. Her hair is in an updo interwoven with flowers and traditional hair pieces, and she wears
a patterned blue and white kimono. Her eyes are surprisingly blue, and her hands are intertwined
with each other, as if she is in the process of wringing them.

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Figure 21
Fin DAC, Upon Reflection, 2014

Five Instagram users who posted an image of Fin DAC’s mural on their own public
accounts responded to questions related to their opinions of the piece. Similar to the results of
Sandoval’s mural, overall survey data showed participants’ perception of the female subject as
being low in trustworthiness, low in maternal fitness, low in sexuality and high in empowerment.
The interview feedback from viewers corroborates these findings regarding empowerment, and
complicates the findings related to the subject’s sexuality. All five of the interview respondents
were male and each of them, although interviewed separately, commented on the subject’s
beauty and her endurance. One Instagram user opined that she’s clasping her hands because she
has “endured many things,” and another suggested that the mask, appearing to drip with tears,
reveals the subject’s “sad past filled with hurt.” A third user related the sadness implied through
the mask to the fact that the women is not smiling. His takeaway message from her stoic facial
expression is a larger societal truth to “celebrate and empower women and quit telling them to
smile in order for them to be considered beautiful. Beauty exists in all expressions.”

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In addition to the subject’s regal endurance, these interviewees commented on her
physical attractiveness, perhaps a couched way of describing her sexuality. One Instagram user
said the subject reminded him of his wife and that the mural threw him into a reverie of
“moments with my wife while we were in Japan.” That this participant saw his wife in the
subject of the mural, and described that encounter with such affection, suggests a subtle
sexualization of the subject. A different Instagram user was more explicit in his description of
the subject’s physical aptitude, identifying her as “outstandingly beautiful.” This participant
described himself as a “lover of the female gender,” explaining that “women are for street art and
sharing their beauty on the streets is a good thing.” The misogyny engrained in this comment,
that women’s beauty should be exhibited on the streets for the benefit of an assumedly male
viewer, undoubtedly would have been softened had the interview been dialogical rather than
shared as a response to static questions with no opportunity for clarifying follow ups. Regardless
of the objectifying tenor of that viewer’s statement, his assertion of the beauty of Fin DAC’s
subject is apt and shared by the other interviewees. A different user also discussed her
attractiveness, but not as a right for the world to ogle, but in concert with her additional qualities
of “grace and tradition.”
Research Question Two
How does the urban artist’s gender identity affect their renderings of their female
subjects?
Before expanding upon how an urban artist’s gender can impact the way in which they
depict female subjects, it is worth mentioning the dialectics surrounding whether an artist’s
gender influences how they create work in the first place. Many art scholars have historically
believed, and continue to assert, that there is a distinctive aesthetic that women artists possess

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that distinguishes their work from that of their male contemporaries (Polson, 1979; Karner, 1991;
Millner et al., 2015). For instance, in 1972 art critic Cindy Nemser questioned whether only
women artists could effectively paint children because of their biological capacity to birth them,
and in 1976 feminist critic Lucy Lippard opined that female artists produce work containing
significantly more empty space and parabolic shapes than male artists because of the
physiological form of women’s genitals. To be sure, there is relevance to these claims in the case
of art made by select women artists, but to make conclusive statements that all art made by all
women accommodates a fixed set of expectations fails to scrutinize the complexity and diversity
of feminist aesthetics.
Survey
The artist’s gender was consciously excluded from the language of the survey questions,
therefore, there is no way of ascertaining whether survey respondents were aware of any aspect
of the artist’s identity profile when responding to the survey prompts. However, there was one
question related to each mural whose results directly speak to this second research question.
Participants were asked who they believed each mural was painted for, selecting on a scale of
one to ten how strongly they felt each work was intended for male or female viewership. For
instance, if a respondent felt that Sandoval’s Decolonized was primarily painted for the female
gaze, but not entirely, this person could select a nine or ten for the “women” category, and
perhaps a five or six for the “men” category. The results of this question, coupled with the
knowledge of the artist’s gender identity that survey respondents presumably did not have,
address how the gender of the artist might influence or impact their renderings of female
subjects.

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Sandoval, the only female artist among the three featured, received feedback from survey
participants that her work seemed more geared toward women than it was toward men. The mean
selection was a 5.29 out of ten for the work being painted for men, and a seven out of ten for it
being painted for women. The former indicates neutrality with regards to an intended male gaze
and a distinctive preference for a female. The standard deviation for both categories was a 2.5,
suggesting that the results for both aspects of the question were equally distributed across the
scale.
Fin DAC’s mural received very similar metrics to Sandoval’s, despite his being a male
artist. The mean selection for the work being painted for a male audience was 5.3, hovering
around neutral, whereas the mean selection for the work being geared toward women was a 7,
suggesting the belief that this mural was intended more for a female audience than a male. The
standard deviation was 2.46 for the male scale and 2.42 for the female scale, indicating similar
variability of the data.
Based on the survey results for this question of intended viewership, Mister Sampson’s
mural was equally meant for a male and female audience; however, since the mean for both male
and female scales was close to neutral, the efficacy of this question is debatable. The mean for
the male category was 6.18, indicating that survey respondents slightly agreed that his mural was
geared toward a male audience, and the mean for the female category was 6.21, indicating the
same near neutrality for a female audience. This schism between perceiving the viewership gaze
as being both male and female reiterates the dual interview feedback that the female subject is
both sexual and empowered, despite those polarities being oppositional to each other in the
survey results.

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Artist Interviews
Within the practice of Art History, analyzing an artist’s biography and their self-
described intentions for creating the work is a common practice to better situate the significance
of their art within the larger framework of the field (Witkowski, 2004). This study expands the
search for meaning from the artist alone to encompass the viewer’s description; however, mining
the three artist interviews within this study is the most effective way to determine how the gender
of the artist impacts their interpretation of female subjects.
Mister Sampson
Despite viewer feedback from male interviewees regarding the subject’s sexuality, Mister
Sampson said that exploring or exploiting her sexuality was not his intention when he painted the
mural. We discussed the subject’s open mouth, tilted back head and outstretched palm further
and the artist shared that the original sketch for the mural concepted the woman holding a joint in
her hand, which explains those compositional elements. Sampson commented that once he
arrived at the mural’s location, he felt the neighborhood was in disrepair and changed the mural
design to a woman taking a deep breath in flow with nature, as opposed to a woman inhaling a
joint. Later in the interview, the artist disclosed that the subject of his work was a symbolic
rendering of a former girlfriend, and a secondary intent of the mural was to achieve closure from
that relationship. Her tears are his tears and her release of emotion and experiences and his
release of emotion and experiences. This anecdote does suggest that the subject is sexualized,
even subtly and unconsciously, since the woman is based on a person who presumably had a
sexual relationship with the artist. Even though Sampson rejects the interpretation that he
sexualized the subject, the nature of his relationship with the mural’s inspiration suggests that
erotic energy contributed to the way she was rendered.

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Sampson created this mural to convey the visual embodiment of flow, the flow of
breathing, the flow of releasing, the flow of the subject’s hair and the flow of freedom. As the
artist describes, his subject is vulnerable, as identified by her tears, yet she remains transparently
so despite the armor of her sunglasses. We all experience challenging circumstances, and this
mural is intended as a relatable reminder to all who view it to release that energy and exhale.
Power comes from vulnerability and connection comes from sharing that vulnerability with
others.
To emphasize the ubiquity of the mural’s message, Sampson intentionally painted his
female subject to be racially ambiguous. He identifies as a Black artist but does not want to be
compartmentalized as being only that and only able to produce work that appeals to a black
audience. He explains that his subject exhibits more ethnically specific features; however, with
her bright blue hair and neon pink skin, she was painted more as a concept than as a particular
person with whom only select viewers can identify. Once again, the anecdote that the subject
was, in part, modeled after an actual person complicates Sampson’s description of her ubiquitous
anonymity; however, it does support the paradoxical complexity of the mural that both survey
respondents and interview participants note in their assessment of the work.
Kristy Sandoval
Sandoval’s comments regarding the subversive strength of her female subject in
Decolonized aligned with viewers’ and survey participants’ overall assessment of her
empowerment. The artist explained that she chose to depict the woman standing upright as one
visual method to showcase her authority within the composition. Thinking back to the analysis of
David’s Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Figure 2, in Chapter Two, women have often been rendered
seated in traditional art to indicate both their physical fragility but also their gendered

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subordination within the composition (Heuer, 2016). Armed with the knowledge of these
oppressive choices made again and again throughout traditional canvas art, Sandoval disrupts
expectations of female portraiture by intentionally painting her subject standing upright. This
empowered choice iterates the fundamental ethos of Sandoval’s work, which is to celebrate
indigenous culture and support the concept of migration. Birds and butterflies migrate and when
the mural subject releases them from their cage, allowing the process of migration to occur, she
engages in a dialectic regarding human migration as well. As Sandoval pointedly asks, “if the
animals are free to migrate for survival, why can’t humans do the same?” In 2013, the year
Sandoval painted Decolonized, she began to develop a deeper understanding of her heritage and
its indigenous rituals and belief sets. With this cultivated awareness of culture came a more
thorough understanding of the ways in which indigenous communities are colonially oppressed
and metaphorically confined. This concept of imprisonment is literalized by the cage in
Sandoval’s design, and the female subject’s decision to liberate the creatures reveals Sandoval’s
own support of cultural autonomy and freedom.
In our interview, Sandoval asserted that any eroticization of the subject, for instance the
11.5% of survey respondents who strongly agreed that she was sexual, is displacement coming
from the viewer rather than a reflection of the artist’s intent. Sandoval shared a story that when
she was initially painting the mural, a man who worked in the building on which Decolonized is
painted made a comment that since the subject’s skirt was also the building’s entrance awning
that he was looking forward to traveling through her legs every day. Apart from that crude and
isolated reflection, Sandoval shared that the only other sexualizing comments she’s received
regarding this subject related to how short the woman’s skirt is, which was not something the
artist could have changed since the skirt was preexisting on the building’s façade. As a female

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muralist, and the only female artist interviewed in this study, Sandoval explained that in this
work she sought to empower and celebrate women from a female perspective since so many
women painted on walls are geared toward a sexual, even lascivious, male viewership.
Sandoval’s nuanced awareness of gender power dynamics within the experience and exchange of
looking was perhaps a result of her own challenges faced as a woman artist in a predominately
male space.
Fin DAC
Interviewing Fin DAC was especially interesting since, concurrent to this study, a
controversy surrounding his practice emerged that did not register in the survey results or
interview data and is directly at odds with the artist’s self-described intentionality for his work.
In March of 2021, a 21-year-old man fatally shot eight women at three different spas in Atlanta,
six of whom were of Asian descent. These murders, coupled with a rising number of hate crimes
targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, led the U.S. administration to pass
the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act as a protective measure against Asian hate (Hate Crimes Act,
2021). These events also sparked debates across domains, including urban art, regarding
appropriation and exploitation of Asian culture. Fin DAC is a white male artist who
predominately paints Asian female bodies and the question of whether his work indicates
cultural appreciation or cultural appropriation was heatedly raised on social media.
From Gérôme to Picasso to Degas, Western artists have culturally appropriated from non-
Western countries and communities since the history of art became an established discipline
(Gall, 2019). What connects the work of these men, and so many other artists whose work is
appropriative, is that their quotations of non-Western culture are decontextualized and
aestheticized; objects, symbols and figures stripped of their original meaning or environment and

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used either for their formal properties alone or to perpetuate a patronizing representation of
“other” (Said, 1979). To disentangle cultural appreciation from cultural appropriation, concepts
in art that are often entwined together and challenging to distinguish, an artist’s intention for
utilizing aspects of a culture they do not personally embody is a useful inroad (Han, 2019).
A representative from gallery and apparel line Ewkuks posted a video on Instagram
claiming Fin DAC’s work fetishizes women and takes more from Asian culture than it
contributes (Le, 2021). After this video was posted, there was a flurry of heated comments from
users who agreed that Fin DAC’s work is problematic, and users who maintained their support of
his practice with equal fervor. From the work alone it is difficult to determine whether Fin
DAC’s depictions of Asian women pander to ethnocentrism or are purely celebratory of their
cultural heritage. When interviewing Fin DAC for this study, the artist spoke freely about the
controversy and shared his intentions in creating the work, while recognizing that its impact on
viewers has, at times, been misaligned with that intent. He first became aware of Asian art and
culture through his mother who had a small collection of Japanese pottery. From this early
childhood encounter, Fin DAC continued to explore and develop his relationship with the East,
incorporating historically significant fashion, symbols, and spiritual rituals into his renderings of
Asian women.
His reason for devoting his practice to the portrayal of female bodies is as a counter
narrative to the hypermasculinity of graffiti culture which often champions anti-aesthetic mark
making over the pursuit of elegant figuration. Fin DAC saw a paucity of beauty within the urban
landscape and wanted to expand that experience to include powerful women. The social media
users who were interviewed about Fin DAC’s work described his female subject as beautiful or
sexual to varying degrees; however, the artist himself is adamantly not interested in sexualizing

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his subjects and describes the woman in Upon Reflection as defiant, with a gaze that is stronger
than the gaze of the viewer. The concept of the gaze has been referenced several times in this
study and describes acts of looking, sometimes depicted by a figure within the image, but
typically from the vantage point of the viewer. There are power dynamics at play with the gaze,
as it is motivated by desire for something or someone and generally suggests authority over that
which is gazed upon (Witkowski, 2004).
As affirmation of Fin DAC’s efforts to subvert the patriarchal subtext of gaze, of the
three murals featured in this study, Fin DAC’s is the only one with a female subject who
confrontationally meets the viewer’s stare. There has long been a stereotype ingrained within the
artist/model dynamic of an older male artist (mis)using his power advantage over the younger
female model to objectifying ends (Hallerman, 1994). Fin DAC is acutely aware of this
problematic exchange and, to undermine it in his own practice, utilizes the same model multiple
times over the span of years so as to have the time to develop an authentic relationship with her
and build a reciprocal power exchange that subverts the stereotype. The model of Upon
Reflection was eighteen years old when Fin DAC painted her so he also engaged in thorough
conversation with her parents to ensure the mutually supportive nature of the painted image.
Regardless of any salience of the claims that Fin DAC’s work can slip into cultural exploitation
and fetishistic portrayals of women, it is significant to note that, as reported by the artist, each of
his Asian female models spoke out in support of his ethicality, either publicly on Instagram or
privately to him.
Research Question Three
What is the relationship between the gender, race and age subgroups of the viewer and
their interpretation of the female subjects of urban art?

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Survey participants were asked to share their gender identification, their general age
range, and their racial positionality, and based on responses to those personal questions, the
relationship between the three demographic categories of age, race and gender, and the viewer’s
perception of the murals can be determined.
Mister Sampson’s Mural
When asked to measure trust, most of the demographic breakdown revealed similar
results. Fifty percent of female respondents felt neutral about the subject’s trustworthiness,
whereas the slightly smaller percentage of 42% of male respondents expressed this sentiment.
Similar metrics occurred based on participants’ race, with 53% of Asian respondents expressing
neutrality with regards to trust, compared to 46% of Caucasian respondents, 48% of Black
respondents and 53% of Latinx respondents. With regards to age, there was slightly more of a
range of neutrality percentages, from the low of 35% from the 25-34 age range to 64% from the
55-64 age range; however, the takeaway from each demographic metric was essentially the
same: trustworthiness is challenging to measure through aesthetics rendering alone.
As was discussed earlier, this same conclusion was met regarding the maternal fitness of
the female subject. Forty eight percent of male respondents felt they could neither agree nor
disagree that she was, or would be, a good mother, and 60% of women respondents made that
consistent neutral claim. Perhaps women felt less comfortable gauging maternal fitness since the
concept of successful mothering is so subjective, and as mothers, potential mothers or empathetic
bodies, women might feel less comfortable making such a complicated judgement on another
woman. Broken down by age, respondents within each of the age brackets overwhelmingly
selected the neutral response option for maternal fitness with 52% representing the lowest
percentage. Nearly the same can be said regarding race metrics; however, Latinx respondents

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had both the lowest percentage of neutrality, at 49%, and the highest percentage of strong
agreement that the subject was maternal, at 6%.
When assessing the degree to which the subject was seen by participants as sexual or
sexualized, some interesting discrepancies occur. As illustrated in Figure 22, significantly more
Black and Caucasian respondents, 35.71% and 25.85% respectively, strongly agreed that the
subject was sexual, whereas a smaller percentage of Asian and Latinx respondents, 13.33% and
8.33% respectively, shared this same belief.

Figure 22
Mister Sampson: Assessment of the figure’s sexuality by participant’s race

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Interestingly, as participants matured in age, their likelihood of assessing the female
subject in Sampson’s mural as sexual increased. For instance, within the age range of 18 to 24,
9.5% of participants strongly agreed that the subject had been eroticized, compared to 22% of
respondents between 25 and 34 years of age, 27.5% of participants between 35 and 44, and 33%
of participants between 65 and 74.
Aligning with the general finding that the women who were seen as sexual were not seen
as empowered, participants within the 18 to 24 age range, who represented the lowest percentage
of people who saw Sampson’s subject as sexual, were the group who evaluated her level of
empowerment the highest, at 21% of respondents strongly agreeing. This percentage is compared
to the low of 6.5% of respondents between 65 and 74 years old sharing that same belief. As
illustrated in Figure 23, there were also disparate data related to empowerment as broken down
by race. Asian and Latinx respondents exhibited a stronger belief that the female subject was
Figure 23
Mister Sampson: Assessment of the figure’s empowerment by participant’s race
empowered, measured by 13.33% and 16.33% respectively, asserting their strong perception of
her empowerment. Not only did a smaller percentage of Caucasian and Black participants
express their strong conviction regarding the subject’s empowerment, but also those two
communities shared a higher percentage of strong disagreement in her empowerment than Asian
and Latinx participants.

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Figure 23
Mister Sampson: Assessment of the figure’s empowerment by participant’s race

Kristy Sandoval’s Decolonized
Mirroring the metrics related to trustworthiness and maternal fitness for Mister
Sampson’s mural, Sandoval’s mural received similar, predominately neutral, feedback from
survey participants. As shown in Figure 24, a breakdown of responses based on the racial
identity of participants illustrates high percentages of neither agreeing nor disagreeing that the
mural subject is, or would be, a good mother.

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Figure 24
Sandoval: Assessment of the figure’s maternal fitness by participant’s race

The lowest percentage of neutral responses, 34.7%, came from Latinx participants
compared to the highest percentage of neutral feedback from Black participants, which totaled
60%. Furthermore, Latinx respondents made up the highest percentage within this racial
demographic breakdown of people who strongly believed the mural’s subject was, or would be, a
good mother, at 22.45%, whereas no respondents who identified as Black shared those strong
beliefs. Once again, participants who identified as women were less likely to strongly agree that
the subject exhibited maternal fitness than male respondents, and more likely to strongly disagree
that she should be described in this manner.
With regards to the viewer’s perception of the subject’s sexuality, respondents within the
age range of 45 to 54 years old had a higher percentage of strongly agreeing that she is
sexualized than any other age category. Twenty one percent of this group felt strongly about her
sexuality, whereas 8% of people 18 to 24 years old, and 9% of people between 35 and 44 years
old, felt the same way with equal fervor. With 17% strongly agreeing, more Black respondents

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felt the subject of this mural was sexualized than other racial demographics, and Latinx
participants were the least likely to perceive her as sexual, with 6% strongly agreeing and 41%
strongly disagreeing.
As fits the trends in the data, women survey participants were more likely to strongly
agree that the woman in Sandoval’s mural was empowered and strong than male identifying
individuals. Since the data for this study suggests that the concepts of sexuality and
empowerment are inverses of each other, it was expected that female survey participants who
perceived the subject of this work as being low in sexuality would determine she was high in
empowerment. Breaking down viewer perception by age, there was comparable consensus across
the age spectrum that Sandoval’s subject is empowered, ranging from 21% to 29% strongly
agreeing with that statement. The data reveals less consensus when analyzed through the lens of
the racial positioning of the viewer. For instance, 27% of Black respondents and 25% of
Caucasian respondents strongly agreed that the subject was empowered, with even more Latinx
respondents, 30.6%, strongly agreeing with this statement. Fewer Asian respondents, only 13%,
strongly agreed with the subject’s empowerment, and 3% strongly disagreed that she was
empowered at all, when no discernable percent of the other racial demographics strongly
disagreed.
Fin DAC’s Upon Reflection
Unlike the other two featured murals, Upon Reflection received less saturation of neutral
responses from participants regarding the female subject’s trustworthiness. Only 30% of male
respondents said they could neither agree nor disagree with her being trustworthy, compared to
43% of women respondents, and 19% of men strongly agreed that the subject was trustworthy,
compared to 12% of female participants. More viewers identifying with either gender category

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strongly agreed that this subject is trustworthy than they did for any of the other murals in the
survey, featured or otherwise. Analyzing perceptions of trustworthiness through age categories,
as survey respondents got older, they were less likely to strongly trust the female subject. Twenty
nine percent of participants between the ages of 18 and 24 said they strongly believed the subject
was trustworthy, compared to the 4% of respondents between 45 and 54 and 0% of respondents
between 55 and 64 years old. There was also opinion discrepancy in the data with regards to the
racial identity of the viewer. As illustrated in Figure 25, at 22.45%, a larger percentage of Latinx
respondents strongly agreed that the subject was trustworthy, compared to 16.7% of Asian
participants and 7% of Black viewers.

Figure 25
Fin DAC: Assessment of the figure’s trustworthiness by participant’s race

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Unlike the case of Sandoval’s mural where Latinx identifying individuals tended to look
upon the Latinx subject more positively than those respondents identifying with different
racialized communities, participants who self-described as Asian did not necessarily perceive the
Asian subject of Fin DAC’s mural more favorably than other people.
Concerning the subject’s maternal fitness, this work also elicited surprising results. Male
respondents were twice as likely as female respondents to strongly agree that the subject was, or
would be, a good mother, and younger participants were three times more likely to support her
maternal aptitude than those who were more seasoned. For instance, 26% of people within the 25
to 34 years of age category strongly believed in the subject’s maternal ability, whereas 8% of
respondents between 65 and 74 years old strongly supported that belief. Through a racialized
lens, there is once again a schism between Latinx respondents and Black respondents regarding
this woman’s perceived character traits. A sizeable percentage of Latinx survey participants,
22.5%, strongly agreed that Fin DAC’s subject was maternal, compared to the 3.5% of Black
survey participants who felt the same way. Only 10% of Asian respondents strongly agreed with
the subject’s maternal capacity, which echoes how this community felt regarding her level of
trustworthiness.
There were no discernable discrepancies in the data regarding the subject’s sexuality
according to gender; a nearly comparable percentage of male and female respondents strongly
disagreed that she was sexualized. Through categories dissecting age ranges and racial identities;
however, additional insights emerged. Nearly half, or 44%, of participants between 18 and 24
years old strongly disagreed that the subject was sexualized, compared to the much smaller
percentage of 9% of respondents between 55 and 64 sharing that same belief. Interestingly, of all
the racial positionalities of participants, people who identified as Asian were the least likely to

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strongly disagree that the subject had been sexualized. Nearly half, 49%, of Black respondents
strongly disagreed with the woman’s sexualization, compared to 41% Latinx respondents and
21.5% Caucasian respondents, whereas only 16.5% of Asian participants shared this opinion.
Confirming themes seen elsewhere in the data, a larger percentage of Asian participants,
43%, strongly agreed that the subject was empowered than any other racialized community, with
Black respondents representing the smallest percentage, 13.8%, of participants who shared this
opinion. Once again, the data revealed that higher levels of empowerment are seen alongside
lower levels of sexuality, and vice versa. The lowest percentage of strong disagreement that the
subject was sexualized came from the same population of respondents, people identifying as
Asian, who were most likely to strongly agree that she was highly empowered. Similarly, the
highest percentage of strong disagreement to the subject being erotically charged came from the
same group of participants, people identifying as Black, who were least likely to strongly view
her as empowered.
Summary
Analysis of the multiple streams of data reveals engaging and, in some cases, unexpected
findings. The first among these discoveries that is more progressive than surprising, is that the
way Freud compartmentalized and categorized women in the early 20
th
century does not appear
to maintain contemporary consequence to how female subjects of urban art are painted or
perceived today. Specifically, women whose actions and identities fall within the binary “whore”
trope were, during Freud’s original positioning, considered both sexualized and empowered.
Based on the data from this study, those two embodiments, the sexual and the empowered, are
not correlative with each other but, rather, are oppositional concepts. This decoupling of Freud’s
dichotomous view of women speaks to the changes that have occurred concerning how women

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are presented and perceived since his theories were developed. Moreover, the negative
connotations that were historically associated with women, and female subjects in art, who
aligned with Freud’s “whore” category do not engender the same reaction today. Analyzing the
survey and interview results revealed no negative connection between high levels of female
empowerment and any ambition to undermine male agency, or associative connections between
female sexuality and an objectifying, exclusively male gaze. Female empowerment does not
have to come at a cost to men and female sexuality does not have to be in service of, or exploited
by, men. Data from this study reflects a reclamation of what was once considered threatening to
men, and a lessening of stigmatizing beliefs regarding embodied female sexuality.
Despite the feminist coup of the result above, data from this study also suggests that some
aspects of Freud’s oppositional categorizations of women persist. Namely, the female subjects
who were regarded as maternal were not seen as sexual, and those who were perceived as
sexualized were not seen as illustrating maternal fitness. Hopare’s mural of a mother embracing
her child, Figure 14, is the most pertinent example to reference as the composition of this work is
the only one included in the study that blatantly depicts the subject’s identity as a mother.
Accordingly, this image received overwhelming agreement from survey participants, 71%, that
the subject was a good mother and overwhelming disagreement, 0%, that she was a sexual
figure. The idea that a woman can only be a mother or a sexual being, never both, suggests that
more disentanglement from Freud’s theories still needs to occur.
Another unexpected finding from this study was how challenging it was for participants
to visually assess the maternal fitness and trustworthiness of the female subjects. Apart from
feedback related to the woman in Hopare’s mural, the most common response from participants
was “neither agree nor disagree,” indicating the ambiguity of the question. During Freud’s day,

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those same questions related to the maternal prowess and virtuousness of women in art would
not have been ambiguous since the predominant female subject was culled from either the Bible
or from ancient Greek mythology. In both examples, the women represented came with them
predigested, didactic narratives that the viewer would immediately recognize when looking at
their image. When the Virgin Mary is the subject of art, viewers know she is intended to be seen
as both maternal and trustworthy; however, female subjects of contemporary art often do not
accompany such clearly defined lore. Furthermore, motherhood was a much more prevalent
narrative theme in canvas art dating back to the early 20
th
century than it is today, which could
also account for viewers’ general apathy surrounding the subject.
Data from this study reveals that a given participant’s varying identities do impact the
way they view female subjects in art. The researcher’s expectation was that the gender of the
viewer would be the most relevant demographic determiner of meaning-making within an
analysis of female subjects, but it was age and, even more profoundly, race that seemed to shape
and guide viewers’ beliefs.
Finally, data shows the gender identity of the artist does influence their rendering of the
female subject; however, within the world of urban art, the manifestation of this dynamic is more
subtly codified since urban artists’ identities are often unknown. Unstitching the relationship
between the urban artist’s gender identity and their portrayal of female subjects is possible, but
further knowledge regarding the artist’s objective is needed to craft a nuanced, holistic
understanding of intention versus impact and how those two pillars might not always align with
each other.

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Chapter Five: Recommendations
The purpose of this mixed methodological project is, through a field study of Los Angeles
urban art, to offer a meaningful contribution to organizations and institutions invested in
pursuing, optimizing, and operationalizing gender equity. Through scrutiny of female subjects of
prominent urban art murals throughout the city, this study first unearthed gender specific
stereotypes that contributed to how the women were portrayed by their artists and perceived by
their viewers. Next, the study investigated the genesis of these stereotypes and the role that an
artist’s and a viewer’s various identity positionalities could play in influencing the way in which
they conceptualized and categorized the female subjects. Finally, in the pages that follow, this
study offers tangible opportunities for change within the field to portray female subjects in a
more nuanced manner that supports the multitude of facets women embody, rather than
pandering to singular and reductive tropes.
Although the study centered around urban art, offering suggestions to enhance its culture as
it relates to equity and inclusion, the findings and recommendations are applicable to society
more broadly since urban art’s democratizing ethos suggests that happenings within the field
echo shared ideological beliefs held throughout the world (Buser et al., 2013). As this relates
more narrowly to women, by regarding urban art as a microcosmic living ecology of larger
sociocultural attitudes, the ways in which women are valued in society are literalized in the ways
in which they are painted on walls (Molnár, 2017).
In this chapter, the findings and results of the broad survey and targeted viewer and artist
interviews are revisited, and recommendations as to how the findings from this study can propel
meaningful change within the field are included thereafter. Finally, the chapter ends with
limitations and delimitations of the study, as well as suggestions for future research.

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Discussion of Findings
Analysis of the findings identified in Chapter Four reveals both alignment and
misalignment with the theoretical framework of Freud’s Madonna/whore dichotomy. As the data
aligns, there was an inverse relationship between female subjects who were identified as sexual
and those classified as maternal. This finding suggests a lingering trace of Freud’s oppositional
positioning of women between those who are desired from those who are admired, or “whores”
from “Madonnas” (Hartmann, 2009). Female subjects in this study were only seen as embodying
one of those two traits, but never both and never occupying a liminal identity in between: women
who were, or might be, good mothers were not seen as sexual, and women who were seen as
sexual were not, and would not be, good mothers. Bareket et al. (2019) found in their study of
the Madonna/whore dichotomy in Israel, that the instinct to compartmentalize those two
ideologies as mutually exclusive bespeaks sexist attitudes and patriarchy-enhancing belief
systems. Findings from this study centered around urban art in Los Angeles indicates that those
belief systems, to some extent, persist.
As the data misaligns, the concepts of empowerment and strength, which were perceived
as connected byproducts of sexuality during the early 20
tth
century, were shown through data
from this study to be not only decoupled from the concept of sexuality but also of inverse
relationship. Similar to maternal fitness and sexuality being mutually exclusive, empowerment in
this study was discrepant from sexuality, intimating not quite a dissolution of Freud’s binary
positioning of women, but a shifting within his categorical breakdown. Furthermore, the negative
connotations that were historically associated with Freud’s “whores,” and the power threats they
were thought to pose to men, did not seem applicable to contemporary depictions of women in
urban art. Analyzing the survey and interview results revealed no adverse connection between

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high levels of female empowerment and any perceived ambition to undermine male agency.
Similarly, data relating to female sexuality did not yield any associative connections with
harming men or invoking the Eve syndrome wherein female sexuality comes at a deceptive,
dangerous cost to male health (Tumanov, 2011).
As the data were not entirely supported by Freud’s theoretical positioning of women,
survey findings were correspondingly only moderately relevant to the microaggressive
conceptual framework. The microaggressive framing, which helped identify insidious gender
specific stereotypes, was, as discussed earlier, teleological in the way it was positioned in the
survey since concepts and adjectives that emerged from microaggressive literature were
explicitly stated, making their autogenous relevance to survey participants challenging to
determine. Furthermore, the deficit framing failed to recognize the subversion in how some
artists, primarily women artists, represent their female subjects as actively undermining
stereotypes that have historically befallen them. The microaggressive framework was a more
applicable guide through which to navigate the qualitative data since gender specific stereotypes
emerged from viewer and artist interviews spontaneously without being inadvertently guided by
the researcher. Themes that emerged from gender specific microaggression literature illustrating
common microaggressive stereotypes used to describe women, Figure 5, served as the a priori
coding for the viewer and artist interviews.
Recommendations for Practice
Treating the field of urban art as analogous to a formalized organization, this study seeks
to ascertain any preexisting and stereotypical patterns in the way women are portrayed as
subjects of outdoor murals, and the way these female subjects are perceived by viewers (Alper et
al., 2000; Costanza et al., 2016). These patterns are outlined in full in Chapter Four and revisited

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through summary earlier in this chapter. To implement meaningful change within the field of
urban art and its culture, three main recommendations are offered and outlined below (Schneider
et al., 1996).
Recommendation 1: Diversify the type of women who are illustrated in urban art murals.
Fleischmann and Mann (2018) argue that depictions of female subjects of urban art
throughout Western Europe, South American and Cuba reflect a diversity akin to the diversity of
women themselves; however, the researcher cannot claim the same is true for depictions of
women in murals across Los Angeles. Over 100 murals throughout Downtown Los Angeles,
Pacoima and South Central illustrating female subjects were photographed for the study’s focus
group and, based on analysis of these images by the researcher, the female subjects of these
works can be classified by at least one of the following five categories: icons, characters, sex
symbols, cultural representatives, and aesthetic devices.
The icons are women such as Marilyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, and Audrey Hepburn, who
are preexisting and celebrated symbols within the cultural canon whose visages are frequently
used as the subjects for murals. The characters are women portrayed through abstraction or
cartoon rendering. The sex symbols are unknown women exhibiting high levels of normative
physical attractiveness whose bodies and facial expressions are painted in a manner that makes
them appear to be for their viewer’s pleasure. The cultural representatives are women who do not
necessarily align with this normative expectation of beauty, whose bodies do not seem to be on
overt sexual display for the viewer, and who are generally bodies of color, sometimes exhibiting
venerable signs of age, and attired in culturally specific clothing. Female subjects as aesthetic
devices are when women are painted in murals not to celebrate a specific person, character,
culture or to engender sexual responses, but rather to showcase a particular artistic choice,

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concept, or capability. For instance, in James Bullough’s mural in Downtown Los Angeles,
Figure 26, the female subject is an aesthetic vehicle through which to explore fragmentation,
motion and distortion, but a male body could have accomplished this exploration just as
effectively.

Figure 26
Bullough, Untitled, 2020

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To be more inclusive and supportive of women, it is the researcher’s recommendation
that urban artists in Los Angeles be more expansive regarding the women they select as subjects
for their work and the role these women are shown occupying. As most extant murals in Los
Angeles of women attest, unless the image is of an icon known for a specific skill, women are
seldom illustrated engaged in a vocational act. Women are not shown in board room vignettes, or
as chefs or teachers or pilots or in their military uniforms. Few are shown as mothers, even fewer
as doctors or executives or activists. Women are comfortably rendered as bodies, seldom as
complex embodiments, and to equitize the field artists must broaden their repertoire.
An example of an urban art portrait of a women that emphasizes the subject’s vocational
offerings is the collaborative work in Paris by AxelVoid and escif, Figure 27, which depicts a
female conductor from the back. Even though her skirt is partially transparent, revealing the
outline of her legs underneath the fabric, and her back and arm muscles are highlighted, the
overall impression of the subject is one of competence and skill mastery. That she is shown from
the back suggests she is oblivious to the viewer’s presence and consumed instead by her
orchestral task at hand. The artistic decision to render her from behind additionally denies the
viewer the opportunity to objectify her face and form in the way that has become common place
in art consumption, subverting patriarchal expectations and shifting paradigms of power
(Scheflan-Katzav, 2021).

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Figure 27
AxelVoid and escif, Hyuro, 2021

Recommendation 2: Diversify the type of women who are rendered as sexually embodied in
urban art murals.
This study questioned the salience of Freud’s categorizations of women as “Madonnas”
or “whores” to urban art depictions of female subjects. Despite the value and provocation of
many of the psychoanalyst’s theories, scholars generally agree that the relevance of his
categorization of women is on the steep decline (Toews, 2018). More specifically, scholars take
umbrage with the very mechanism of seeing concepts, like the Madonna and the whore, as
binary and mutually exclusive, instead choosing to subvert that logic and transcend dichotomized
sexual politics altogether (Ketz, 2014). Within the field of art, this subversion has manifested in
women artists, like Catherine Opie, depicting themselves or their female subjects as sexually
embodied for their own scopophilia, rather than for the pleasure of the male gaze (Guralnik,
2013).

105

Within the field of urban art, women are generally depicted by male and female artists as
sexualized; however, the type of women illustrated conform to the normative standards of
Western beauty: Caucasian, young, svelte, coquettish, and able-bodied with long, luxurious hair.
That the overwhelming percentage of female subjects of urban art are attractive in the way that
Western society pressurizes women to be, could explain why participants of this study identified
empowerment and sexuality as conflicting identities, rather than perceiving those ideologies as
aligned. The researcher’s recommendation to remedy this pattern is for urban artists to depict a
broader, ethnically, and bodily diverse, swath of female types as sexually self-empowered.
Recommendation 3: Generate more urban art pedagogy.
Data from this study reveals that a given viewer’s varying identities, i.e., their gender,
race, age, etc., impact the way they assess and understand female subjects in art. Data from the
study also asserts that a given artist’s identity positionalities impact choices that they make in
rendering their female subjects. Information processing is inexorably linked to facets of social
identity, including self-perception, the perception of others, and a general understanding of the
world, yet none of this level of scrutiny has been applied to the field of urban art scholarship
(Barnett et al., 2021). In contemporary art, it is common for artists to utilize the idea of varying
identities, and intersectional identities, as a method of critical inquiry, and in recent years
meaningful art theory of this ilk has been written as commentary on traditional indoor canvas art
(Gemmel, 2021). As urban art is an integral facet of the contemporary art movement, it is the
researcher’s recommendation that an increased amount of pedagogy be generated on the role that
identity can play in the presentation and perception of bodies within the urban art space.
To mirror the accessibility and diversity of the urban art field, this pedagogy should come
in the form of both academic scholarship, panel discussions and symposia, but also user-friendly

106

social media content. If urban artists and urban art tastemakers created more videos and dynamic
written captions on social media explaining the intentionality of the work, viewers and
enthusiasts would be better armed with an informational guide through which to cognize the art
and create their own analysis. Visitors at a museum have access to audio guides and didactic wall
labels to help them gather knowledge about the work displayed and contextualize its meaning;
however, viewers of urban art are all but left to their own devices to interpret any image they
encounter (Reitstätter et al., 2021). At best, this absence of persuasive text empowers viewers to
craft their own meaning ascribed to urban art and, at worst, it makes artists and viewers alike
vulnerable to painful misinterpretation, as the accusations of Fin DAC’s supposed cultural
appropriation attest. The ultimate drive behind increasing pedagogical content related to urban
art and identity is to increase visual literacy, which is integral to meaning making, the
presentation of ideas and effective communication in learning environments (Eilam, 2021).
Limitations and Delimitations
Observing and analyzing this problem of practice through both a quantitative and
qualitative lens came with a multitude of opportunities, as outlined throughout Chapter Three.
However, with these opportunities came drawbacks, some unavoidable and some consciously
elected. In research terms, the design constraints that are unavoidable and uncontrollable are
described as limitations, whereas deliberate choices that control and contain a study’s reach are
designated delimitations (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
A limitation of the mixed methodological design is by executing multiple streams of data
analysis, that analysis might not be as thoroughly delved into as it would if supported by one
approach alone. At times sacrificing depth for breadth, this expansive design strategy can come
at the cost of nuancing information (Bergin, 2018). Furthermore, combining two methodologies

107

requires multiple avenues of diverse expertise and with this expectation comes practical barriers
regarding the researcher’s differing levels of competency (Hollstein & Dominguez, 2014).
Nevertheless, this methodology was selected for the flexibility and comprehensiveness it offered
and, through its assorted collection methods, to add empiric data to the field that had not been
done prior to this study.
The most substantial delimitation of the study is that the only personal information asked
of participants was their gender, race, and age. The decision to eschew gathering data related to
socioeconomic status, highest level of education, or any additional factors, was a conscious one
made to uphold the study’s validity by only obtaining information from participants as it related
to the research questions (Salkind, 2014). The philosophy behind this study was, using the lens
of urban art, to better understand the relationship between aspects of an individual’s personal
identity and that same person’s opinions of women. Gender, race, age, class, level of education,
physical ability, and a multitude of additional identifying factors, undoubtedly all inform
viewers’ perceptions of representations of female bodies, and artists’ portrayal of those bodies;
however, with reasonable scope in mind, the subcategories of identities that seemed most
pertinent to consider in this study were gender, race, and age. Socioeconomic status and level of
education were deliberately excluded to honor the economic equity that fundamentalizes how
urban art is disseminated to viewers, whereas other identity categories were excluded out of
necessity to maintain as focused of a study as possible.
Recommendations for Future Research
The research that began with this study would deeply benefit by expanding to include
additional layers of identity categories collected from participants. Not only would this add

108

complexity to the findings, but also would allow for an inferential statistical analysis to expand
upon the descriptive analysis offered here.
Data from this study reveals that a given participant’s varying identities do impact the
way they view female subjects in art. These varying identities, however, were analyzed as
isolated categories and would benefit in future research from being analyzed intersectionally. For
instance, this data mined knowledge from discrepancies in how Black participants viewed the
female subject than Latinx participants, etcetera, and how male participants viewed the female
subject differently than female participants, but did not analyze how Black women might have
seen the work differently than Latinx women, Black men or Latinx men.
Conclusion
The origin story of this dissertation began with a look at politically motivated urban art
that was created, or not created, in Los Angeles during the 2016 U.S. presidential election
campaign. Using the paucity of urban art that commented on the first woman to run for the
highest-ranking office in this country as a punctum, the intention of the study was to understand
why women like Hillary Clinton are all but aesthetically ignored by investigating the ways in
which women who are acknowledged are portrayed. The study shifted from extracting potential
gender bias that predicts the type of women who are excluded from the lexicon of urban art to
potential gender bias that informs the type of women who are included within its canon. Findings
from the methodologically diverse streams of data collection did reveal considerable gender
biases and stereotyping that affects how women are portrayed as subjects by artists and identified
as various categories by viewers; however, these findings exhibited more complexity and nuance
than the researcher’s original, equally biased, assumption that men fear powerful women so
choose not to portray them. Using urban art as an inroad to society at large, study findings

109

suggest that although there is work to be done to dismantle lingering gender specific stereotypes,
that the dogma of many of these pernicious assumptions has already begun to loosen its grip.

110

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131

Appendix A: Survey Protocol

Preamble: You are invited to participate in a survey to examine the ways in which women are
illustrated as subjects in Los Angeles urban art. The study is being conducted by [Name] as part
of their doctoral dissertation for the University of Southern California. Your participation in the
study is completely voluntary and your individual identity is, and will remain, completely
confidential. If you are interested in participating in this survey, are at least 18 years of age, and
are a current Los Angeles resident, please click on the following link: [insert link].

Survey Prequalifying Questions:

By clicking the button below, you acknowledge:

Your participation in the study is voluntary.
You are 18 years of age.
You are currently a Los Angeles resident
You are aware that you may choose to terminate your participation at any time for any reason.

Options: [radio buttons]
I consent, begin the study
I do not consent, I do not wish to participate or am not able to participate

Survey Questions

Question Level of
Measurement.
(nominal,
ordinal,
interval, ratio)
Response
options
1. Age: What is your age? Nominal 18-25
26-35
36-45
46-55
56-65
66-75
76-85

132

86 or older
Prefer not to
respond
2. Gender: How do you
identify?
Nominal Female
Male
Nonbinary
Prefer not to
respond
Prefer to self-
describe, below

3. Would you describe
yourself as transgender?
Nominal Yes
No
4. Ethnicity: How do you
identify? Check all that
apply
Nominal Asian
Black/African
Caucasian
Hispanic/Latinx
Native American
Pacific Islander
Prefer not to
answer
Prefer to self-
describe, below

Mural #1 Illustrated

5. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

133

6. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

7. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

8. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

9. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #2 Illustrated

10. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

11. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

134

12. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

13. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

14. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #3 Illustrated

15. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

16. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

17. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

135

18. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

19. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #4 Illustrated

20. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

21. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

22. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

23. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

136

24. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #5 Illustrated

25. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

26. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

27. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

28. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

29. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #6 Illustrated

137

30. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

31. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

32. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

33. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

34. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #7 Illustrated

35. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

138

36. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

37. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

38. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

39. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #8 Illustrated

40. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

41. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

139

42. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

43. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

44. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

Mural #9 Illustrated

45. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is
empowered/strong?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

46. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears
sexual/sexualized?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

47. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist is/would be
a good mother?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

140

48. To what extent do you
agree that the woman in
this mural painted by a
female artist appears to
be a person you would
trust?
Ordinal Strongly Agree
Agree
Not Sure
Disagree
Strongly
Disagree

49. Who is this mural
painted for?
Ordinal

Men => Women
Scale of 1-9

141

Appendix B: Semi-Structured Interview Protocol

Preamble: Thank you for stopping to speak with me today. Based on your interaction with
[mural name] mural just now, I would love to talk to you about your opinions of the mural for a
study that explores the ways in which women are illustrated as subjects in Los Angeles urban art.
My name is Lizy Dastin and I am conducting this study as part of my doctoral dissertation for the
University of Southern California. Your participation in the study is completely voluntary and
your individual identity is, and will remain, completely confidential. If you are interested in
sharing your opinions about this mural with me today, are at least 18 years of age, and are a
current Los Angeles resident, please give me your verbal consent. [If consent is given] Thank
you for agreeing to have this conversation! Is it alright if I record our talk on my phone so I can
reference what you say in my study with complete accuracy? I will be the only person to ever
listen to the recording and, if you would like, I can generate a transcript for your review. [If
consent to record is given, hands interview participant a card with my name and contact
information] Here is my information if you would like to request a transcript of our interview or
reach out with any questions or to ask to be removed from the study for any reason and at any
time. Are there any questions you have for me before we begin?

Interview Questions Potential Probes RQ Addressed
1. Only if you feel
comfortable, would you
please share one or two
adjectives that you would
use to self-describe? For
instance, I would self-
describe as a Jewish
woman in my 30s.

3

142

2. What is your level of
experience with street
art?
Have you stopped to
look at a mural like this
before?
Experience
3. What about this
particular mural made
you stop to look at it?

Could you tell me what
you mean by...

1, 3
4. How would you
describe the female
subject of this mural?

Would you explain
that?

1, 3
5. What do you think the
artist was trying to say
through this mural?

Would you elaborate
on that?

1, 3
6. How would you
describe this mural to a
friend?

Can you give me an
example of that?
1, 3
7. What are your
takeaway impressions
from this mural?

Would you explain
that?

1, 3

143

Appendix C: Structured Interview Protocol for Instagram

Preamble: Hi [Instagram handle]! I saw that you posted an image of [Artist’s Name] in [L.A.
neighborhood] on [Date] and was wondering whether I could ask you a few questions about your
impressions of the mural. My name is Lizy Dastin, I’m an art history professor at Santa Monica
College, and I’m writing my doctoral dissertation for USC on murals that feature female
subjects. I’m including the mural you posted in my study, with the consent of the artist, and
would love to talk to you about it! If you consent to a brief IG conversation, your identity will
remain completely confidential and anything content you share will be utilized only for
educational purposes. Thank you for your consideration and please let me know whether there
are any additional questions you may have.

Interview Questions RQ Addressed
1. Only if you feel
comfortable, would you
please share one or two
adjectives that you would
use to self-describe? For
instance, I would self-
describe as a Jewish
woman in my 30s.

3
2. What about this
particular mural made
you want to photograph
and post it?
1, 3 (and RQ 2 if the
person posting knows
the gender identity of
the artist)
3. How would you
describe the female
subject of the mural?
1, 3 (and RQ 2 if the
person posting knows
the gender identity of
the artist)
4. What do you think
[Artist Name] was trying
to say through this
mural?
1, 3 (and RQ 2 if the
person posting knows
the gender identity of
the artist)

144

5. Do you have any
takeaway impressions of
the mural?
1, 3 (and RQ 2 if the
person posting knows
the gender identity of
the artist)

145

Appendix D: Semi-Structured Phone Interview Protocol with Artist

Preamble: Hello, [ARTIST NAME]! I am looking forward to talking with you today and
grateful for your time. As I mentioned in our introductory email exchange, my name is Lizy
Dastin and I am conducting a study that explores the ways in which women are illustrated as
subjects in Los Angeles urban art study as part of my doctoral dissertation for the University of
Southern California. Your mural [title, if applicable, and location] is included in my study both
illustrated in a survey that I distributed to diverse inhabitants throughout the city, and in
individual interviews I conducted digitally via Instagram with [number of people interviewed]
people who posted an image of your work and tagged you in that post. I have collected the
results of these surveys and interviews to share with you today and would like to have a
conversation with you about these viewers’ thoughts, and about your reactions to their thoughts.
I appreciate your agreeing via email to be interviewed for this study today and would
additionally like to ask, do I have your consent in having this conversation and your participation
in my study? [If consent is verbally granted] Fantastic, thank you! Finally, do I have your
consent to record today’s interview? [If consent is verbally granted]. I would like to have a
recording so I can be present in the conversation without having to take notes, but also so I can
generate an accurate transcript, which I will send you for your review within one week of today.
Furthermore, I will be the only person who will listen to this recording. Are there any questions
you have for me?

Interview Questions Potential Probes RQ Addressed
1. What inspired you to
paint this mural?

What message were
you hoping to
communicate to
viewers?
1, 2

146

2. How would you
describe the woman in
this mural?

Would you elaborate
on that?

1, 2
3. When you painted this
mural, what were you
hoping viewers would
takeaway from it?

Would you explain
that?

1, 2
4. After learning the
results of viewer surveys
and interviews about this
mural, what are your
initial thoughts?

Did these responses
align with your
intention for the mural?
1, 2
5. What viewer feedback
was the most surprising
for you receive?

Why was that
surprising?
1, 2
6. Was there any viewer
feedback that you
disagree with?

Would you elaborate
on that?
1, 2
7. How, if at all, will any
of this viewer feedback
affect your depictions of
women in the future?

Could you tell me what
you mean by...

1, 2

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Dastin, Lizy (author)

Core Title The field of Los Angeles urban art: gendered stereotyping and opportunities for change

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/28/2022

Defense Date 03/28/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag gender bias,Los Angeles street art,Murals,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational change,Street art,urban art

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hyde, Corinne (committee chair), Corwin, Zoe (committee member), Crawford, Jenifer (committee member)

Creator Email dastin@usc.edu,elizabeth.dastin@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111136619

Unique identifier UC111136619

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Dastin, Lizy

Type texts

Source 20220428-usctheses-batch-934 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu