'The sex of the artist matters'. Art history categorises art into 'a stratified system of values, which leads to a hierarchical of art forms'. Painting and sculpture at the top. 'Other arts... relegated to a lesser culture sphere... 'applied', 'decorative', or 'lesser' arts. This hierarchy is maintained by attributing to the decorative arts a lesser degree of intellectual effort or appeal and a greater concern with manual skill and utility. ' p50
'The art and craft division can be read on class lines, ... economic and social system dictating definitions of the artist as opposed to the artisan. ... The sex of the maker as as important a factor in the development of the hierarchy of the arts as the division between art and craft on the basis of function, material, intellectual content and class. ... The history of flower painting, privileges the necessary link between sex and status - the presence of women in large numbers changed its status and the way it was seen. p51
There is a 'tendency to identify women with nature. .. Fused into the prevailing notion of femininity, the painting becomes solely an extension of womanliness and the artist becomes a woman only fulfilling her nature. This effectively removes the paintings and the artists from the field of fine arts. Descriptions of flower paintings employ exactly the same terms that are used to justify the secondary status accorded to crafts which are similarly described as manually dexterous, decorative and intellectually undemanding.' p58
In the 18th and 19th century there was 'the development of an ideology of femininity, a social definition of women and their role, with the emergency of a clearly defined separation of art and craft. Embroidery was one of a number of arts and crafts which ... glorified the ruling institutions, church, monarchy and the nobility. p58
Embroidery,... with its aristocratic connections, was a perfect proof of gentility, ... that a man was able to support a leisured woman ... and played a crucial part in maintaining the class position of the household. ... Women were encouraged to ornament every conceivable surface ... a refined, tasteful life-style ... symbolised the domestic virtues of tireless industry, selfless service and praiseworthy thrift. .... Needlework began to embody and maintain feminine stereotype. p61
'Samplers are often beautiful, ... admire(d) and ... represent ... the acquisition of ... feminine characteristics. Patience, submissiveness, service, obedience, and modesty were taught by concentrated technical exercises, as well as by the pious, self-denying verses and prayers. : ... Within limitations imposed upon them, women made samplers into an expressive form.' p66
'Samplers are not generally seen as expressive art forms and if they are valued at all it is for nostalgia reasons for for the manual dexterity they display. p67
(There is a) 'familiar package of derogatory definitions: Limitedness, decorativeness, industriousness and pettiness. ... To justify a change of status for such crafts and to move them onto the fine art circuit, they have to undergo a revealing transformation. ... Woven blankets by the American Navaho ... those who wished to see them as artworks had to expunge all traces of craft association. ... The geometric becomes abstract, blankets become paintings, and women weavers become nameless masters. ... In art history the status of an artwork is inextricably tied to the status of the maker. p68. ... Art Historical writing (is based on) the monograph on a named artist, ... a catalogue raisonne of all paintings ... because it is seen to issue from the hand of an individual. The way a worker of art is viewed depends on who made it. By contrast, books on craft history are more concerned with the objects themselves, in relation to how they were made their purpose and function; the maker is of secondary importance.
When talking about 'Navaho products as art, Pomeroy conjures up 'nameless masters' .... used by modern historians tolerate an artistic identity for an artist whose name has become lost to history. ' Not 'nameless mistresses' or even 'nameless artists'! 'Once again I modern art history the fine artist is synonymous with the male artist'.. What is required is 'a new status for the maker which includes not only a change of terminology but also of sex and implicitly, of race. p69
'Women's work is ... awarded secondary status because of... differences(s) between private and public activities, domestic and professional work. ... What distinguishes art from craft in the hierarchy is. not so much different methods, practices and objects but also where these things are made, often in the home and for home they are made, often for the family. The fine arts are a public professional activity. What women make, which is usually defined as 'craft', could in fact be defined as 'domestic art'. ... It is out of these different conditions that the hierarchical division between art and craft has been constructed; it has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of the object nor the gender of the maker.' p70
'High art and the fine artist have come to mean the direct antithesis of all that is defined by the feminine stereotype. ... The important questions concern women artists' relationship to an ideology of sexual difference in which the notions of masculine and feminine are meaningful only in relation to each other. ... All women's art is seen homogeneously as inevitably feminine in painting... as in the crafts is the effect of this ideology. We never speak of masculine art or man artist, we say simply art and artist. But the art of men can only maintain its dominance and privilege on the pages of art history by having a negative to its positive, a feminine too its unacknowledged masculine. Ideology is not a conscious process, its effects are manifest but it works unconsciously, reproducing the values and systems of belief of the dominant group it serves. ... This ideology is reproduced not only in the way art is discussed, the discipline or art history, but in works of art themselves. It operates through images and styles in art, the ways of seeing the world and representing our position in the world that art presents. It is inscribed into the very language of art.' p80
Thus in art, 'the position of women is contradictory and problematic, for if feminine is the negative of masculine and masculine is dominant, how do women see themselves and how do they produce meanings of their own in a language made by a dominant group which affirms men's dominance and power and reproduces their supremacy?' p81. (I need to answer this question)
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