I'm doing 10 x 2 hour classes at the National Gallery looking at women in art.
Katy Tabard was an excellent speaker. She started by asking how many women artists we could think of prior to 1900. Not many. I could think of their artworks, but not their names. Then she expanded it to all women artists. Yet we could think of many more men. She also noted that most women artists who had achieved success had significant similarities. eg Linda Nochlin - woman, jewish, attended all girls school, and had significant supporters.
But Tabard said most women agreed that Nochlin's statement that the solution was NOT that there had not been any great women artists, or that we should dig up examples from the past. The first step was to define "what IS a great woman artist?"
The male Narrative of Genius has two types. He-man - Michelangelo or Caravaggio; or Wistful/showman - Van Gogh.
This privileges individual experience over social institutions.
Quote from Giorgio Vasari in Life of Individual Artists. Who decides on Great: " The better from the good and the best from the better".
Typically there was 1 great genius male from each era who hands over the baton of greatness. Up to the Renaissance. A belief that genius is innate and a mature genius plucks them from anonymity. Women were banned from Guilds. Held back by 'woman brain', not having the male 'nugget of gold'.
What did men have access to, and women did not? "In our Institutions and our Education". Linda Nochlin
Conditions, training and conventions. Women (1900s) cannot go along to the countryside - no grand tour or flaneur. Women don't go to bars, or life class.
In the Renaissance:
Workshop/studio). Not for women, unless
Workshop/Guild). daughter/wife of artist.
Renaissance Humanist circles) Women
Talk freely to patrons. ). excluded
Travelling freely ). Not for women.
Judith Leystar - married an artist. Paintings covered her signature and attributed to her husband.
Gentileschi - St Catherine - recent acquisition. NG trying to change its artstock.
Subverted training problem probably by training her father's workshop
Rape trial - moves to Florence. Artist life, esp for women eg rape, evidenced in their work, but look at the quality of their work - really significant.
Tracey Emin. Motherhood idea. Claims her art career would have been impossible with children. Most successful artists with children, are men!
Rose Wylie. Art history on tv - all men. She reduced her work due to her children. Art discussions in the home. Her daughter's views was that art discussions with other artists in their home, focussed on the husband and ignored Rose Wylie's views.
17-19th century
The Academy system - excluded women. It was required as a precursor for:
The Salon
The Grand Tour
The Prix du Rome
Travelling freely
Engagement in politics
thus prevented women's access to the broader art scene of success.
RA - women excluded until 1862
Beaux Arts - women totally shut out until 18th C
Penn - women only allowed in life class in 1868.
Paris Salon - 1660 - Prize was free Prix du Rome tour 3-5 years. Women excluded until 1925.
RA - 1871-2 Maria Cosway, Mary Moser, and Angelica Kauffman. The next woman was Laura Knight, 1936.
Life Class - male nude is fundamental to being a great artist. Therefore only men allowed to draw it - due to the sensitivities of women! Hierarchy of painting:
History & Mythology painting (therefore need life class to get full body proportions right)
Portrait
Landscape
Genre.
Thus women cannot compete as excluded from life class. In 1850 no women members of RA life class.
1893 Women admitted to RA life class, but figures must be draped!
Women relegated to minor fields - landscape and genre. Rosa Bonheure, daughter of liberal artists, entered the field in 1849. Dressed as a man. Very practical way to dress - trousers and shirts - in order to observe and paint outdoors.
Women painters: Mary and Margaret Gainsborough.
Flower painting - seen as amateur pastime. OK for women.
Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun. Great self portrait based on Reuben. Mythology painting. Royal patronage helped. Marie Antoinette - seen in mother role - for better public appeal. Does not train other women.
Labille Guiard 1785 does train other women.
Emily Osborn. Nameless and Friendless. Paints the condition of women. Moved from Kent to London. Her mother wanted her to be an artist. Queen Victoria patronises her. EO was a Girton College feminist.
Most art critics are men. Eliza Thompson, Lady Butler - Crimea Calling the Roll - depicts aftermath of war - painted many years after the event.
Who controls the narrative? Women influencers in art history. Main floors and lower galleries - where are women staged? Exhibitions make this really clear. Main gallery and collecting policies are not clearly explained. (And even when they are clear, eg National Portrait Gallery, they do not follow them!).
Top 100 sales prices - no women.
Nicola McCartney. Makers not Muses. Feminist Guide to Art History.
20 out of 2400 - women to men artists in National Gallery.
Representation of women in mainstream society - unequal.
John Berger - art history - Men act, and women appear. Relationship of women to themselves. Women are complicit.
Laura Mulvey - visual culture. Active/male, passive/female (Mulvey 1989 [1975]: 19). Court the gaze. Decorative. Women view each other through the male gaze.
Flaneur - male. Solitary, gifted man. Not woman. So what do women do?:
Mary Cassatt - 5 o'clock tea. Domestic space.
Inactive (Diane Arbus), sexualised and fetishised (Frida Kahlo) and mad (Seraphine de Senlis).
How to resist?
Gluck - refused pronoun 'she'.
Don't look at art history in a silo. Symptomatic of larger, social system and construct.
Carolee Schneeman - RIP.
Romantice - genius becomes male.
Performance art makes the personal public. Why? Alan Jones Chair (1969)
Guerrilla Girls. Academic and theoretical feminism.
Jenny Holzer. Text and media. Authors work of 'the collection'. Appropriates mass media and utilises patriarchy to critique it.
Private artworks wants a name and signatures. Artworld does not want multi- prints by a group as Guerrilla Girls do. Print is key to their success. Read their press releases - international art world language. Props up their cultural capital. Men's techniques - lectures, monologues, books. Guerrilla Girls make the debate more accessible - Humour offensive. GG Bedside Companion to Western Art does not challenge the male way.
GGs are multi-ethnic. By wearing the Guerrilla mask, it removes the blackness/difference between them. Latinos - comfortable in mask for whites because it removes white privilege. But fails to acknowledge individual women. But this has pros and cons. Anonymity fails to acknowledge the individual - but all get some success. Concealed identity and sharing pseudonyms means detractors don't target a person.
Parker and Pollock. p45 Old Mistresses. Based on personality still.
Art history is still representative of social constructs and resistance.
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