Allison Deutsch. Social politics of making, viewing and writing about art in the 20th century.
Why are there no great women artists.
What is it like to be a feminist art critic today?
1970-90 arguments were well established and impact had been made ...? Importance of critique - changed art history.
Still completely urgent and vital. Why it matters still? How to contribute? Be skeptical. Art criticism is riddled with gender assumptions and prejudice.
Morisot best known female Impressionist. Impressionism has waxed and waned in popularity. Wealthy-genteel-art eduction accomplishments. 1860s submitted to Salon. Morisot was in all their exhibitions from 61-68 except the year when she was pregnant. No men did this. Died 1896 and on death certificate it said 'sans profession' ie no employment! In year of death 1896 retrospective of 400 of her paintings.
Obscurity. Male colleagues became popular. Not Morisot until 1987 Women's college Mount Holyoke Massachusetts. Important show - pushed thinking. Books on her from 1987-92, cemented her into the canon.
Then her star wanes again. New show now on tour (France?) First woman solo show in France since 1941.
Patronising review! New Yorker - written by a man - well intentioned. Sexism is a problem. Concludes "puts Morisot centrestage'. Puts the emphasis on to women. Talks about the woman, not the art.
Women's art - products of labour and training - NOT: the unconscious pouring out of personality; or less professional and more sensitive person.
'Radiates selfhood' - generic female self? Contemporary art writing - encodes many messages?
BBC Culture - Cath Pound 7/8/18. Cassatt. Factually wrong.
Marginalised by consciously not marginalising.
'Morisot comes into her own' - conflates with her self?
We get told women can be quickly forgotten. Neglected, forgotten, marginalised - key terms in headlines.
Different in how women and men artists are written about.
Nochlin argument challenges premises of Great Western Artists by two main arguments: There are great women artists; there is a feminine type of painting.
People who subscribe to There are great women artists - dig them up. Many books post 1970s. Important - contests ideas: women don't paint; navigate history and perspective; motivation. But it's not enough to include women. We are not an afterthought. Need to find the mechanism of exclusion.
Question assumptions. Great? Art? Direct personal expression of personal genius? Unmediated outputting? Appealing narrative but not enough. Find social and political influences, institutional factors.
Mythology of male genius. Griselda Pollock.
Mad/genius - eg Van Gogh. Unmediated outpouring of genius. Conditions of epilepsy - source of unique vision, not holding him back. Male power and potency = male genius.
Going Native - eg Gaugin. Invention of Primitive Modernism. Failed stockbroker - heroised social misfit = groundbreaking new art. (Actually he worked from Manet's Olympia to paint The King's Wife). Constructs the hero. Paintings reveal personality - magically transforms emotions into paint. Understand language of art immediately - NOT TRUE. His contemporaries did not understand it!
Godlike man - wife selfish for going back to London to live with her children supported by her family. As described by a male art critic.
19th century - Female greatness? Possibility, yes. Different kind of genius? Feminine style 19thC. Direct personal experience of women (not teacher/practice). Morisot popular in her time. Feminine painting described as 'charming' or 'delicate and feminine', or 'elegant and light touch'. Pastels and loose brush work.
Manet descriptors - ugly canvas, half completed
Degas - ugly, horrifying, bathers like monkeys.
Impressionism - thoughtless and mechanical - quintessentially feminine, hypersensitivity and nervousness of women.
It takes skill, training and practice, not genius. 19th C 'proved and categorised' women's brains as laser. Women were not to be original but copyists.
Women need to be judged on their quality of work, rather than sensuality of women.
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Art & Sexual Politics
Female painting and the nude. Women lacked access to many things. Painter of modern life essay. Charles Baudelaire focussed on contemporary reality. Ignore the past; focus on contemporary. The Modern ie in Paris, technologies, lighting, railways, cafes. Quick paced painting.
The Flaneur - urban wanderer. Move about city alone and unnoticed. Clear observer of all - top and bottom of society. In Impressionist times, women cannot do this.
Feminists - concept of modern - deeply gendered. Experience of men, not bourgeois women. Women restricted to being veiled, chaperoned, respectable spaces, restaurants.
1988 Pollock. Gendering of modern life. Vision and Difference. Middle class women painters can't go to these space. Created a grid in her book.
Men could go everywhere
Middle class women would be at home, or chaperoned. Bourgeois women's ideology - home was their private space.
Working class women - laundresses, milliners - could go out more. Working class women provided entertainment for middle class men eg backstage and opera. Middle class women could not be seen in this space, so could not paint it. Exhibiting such paintings would indicate middle class women knew too much!
Loge - theatre boxes. Upper class couples. Renoir - La Loge - opulent woman - spectacle, woman in front, illumination. Respectable woman? Man has costume of public power - tux. His body not on display - uniform. Eyes covered by opera glasses. He's watching other loges - looks at another woman. We get get the masculinised position - the power to look.
Eva Gonzales 1874 A box at the Halman Theatre.
Painted modern life. Men and women don't paint differently but instititional gender assumptions are made. Fashion exposes female bodies.
Cassatt In The Loge. Pearl necklace. 19th C France. Committed to feminist movement. Interested in changing social acceptance of women. Shows actual effects of gas lighting - and was slated by critics for making flesh look mouldy. In The Loge, woman looking actively not passively looked at. Resists male gaze, and is covered up.
Gendered titling. In the 1980s, difficult to find woman artists? Today - in same place? Unknown women. But what separates men and women? Women different and lesser.
Historically, in art, women were less able - not unable.
Degas Hatmaker was only able to be painted because Cassatt took him with her to her milliner. Otherwise he would not have had the contacts in that environment.
Control of women via Italian renaissance. Northern School. Women encouraged by families and male artists. Institutions are male. Powerful male supporters help. This is true, and ok.
Vision - male - power
Taste/smell - female and associated with the body.
Impressionism at the time was deemed feminine. But not just about women
Used vision and science of optics. Uses gendered arguments.
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