Women In Art, Forgotten and Ignored

The Wounded Deer by Frida Kahlo

Every year Camp Quest, a summer camp for secular humanist kids, puts together famous freethinkers cards to educate the campers about the many individuals who, without religion or faith, made significant contributions to history.

I was contacted by some Camp Quest organizers who were seeking examples of women artists. So far the only one they had come up with was Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist popularized in America by the film starring Salma Hayek, and known for her often surreal and autobiographical paintings. 

I ended up highly recommending they use Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, and Yoko Ono, as all three are confirmed non-theists and big names in the art world. It does somewhat sadden me that even among college educated people, only one of these three is commonly known, and she's mostly famous for being married to John Lennon. 

Portrait of Victorine Meurent by Annie Kevans

As both an artist and parent of a little girl who loves to paint, I was thrilled to hear about Annie Kevan's new exhibition: Women and the History of Art. It is a series of delicate, yet stark and emotionally charged portraits of women artists, prominent in their time but largely forgotten by history. 

Nell Frizzell of the Guardian writes: 

(Annie Kevans) has now painted more than 30 portraits of successful women who have been smudged out of the history of art for a new exhibition. Women like Victorine Meurent, who was an artist in her own right as well as one of Manet's muses, or Suzanne Valadon, who became the first female painter admitted to France's Société Nationale des Beaux Arts are among the women who are only now being singled out by later generations (Kevans's work follows the BBC's recent Story of Women and Art).

Palm Sunday, the only surviving example of
painting by Victorine Meurent.

I was surprised to learn that Victorine Meurent (the nude model in two of Manet's most famous works: The Luncheon On the Grass and Olympia) was an artist who regularly exhibited in the juried shows of the Paris Salon. Alas, when I went in search of examples of her work, I discovered that there is only one surviving work! 

There is plenty of lamentation these days about the lack of women in STEM fields, despite the fact that women are often well represented as students in STEM at the academic level. 

But these same trends exist in the field of visual arts. 

As one can tell from a stroll through any art museum, women artists in general have never been well represented. The numbers today are still rather bleak. Less than 5% of the artists featured in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, and startlingly, the numbers at the Museum of Modern Art aren't much better!  

Despite the fact that in the 1970's (and also today) women were earning more than half of all graduate degrees in studio arts (source), less than half of full time professors of art are women, and only 30% of the artists represented by professional galleries are women. (source.) Similarly, women artists are featured only about 30% of the time in reviews and articles of ARTnews and Art in America. 

Shamsia Hassani, an Afghan graffiti artist

Given all the female talent coming out of academia with BFA and MFA degrees, academic awards and solid portfolios, why the inequality in professional representation? 

It is here that the sexism inherent in American society is most evident. Evaluation of the quality and significance of works of art is a largely subjective practice. Expectations and standards evolve over time based on the ever-changing values and conditions of the society from which the artwork emerges. When only a slice of societal perspectives is represented by the dominant institutions and publications, history is bound to be skewed, and social progress stunted. 

In is alarming, for instance, that Juxtapoz, a magazine covering the underground art scene, including graffiti, street art, erotica and illustration, features very few women artists (but plenty of casually sexist imagery without critical commentary), sometimes having whole issues which include not a single woman artist. This despite the fact that there are plenty up-and-coming female illustrators, creators of erotica, and street artists out there to profile, interview, and critique. 

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, an American street artist

Critics, curators, dealers, and editors need to wake up to the sexist biases that influence their choices of what to write about, exhibit, and feature. They need to cultivate an awareness of the broader society and make real efforts to seek out the art (which does already exist!) that gives voice to historically marginalized groups, including not only women, but people of color, ethnic minorities, and LGBT people. 

Moreover, just like Annie Kevans, we need to remember the women artists forgotten by history; bring them back to prominence, and teach about them to our daughters who long to be artists. 

The summer of 1995, when I was a senior in high school, I spent 5 weeks in Mexico learning their language and culture. During that time I had the great privilege to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City. The building (La Casa Azul) had been Kahlo's home. Many of the rooms have been kept as they were when the artist was alive. It was a hauntingly intimate experience. I felt a bit as if I'd stepped into someone's home, uninvited. 

In one room I noticed a pillow with the hand-embroidered inscription: 

No me olvides, mi amor. 

Kid Climbs on Sculpture, an Excuse to Mock Art

My friend Dave posed for this photo as a joke because he 

doesn't share my love for Mark Rothko paintings. That said, 

despite not being into this one piece, he values and respects 

art and would never let his toddler touch it.

Earlier this week, gallery owner Stephanie Theodore tweeted a photo she took of a child climbing on a Donald Judd sculpture on display at the Tate Gallery. For those who don't know who Donald Judd is, he's one of the most famous American artists from the 20th century, and his sculptures are worth millions.

Before I go further into the meat of this post, let me respond to the original tweet. I wasn't there and I certainly can't know whether the parents were knowingly dismissive toward museum/gallery etiquette, or merely ignorant. Mistakes happen. I won't go as far as calling them "bad parents." However, they would have been very sad parents had the child done any damage.

I share Stephanie Theodore's shock, and I would have done exactly what she did: first she told the parents why the kid shouldn't be doing that, and when they ignored her, she told the guards. And of course she also snapped a photo and tweeted. Of course she did - because it's a friggin' kid climbing all over a Donald Judd in the Tate! As a gallery owner who makes a living in the arts, Theodore would have been an idiot to not tweet that.

Now on to the real bee in my bonnet.

The photo tweeted by Stephanie Theodore.

Unfortunately, I stumbled on this story on Gawker, and made the horrible mistake of reading the comments. As I've come to expect when certain types of art (in this case from the Minimalist movement) are brought to the attention of the general public, Philistines come out of the woodwork to call the work junk and mock the art establishment that gives it value.

Many of the comments go so far as to morally denounce Judd for his success, such as this gem:

If your shelf-looking sculpture sells for millions of dollars, and you don't donate at least half of that to charity, you're fucking horrible.

That would be difficult seeing as Judd's been dead since 1994. Although I do wonder if this person is equally outraged by anyone who, against the odds, ends up producing something worth millions of dollars.

By the way, at least according to one study, the median salary of artists is $43,000/year. While this sounds comfortable, it is a far cry from millions (especially when you take the student loans into account.) More importantly, this median only represents the people who succeeded in turning their artistic aspirations into a career. The vast majority who study and practice art, especially fine art, work day jobs or live off spouses for years, and never make a living solely off our work. But by all means, piss all over the giants in our field.

The award for irony goes to the countless people who mocked a Judd sculpture for looking like shelves from Ikea. Not only was Judd an actual furniture designer as well as fine artist, but I guess they don't know that the Minimalist movement in art was a driving influence in design across the globe, including the aesthetics of Ikea.

As a working (and struggling) artist, as someone who values art, and as a parent who aims to raise kids to appreciate the arts, I'm so sick of this shit. 

We artists and art dealers, collectors, curators, critics - everybody who makes up the art world - are basically a subset of nerdom. To quote today's wikipedia entry on Nerd:

Nerd (adjective: nerdy) is a descriptive term, often used pejoratively, indicating that a person is overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities

Indeed, we spend an inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, non-mainstream activities. We tend to be intellectual. We often have our own, unique social quirks. The mainstream tends to not "get" what we do. And while some who don't share our interests still respect us and acknowledge that our creations/writings/purchases have value, others mock us and insist our activities are nothing but pretense.

I don't get sports fandom. What I mean is, I've watched games of basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and I feel bored. However, when I look around at other spectators and see expressions of deep emotional engagement, when I overhear people going into very detailed debates and discussions about strategies and plays, when I notice that there is an entire establishment of writers, historians, and museums constructed around sports, and when I see how sports have widespread appeal across nations and class divides, I recognize that this is a valuable, meaningful part of the human experience.

So while most people don't get Judd's work, it's important to acknowledge that the reason it's worth millions is because there's actually a lot to it. In its full context, to enough people, Judd's work evokes as much passion as Paul "Bear" Vasquez's reaction to a double rainbow: