Open Letter To Artists (From An Art Critic) - Part 4
by Joan Altabe - 6/30/2006
If you’re a woman artist and participate in woman art shows, this message may hit like a wild wind blowing litter in your face: gender-specific shows are not good for you. They ghettoize you and there’s been enough of that.
Art by women has been ignored for a very long time. In the first and second editions of H.W. Janson’s “History of Art,” a standard college textbook (the latter edition published less than 30 years ago), not a single woman got a mention. Not even Cassatt. Not even O’Keeffe.
This is not to say that male historians have been the only chauvinists. Female historians have kept female artists out of the history books, too. ”The Story of Painting,” a 1994 publication by British art historian Sister Wendy Beckett, neglected to report that in 1768, Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Moser founded the British Royal Academy. Members included English greats William Blake, J.M.W. Turner and Joshua Reynolds.
The only reference to Kauffmann in Sister Wendy’s otherwise exhaustive 721-page tome is the artist’s friendship with Reynolds. That he was a great admirer of Kauffmann’s work got no mention. Neither did Sister Wendy acknowledge Kauffmann’s work. She merely noted a small portrait painted on a vase, completely overlooking the fact that Kauffmann distinguished herself by rendering history paintings. Traditionally, commissions for these went to men, not women.
Sister Wendy likewise disregards Moser's reputation as the successor to one of the most important Flemish painters of the 17th century, Sir Anthony Van Dyke.
Besides Sister Wendy cutting Moser and Kauffmann out of the picture, Helen Gardner also slighted them in her book "Art Through the Ages," which went on to become a standard college text alongside Janson's book.
But that was in 1926. Sister Wendy's book was published a mere dozen years ago.
Cheating Kauffmann and Moser out of their history at the Royal Academy began early. A famous portrait of the first class studying a nude, "The Academicians of the Royal Academy" by Johann Zoffany in 1771, shows everyone at work but Kauffmann and Moser. Zoffany put their faces in small portraits on the studio wall -- objects of art rather than art makers.
But, for the most part, those days are over. The beginning of the end likely started in the '40s when O'Keeffe was invited to participate in a women's art exhibit and she refused, saying she wasn’t a "woman painter.''
Even if a historical corrective were needed, it's not a good idea to isolate art by gender. The separation only reinforces the divide. Which is why the National Museum of Women in the Arts isn’t a good idea. Washington, D.C.’s temple to women's art, formerly the male bastion of the Masonic temple, is just another garrison where inclusion is based on anatomy.
Besides segregating women from men, women art shows shift focus away from art to advocacy of women's rights. Art history shows there's a better way to buck the men-only art scene: form a group open to both genders. That's what Kauffmann and Moser did when they founded the British Royal Academy.
In a similar way, despite Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s attack against women artists as "ridiculous five-legged calves,'' Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot joined his group, the Impressionists. Had they created their own group, they might have been even more marginalized.
— Joan Altabe | June 30, 2006
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Fine Art News Feed
Dear Joan, FINALLY!!!
Your comments needed saying. I do hope that the world takes notice.
As the husband of a most creative woman (media, international diplomacy, the law and national politics) and the father of two incredibly successful and very individualistic daughters, I must concur with your comments. The world is not the most welcoming of environments for women. This is both the result of prevalent old-boy attitudes and, less acknowledged, the envious dissing by "sisters". But choosing to compete and be successful in ghetto-ized arenas is a false step forward - if forward it is at all.
Women must get out there and be whoever they are regardless of whatever is said or whoever is saying it.
Women do not need to be in and should never depend on "protected" environments in order to be recognized - i.e.: unless what we all want is that females be dependent, submissive . . . and paint only in the kitchen. . .
Bernard Poulin
August 22, 2006