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Alas the internet is a lousy place to find any women artists. I have run image searches for a number of russian, middle european and asian women artists whose work I want to share with the kids and adults I teach. The results (of the searches not the teacking
) are indifferent at best. This is why my magazone bill is so much higher than my internet costs. Sometimes the web is just a tangle.Half of the great women artists I know of are here on WetCanvas and living, yet when I poke into art history they’re all over the place. Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keefe come to mind off the top of my head but there’s also a Dutch Mistress whose name escapes me, her still lifes with tulips sing and are as utterly wonderful as any other Dutch Master. She influenced a lot of later painters too, I just have trouble remembering names.
But ask me about living artists and I’m off into Deborah Secor, Barbara Noonan, Charlotte Herczfeld, Maggie Price, the majority of living great pastelists I know are women with a couple of good exceptions like Albert Handell and Richard McKinley.
I think it’s a matter of what society valued in earlier times. What I hope is that these brilliant women painters of our times get the recognition they deserve, both now and in future.
As a collector I’ve bought paintings from one male artist and four female artists (major fine art), not counting the hundreds of ACEOs from artists on eBay.
Robert A. Sloan, proud member of the Oil Pastel Society
Site owner, artist and writer of http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com
blogs: Rob's Art Lessons and Rob's Daily PaintingI think it’s a matter of what society valued in earlier times. What I hope is that these brilliant women painters of our times get the recognition they deserve, both now and in future.
I would agree with you except there were quite a few who were appreciated and valued in earlier times, but seem to continually ignored in art history books.
While opportunities are much better nowadays, it doesn’t bode well for women of merit when current writers (and art critics and museum advisors like Brian Sewel) of history continue to perpetuate a slanted view of art history.
“Women represent 50% of the pool of professional artists. This figure is supported by a number of surveys, the most recent of which is a survey of recipients of the Master of Fine Arts degree, conducted by the College Art Association.” …….Yet women do not have the visibility of men. . . . One-person exhibitions by women make up less than 2% of the shows given to living artists by museums.” Coaliton for Women in the Arts
If I were to answer the question about women artists with “Because women are incapable of artistic greatness” I would be shouted down at once as a sexist pig.
To me you hit the nail right on the head and the key word here would be “pig” as Freud said all men are pigs which not surprisingly makes us better than most women. Men don’t suffer such inhibitions as do woman so we are far freer to create than woman therefore men are taken more seriously than woman.
So it seems to me the problem lies squarely within the woman and how they deal with their inhibitions and this makes it nobody’s fault certainly not the art establishment but instead this puts it squarely on woman themselves to make and effect changes for themselves like Jenny Saville[/URL] did. So things are slowly changing for the good.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all. Paul Cézanne
So it seems to me the problem lies squarely within the woman and how they deal with their inhibitions and this makes it nobody’s fault certainly not the art establishment but instead this puts it squarely on woman themselves to make and effect changes for themselves like Jenny Saville did. So things are slowly changing for the good.
I don’t have an icon for the heavy sigh, heavy sigh.
I don’t have an icon for the heavy sigh, heavy sigh.
So… are you finished sighing yet… I don’t want to interrupt you.:D
Have you ever wondered why woman in most cases play it safe. Why do they mostly default to Kittens, babies, flowers, strawberries and so on….why? Inhibitions will not allow them to be bold and go farther but men we could care less we can go anywhere in art and not be afraid to be called whatever… add what you want here but Freud was right that we men are pigs and we don’t sweat over the little details that seem to worry women and prevent them from being bold and unbridled. But like I said it’s changing and that’s a good thing.
Degas was pretending to be a voyeur looking through the key hole in a matter of speaking and could care less what people might say or think, different story for woman. What was Marry Cassett painting around the same time… a lot of babies? I am not trying to devalue woman but I am trying to encourage them to be bolder.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all. Paul Cézanne
If I were to ask why have there been no great house cat artists, the answer would be “Cat’s are incapable of artistic greatness.” Leaving aside the brilliliant satire “Why Cats Paint” I don’t think anyone would challenge this.
If I were to answer the question about women artists with “Because women are incapable of artistic greatness” I would be shouted down at once as a sexist pig. However I think that through much of Western history this was the predominant view.
The problem is that the latter statement (“Women are incapable of artistic greatness”) would also have been largely true… for the simple reasons that
1. Women were not afforded an equal education as men
2. Those women who did excel would have struggled against extreme prejudice.
3. The majority of women themselves would never had thought of art as a real career option.While opportunities are much better nowadays, it doesn’t bode well for women of merit when current writers (and art critics and museum advisors like Brian Sewel) of history continue to perpetuate a slanted view of art history.
Again, you are perpetuating the notion that art history is slanted, but have offered no proof of this. In simple terms, put up or shut up. Show me the female artists from the past that are clearly towering figures… giants far better than the majority of their peers and great innovators central to the narrative of art history. Ignoring Artemisia Gentileschi or Rosa Bonheur does not exactly amount to a slanting of art history when there are hundreds of equally talented male artists who have also slipped through the cracks. If a writer of the stature of Jane Austen or Emily Dickinson were ignored, then certainly we would have an argument. The reality is that we are not going to change the future… an equal representation of men and women in art… by attempting to rewrite the past.
”Women represent 50% of the pool of professional artists. This figure is supported by a number of surveys, the most recent of which is a survey of recipients of the Master of Fine Arts degree, conducted by the College Art Association.”
You would need more than this to prove the argument that the pool of artists worthy of gallery/museum representation is 50% women. Universities do their best to promote the illusion of egalitarianism. How many of these graduates continue to seriously make art 10 or 20 years down the road? How many aggressively market their work? How many abandon their art for the sake of raising a family? How many are really good? These are all valid questions. Art is not egalitarian. At certain times in history certain cultures have had far more impact than others on the narrative of history. There are more Italians and Dutch and French among the canonical figures of art history than Alabanians, Hungarians, and Portuguese. This often has much to do with access to wealth and power… the support for the education and the training of the artists.
Honestly, I cannot say that women amount for anywhere near 50% of the art shown in galleries… but at the same time I doubt that we would find that the percentage of black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, homosexual, Albino, etc… artists in any way mirrors their percentage in the population as a whole. Galleries are in the business to sell and have no responsibility to promote equality and egalitarianism. Their only responsibility is to sell. I highly doubt that any dealer would turn down the work that they thought they could sell by a woman, black or Asian artist.
As Keith has suggested there are hundreds of talented women artists showing and gaining recognition… a great many hundreds whose careers are doing better than mine…
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
So… are you finished sighing yet… I don’t want to interrupt you.
Have you ever wondered why woman in most cases play it safe. Why do they mostly default to Kittens, babies, flowers, strawberries and so on….why? Inhibitions will not allow them to be bold and go farther but men we could care less we can go anywhere in art and not be afraid to be called whatever… add what you want here but Freud was right that we men are pigs and we don’t sweat over the little details that seem to worry women and prevent them from being bold and unbridled. But like I said it’s changing and that’s a good thing.
Degas was pretending to be a voyeur looking through the key hole in a matter of speaking and could care less what people might say or think, different story for woman. What was Marry Cassett painting around the same time… a lot of babies? I am not trying to devalue woman but I am trying to encourage them to be bolder.
Alas I continue to sigh. I could care less about the subject matter – male painters of animals, flowers, fruit and the ephemera of domesticity are hardly thin on the ground. I would personally like to see a wholesale rejection of the spurious ‘history’ paintings, tedious allegories and portentious ‘portraits’of the great and famous that infest our museums. Boldness lies not in the subject but in the execution. Things are indeed improving but women should not be expected to paint ‘like men’ to gain recognition.
Freud – a discredited founder of a still nascent social science.
Things are indeed improving but women should not be expected to paint ‘like men’ to gain recognition.
I agree that the art of the fleeting moment, the ephemeral, the intimate, the delicate, or the domestic is not something that is limited to women alone. Vermeer and many of the “little Dutch masters”, the Impressionists, Vuillard, Bonnard, Utamara and others come immediately to mind. At the same time, Sue Coe, Jenny Saville, Cecily Brown, Magdalena Abakanowicz and many other women create images with a fierceness equal to anyone.
I am left with the question, however, whether there is a distinct woman’s art vs a man’s art?
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
I am left with the question, however, whether there is a distinct woman’s art vs a man’s art?
I have the same question
I am uncomfortable with generalisations either way but can understand why a number of feminist writers on art have taken the stance they have.
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