I felt that beginning the blog with a brief overview of women in art history will provide a good basis for how we look at and analyze current feminist art and movements. As I mentioned, this is will be a very, very brief look into the past of western art history and women.
Although women artists have obviously provided a significant amount of art to society and the general public, art history reflects a history of misogyny, racism, and discrimination. Women artists have been left out, forgotten, and deliberately erased from artistic historical contexts and therefore, we are left with a very patriarchal view of art history.
Nevertheless, “despite prejudice, there have been lots of women artists throughout Western history” (The Guerrilla Girls, 8). Several reports point to women painters, sculptors, and artists as the creators of great works of art throughout time. For example, the Bayeux Tapestry from 1066 represents one of the most important medieval art objects to this day, and scholars agree that the 200 foot long banner depicting the conquest of England by Norman king William the Conqueror and everyday life was embroidered by a group of women. Hildegard von Bingen, a nun in Germany in the 12th century commissioned artists to illuminate their visions (which were later dubbed as heretical by the catholic church) into pieces of art, which now provide a glimpse into the life of such a maverick nun.
The Bayeux Tapestry
Women artists have also been lost in history as their work is attributed to male artists. Often times financial concerns are deeply engrained in this misattribution and since “the monetary value of works of art is inextricably bound up in their attribution to ‘named’ artists, the work of many women has been absorbed into that of their better-known male colleagues” (Chadwick, 22). For instance, Judith Leyster, a prominent seventeenth-century painter, “was almost lost from history from the end of that century until 1893, when Cornelius Hofstede de Groot discovered her monogram on The Happy Couple (1630) which he had just sold to the Louvre as a Frans Hals” (Chadwick, 22). Although Leyster drew inspiration from and modeled many of her paintings from Hals’ style, there is a difference. However, Hals’ works were valued significantly more than Leyster’s, and, therefore, the overeager art historian was more than happy to see a Hals painting, especially those historians “committed to a view women’s production as obviously inferior to those of men. ‘Some women artists tend to emulate Frans Hals,’ noted James Laver in 1964, ‘but the vigorous brushstrokes of the master were beyond their capability. One only has to look at the work of a painter like Judith Leyster to detect the weakness of the feminine hand” (Chadwick, 24). Nevertheless, after the first discovery of the misattribution of Leyster’s work to Hals’, seven paintings were reattributed to Leyster.
The Happy Couple, Judith Leyster
Some feminists, however, ask the questions if there actually were any great women artists. I know many of you feminists are reading this saying “uh…what!?” but Linda Nochlin asks this exact question in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”. According to her essay, “there have been no great women artists, so far as we know, although there have been many interesting and good ones who have not been sufficiently investigated or appreciated…” (Nochlin, 5). Nochlin sites society and the art education system throughout history as the main reason why women have not succeeded in art. She asks, “is it not the kinds of demands and expectations placed before…women—the amount of time necessarily devoted to social functions, the very kinds of activities demanded—simply made total devotion to professional art production out of the question, and indeed unthinkable both for upper-class males and for women generally” (Nochlin, 10). Society’s pressure on women and their actions led to an underdeveloped representation of women artists.
Whether great women artists were left out of art history or whether there actually were no great women artists in history, art history is one told predominantly of male artists. This attitude has continued to carry over into today with galleries and museums showing mainly male artist’s works. However, groups such as the Guerrilla Girls and movements such as the Feminist Art Movement (both of which I will discuss in later posts), have brought attention to this discrimination.
Do you feel that Nochlin is right in saying that there have been no great women art? Or have women artists simply been pushed out of the spotlight?
The Guerrilla Girls, First. The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: the Penguin Group, 1998. Print.
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. 4th ed. New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2007. Print
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