Recently on a corridor at uni I remember seeing a notice saying: “History, what else is there?” I was tempted to, (I wish I had), write underneath: “Her Story, of course”.
I do think that in the past women have been written out of history. Patriarchal societies are about men aren’t they?. Take my own schooling ( some time ago) on Art History as an example. I had never heard of Mary Cassat or Berthe Morisot. Both of whom I now think are wonderful artists, capturing sensitivity and lightness in their work. In the National Portrait Gallery there is a painting by Morisot, Girl on a Divan, which I think is most exquisite and timeless. The young girl’s face has a distant, reflective, yet feline quality, her dress luminously conveys its taffita substance and the colours sing. It hangs in a room with some rather lumpy, leaden paintings by Renoir. Brian Sewell, the art critic, often quotes Renoir as saying of himself that he painted with his penis. Certainly his, A Nymph by a Stream, has no visual appeal to me. Her green flesh is most unhealthy and lardy looking and why is she naked outdoors? She doesn’t really look the type to be a wood nymph, she’s just a girl stripped of her clothes; to titillate Renoir no doubt. As he aged, his nudes became more rosy with rolls of flesh, yet no more appealing, in my opinion; objects rather than people.
Brian Sewell is unfortunately not very complimentary about women artists.
In an article in the Independent in 2008:
he says:
“The art market is not sexist, the likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.
Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.”
The last sentence, apart from Sewell’s damning misogyny, says it all. Children and marriage DO hold women back, they are time consuming and patriarchal societies do not accommodate women and childrens’ needs well.
If women are lucky and live a long time, moving beyond such obstacles, they have time to produce great work. Once her sons had grown up and her husband died in 1973, nothing held Louise Bourgeois back! She moved to a much bigger studio and produced wonderful work until she died at 98 in 2010. She had a long time to herself.
Tracey Emin realised very early on that she couldn’t be an artist and a mother. She saw at first hand how hard her own mother worked just to provide for Tracey and her brother. Her Art is her Life and her focus involved aborting her foetuses on two occassions. If your energy goes into cooking meals, washing clothes, making pack lunches and working to provide money, what time is left for Art? Most male artists have been fortunate to have wives to do all this.
A few weeks ago I was at Kettle’s Yard seeing The Ben and Winifred Nicholson exhibition. What struck me was how Winifred was head and shoulders above her husband in terms of style, essence and joyousness. He, Ben, even attributed much of what he produced and achieved to her. So why has it taken so long for her to be recognised and lauded?
At the Whitechapel in March I saw the Hannah Hoch exhibition. She didn’t have children, just as well, as the Dadaists merely tolerated her amongst them, despite their whole movement being about emancipation! She is now recognised as the pioneering figure in Photomontage and an eminent Dadaist. Yet apparently when she was with Raoul Hausmann, another Dadaist, he wanted her to give up art to do a proper job and support him! Her work, The Small P, encapsulates for me the exhaustion of young children and relationships: the bawling child is disproportionate to its size and the male portion of the face suggests male neediness too. At the time of this work she was in a lesbian relationship. Says it all really.
