The Absence in Art History: A Glaring Gap
A while back, I watched Robert Hughes’ 1980s The Shock of the New on YouTube. I didn’t have a TV when it first came out and it had been on my list for 40 years. I was struck by the dearth of women artists. I counted only four or five through the whole eight episodes, plus the 25-years later follow up. And one of these, Sonia Delaunay, though a noted artist and designer, was mentioned only regarding a piece her artist husband made for her.
Checking contemporary criticism, I found questions over which (male) artists and their movements Hughes chose to highlight. But apparently the omission of women failed to register, was taken for granted. This reflected the assumption that there were not and could not be any important (read powerful, groundbreaking) women artists. That women simply couldn’t make the cut, meet the “rigorous” standard.
Breaking Down Biases: Linda Nochlin’s Questioning
In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote her article Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Ten years before Hughes, she used the same criteria and pointed out that making art could not be viewed as a political act in feminist terms. But then she questioned the criteria themselves, most notably in an ironic retelling of the story of the artist Giotto, discovered as a young shepherd boy drawing on rocks and immediately recognized as innately gifted with divinely, blessed-by-God, talent. It’s a classic hero tale, with demi-god overtones. Think Jesus, Achilles, King Arthur, Superman, Marvel Comics heroes. And, of course, no women need apply, because women can’t be heroes or demigods.
Anonymous Was a Woman: Trivialization of Female Work
When I shared with a friend, she described a course she took in the 1980s called Anonymous Was a Woman on how female work has been trivialized, cast as merely decorative, and often appropriated and coopted. Around the same time, I was taking a history of modern architecture course with the great Reyner Banham. His sense of how influence moves has continued to shape my view of the world. Who studied with whom, who worked for whom, who borrowed/stole from whom? Now, I apply this to women artists, though all examples at that time were men. Not because women couldn’t, but because until recently, many were not even allowed to try or leave home on their own, let alone enter schools and professions.
The Bauhaus Dilemma: Co-Ed Aspects and Gender Biases
Now, I wonder how much has changed and if bias has only become more subtle. I offer quotes from opposite ends of the socio-political spectrum. Mao said, “Women hold up half the sky.” The Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by the western women.” And getting there will take continuing to throw off millennia of conditioning inculcated in both women and men. And there’s a double bind: noticing and bringing this stuff up can be seen as shrill and unreasonable and lead to pushback. However, saying nothing allows damaging patterns to continue unchallenged. The actress Geena Davis noticed and spoke up and started her Institute on Gender in Media, which tracks, documents and works to reduce unconscious and insidious bias in films and TV that impact opinions and actions.
Double Bind: The Struggle to Be Heard
Both Hughes and Banham devoted considerable time to the Bauhaus, that iconic font of early 20th century architecture and industrial design. But neither touched on the co-ed aspects, still unusual at the time. Walter Gropius, the director, claimed, “No difference between the beautiful and the strong sex.” But his choice of words clearly says otherwise and that was carried out in practice. I believe only one woman ever became a master teacher. Women could enroll, and they did, outnumbering men in the first class. But early on they had to pay higher tuition and could only take “feminine subjects,” like weaving and textiles. Nevertheless, Anni Albers (textile artist, print maker) and the multi-talented Sophie Tauber-Arp (artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, and dancer) managed to stand out. This despite often being hampered by the common pattern of having their work being subsumed into their husbands’, with themselves treated as “assistants,” though in fact they were co-creators and often independent creators. And all the while, they juggled maintaining households. A la Ginger Rogers dancing backward and in heels.
The Geena Davis Institute: Challenging Media Bias
Davis said she started her institute to help open more space for her daughter and other young girls. I recall my mother’s participation in a study on women’s roles conducted by nearby Cornell University. The data apparently went unused at the time. Was that due to lack of interest? Though it was the 1950s, a few years before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, when many “housewives” were going quietly and sometimes not so quietly mad in their constricted lives. This was before they were called “stay at home moms.” As with women artists, definitions and shifts of emphasis are often applied from outside, rather than discovered from inside. My mother herself took a refresher course in bookkeeping and found a job as soon as my younger sister started school. Years later, when a researcher wanted to follow up with daughters, my mother sent her my way. Things had changed—more divorces, some traces of domestic violence, hints of self-discovery as gay. I myself married relatively late but was then early in relationship with the man who would become my husband.
Renewed Interest: Reclaiming Women’s Artistic Energy
By the time Hughes recapped his series around 2005, he walked with a cane. Though he devoted significant time to a single woman artist Paula Rego, he bemoaned modernism’s loss of energy. Was this a stunning feat of illogic and/or blindness? Was it a reaction to his own loss of physical power? Whatever, one of his talking-head commentators read from the same page, saying we’d only need one or two key male artists to get things going again. Nonetheless, almost another 20 years on, we’ve seen renewed interest and major exhibits of artists like Albers and Tauber-Arp. Women of Bauhaus is a prominent Instagram channel, rubbing virtual shoulders with the iconic Patty Smith, who presents herself in still active old woman mode, as well as equally iconic throwback images of Debbie Harry from her hottest period. And reconditioning continues to be a hit-and-miss, stop-and-start slog, with perhaps an inkling that at least some movers might just be women? And that opening the door just a tad might help restore some of the lost energy?