Friday, June 07, 2019

Will All Artists Be Women?

Not long ago I attended an outdoor workshop in New York state. As seems common, the majority of the attendees were women, a constant circumstance. As it happens, I received an email newsletter from Robert Genn, a Canadian painter who passed on a few years ago, discussing that very topic. (although Mr. Genn passed on a few years ago, his daughter writes and republishes from the site, The Painters Keys). In one of his newsletts, written a decade ago and republished this week, Mr. Genn noted the preponderance of women who attended art conferences, workshops, and the like. His newsletter subscribers at the time were 2/3 female, he said, and he had always noticed a female-male ratio of perhaps 80-20 in art organizations too. He mused that perhaps in future all artists would be women. Certainly women are pursuing arts and letters in higher numbers than men and the majority of university students are now women too. Men these days show less interest art, education, and aesthetics, than women, too.

Although we're generally less familiar with them and their work, women through history have contributed mightily to our human heritage. From the earliest days women have drawn, painted, etched, sculpted and made all kinds of art across the cultures of the world. My knowledge of female artists outside the historically western cultures is scant, but I intend to correct that failing. Meanwhile, here is a highly personal list of great artists from the past who also happened to be women, in no particular order of importance or enjoyment.

Vigee leBrun, "Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, oil, 1782
Louise Elisabeth Vigee leBrun (1755-1842) was a famous painter even in her own day. Her father was a painter before her, and gave her some rudimentary training before he died when she was twelve. She received training from several prominent painters while in her teens and began painting portraits professionally before she was twenty. Obviously an enormously talented and dedicated worker, she went on to produce around 800 paintings, most of them portraits. She was patronized by Marie Antoinette and so had to flee France when the royals were arrested. She lived and worked in numerous places in Europe but eventually returned. Although less known today, she was as accomplished and successful a portraitist as anyone, before or after her time.
Vigee leBrun, "Emma Hamilton," oil, 1792




Kathe Kollwitz, "Self Portrait in Blue Shawl," lithograph 1903

Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945) who lived through the horror of the early and mid-twentieth century was not primarily a painter but a graphic artist. Her drawings, lithographs and etchings dealt with injustice and oppression and especially the suffering of the working classes. Her own agony at the loss of her son in World War I and a grandson in World War II fueled her work powerfully. Perhaps most telling are the several dozen penetrating and honest self portraits she made, which constitute a big part of her overall output. Today she is occasionally grouped with the Expressionists because of her deeply emotional work. Regardless of grouping, her art has depth, power, and much to say about the emotions of loss, grief, depression, and fear. She deserves wider recognition. A particular favorite of mine is her lithograph self portrait of 1903 (below).
Gentileschi, "Self Portrait as Allegory of Painting," 1638
 


Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) worked and painted in Italy during the Baroque Period (17th century), was the first woman admitted to the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. She was quite successful in her lifetime and enjoyed a wide international following. For many years she was something of a curiosity, given that there were few women painting professionally at that time. Her work has echoes of Caravaggio, as might be expected, but she produced strong, evocative works of historical and biblical subjects as well as portraits. In particular her female figures, substantial and moving through space, are my favorite passages of her works.

Mary Cassatt, "Lydia at the Opera," 1879
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American expatriate painter and graphic artist who worked most of her career in France. She studied at home in Pennsylvania for several years but became frustrated with the lack of teaching and decamped for Paris in 1866 where she studied with Gerome and Thomas Couture among others. By 1868 she had work accepted into the annual Salon, one of the first American women whose work was selected. She stayed a few more years but when the Franco-Prussian War broke out she returned home. It was not long until she returned to Paris, with her sister, where she opened her own studio and began having success as a realist painter. Through the ensuing decade she was regularly accepted into the Salon and began to succeed as a painter. In 1877 she was unsuccessful entering the Salon after being an annual exhibitor for a number of years. Her friend Edgar Degas invited her to show with the loose group of painters known as independents who would be the nucleus of the Impressionist movement. From then she was
Mary Cassatt, "Boating Party," 1894
closely associated with the Impressionists through the remainder of her career. Her images of mother and child, or woman and child, are striking reminders of the tenderness of childhood. Her subject matter varied little but her approach to painting did. As did many of her male colleagues, she became interested in simplified arrangements of flatter colors, inspired by Japanese prints. After a century and a half, her works still have resonance.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a painter whose power came from an unflinching eye and an injured
Frida Kahlo, "Self Portrait," oil, 1926
heart. Her life story is familiar to many, owing to a famous movie and to her growing international fame. But for most of the 20th century she was known as the "wife of Diego Rivera," who also painted. Nonetheless, Rivera (an internationally famous muralist) often insisted that she was the greater artist. She had suffered polio plus horrendous injuries in a streetcar accident (1925) that left her with continuous pain and disability that were lifelong. During her long convalescences she drew and painted many self portraits, nearly all featuring her famous unibrow. In those self studies she consciously explored her feelings
about her illnesses, about herself and others. She did gain recognition from the Surrealists and exhibited in New York and Europe, yet still remained obscure here until the 1970s. Since then, with numerous books, exhibitions, a movie, and sundry other events, she has become an international icon. 
Perhaps in the future, all artists will be women, given the current trend in art schools but I doubt it. Instead there will always be these and many others.




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