Women in the Arts: The Personal is Political

                                                Women in the Arts: The Personal is Political

Throughout history, women have failed to receive the attention and respect they deserve for their many contributions to culture and society. The area of the Arts is certainly no different, and the struggle of female artists for recognition and opportunity parallels the struggles of women in society in general. Certain branches of the arts were more accessible to women than others in previous centuries. For example, while many women painted in Renaissance Europe, there is almost no known history at all of accomplished female musicians and writers during this time. The amount of known work by women artists from any given period is directly correlated to the amount of liberty, education and opportunity available to women in that period. As such, we see more and more work by women as history progresses.  The overall reality of women in art history can be fairly accurately summed up by the Guerilla Girls activist group’s 1985 billboard statement: “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections (of the Met in New York) are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” Through most of history, society has been more comfortable to view women as objects rather than as artists and innovators.  The role of women in the arts is largely determined by the political and social climate of their era, and as such, the art made by these women reflects the prevailing attitudes and philosophies of women’s role in society at large while simultaneously challenging the status quo.

In the era of the early Renaissance until the middle 19^th century, the realm of the arts was mostly limited to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The only women, who had access to materials and education, as well as the free time needed to paint or sculpt, were of the very upper classes. Many known and successful women artists throughout this period were often related or married to successful male artists, which gained them admittance to the necessary circles and access to patrons. For example, Lavinia Fontana, a successful and respected portrait artist, was the daughter of the artist Prospero Fontana.  Fontana was very well known, and even worked as portrait painter to The Pope. In Northern Europe, Caterina van Hemessen established herself as a renowned miniature portraitist. Many female artists of the Renaissance and Mannerist period were portrait painters. Hemessen was the daughter of Flemish Mannerist Jan Sanders van hemessen. During the Renaissance, while there was a resurgence of humanitarian thought and philosophy, it often failed to include women.  A woman’s opportunities were severely limited by her family and social status. Unless a woman’s family was supportive of a decision to pursue art, the choice would have been all but impossible. Women at this time, and really until the end of the 19^th century, were seen as the property of first their fathers, and then their husbands. In many places, women couldn’t own property, and working outside of the home was usually impossibility. Yet another famous painting daughter is Artemisia Gentileschi. Her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes is really the first well-known painting by a woman artist to portray a scene of such violence. A complete departure from the portraiture and still life that most women artists occupied themselves with, this painting is rife with emotion and violence, and really symbolizes the rage the artist had after a sexual assault at 15. This painting for me symbolizes the first real feminist painting, a work depicting a strong woman doing “man’s work”, and accomplished without any sentimentality or pandering to expectations of ladylike behavior.

We finally see women break out beyond the visual arts and into the arena of literature during the late 17^th and 18^th century. Anne Bradstreet was the first female poet to achieve success. Her work focuses on domestic issues of family, childbirth, and marriage. Her work celebrated her domestic role rather than challenged it.  During and after the Enlightenment, writing became not only more accessible to women, it also started to become a means to challenge the status quo, and question their second-class citizen standing. Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, comparing the plight of women to that of the working poor, and arguing that women are oppressed and forced into subservient circumstances that deprive them of their true nature, and prevents them from achieving their true potential as individuals. This essay was hugely influential, and has been cited by many feminist scholars.  Jane Austen also challenged the social attitudes and philosophies regarding women, though she did it in a much more subtle and ironic way, utilizing the fictional novel as her means of expression. As the 19^th century progressed, more and more female writers achieved success. The Bronte sisters and Emily Dickinson are perhaps the best known women writers of this period. It is worth noting that these women all opted not to marry and have children, a defiant act in that era. The prevailing thought at this time was that one could not have a family and also write and have a career, and so these women chose their art over the expectations of their communities. Ironically, many of the most successful women painters on the Renaissance and Baroque period had many children. 

The beginning of the 20^th century saw the blossoming of the Naturalist movement, and this movement was heartily embraced by woman writers as a means to voice their frustration and suffocation with the limited roles available to them. The delicate Victorian ideal of gentle wife and mother was being exposed as the stifling charade that it was by a new generation of lady writers like Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins-Gilman. Artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Dorothea Lange achieved critical and commercial success as artists on their own without need of male relatives or spouses to pave the way for them. Women gained the right to vote, and the tumultuous and decadent atmosphere of the Roaring 20’s provided an opportunity for women to abandon the confining social mores that had oppressed them for so long. With World War II, so many men were overseas fighting that women had to step up and fill many jobs traditionally held by men. This helped further chip away at the notion that women were somehow inferior or incapable. This all paved the way for second-wave feminism and the equality movement of the 196o’s and 70’s. Throughout this time, women writers, artists, and now finally musicians were achieving both critical and commercial success like never before in history. The advent of cinema and television provided new creative opportunities for women, but also served to reinforce many negative stereotypes that served to keep women pigeon-holed. Artists like photographer Cindy Sherman sought to challenge and defy these stereotypes, and much of the art made by women in this period is anti-establishment and anti-patriarchal. Judy Chicago brought the conversation to the table, if you will, with her monumental installation piece, The Dinner Party, which paid homage to the many women that contributed to the arts, society and culture, while simultaneously reevaluating crafts typically thought of as kitsch women’s work, like knitting, embroidery, and the like, and transforming them into high art.

Unfortunately, despite all of this progress, women are still grossly underrepresented in the arts. Women are still paid less for the same work, and only now in 2010 did a female director finally win a Best Director Oscar at the Academy Awards. The one area where women have made the most headway in the recent past is music. Female artists have taken over the charts, from Rock and Roll to hip-hop, to country; the ladies are hard to beat for popularity and sales. The downside is that so much of their success is image driven rather than talent driven, and it perpetuates many unfortunate stereotypes.  We have reached a point I our culture where women have reclaimed their sexuality, and now see it as an empowering tool to utilize for their own benefit. This is a philosophy aligned with third-wave feminism, and is in direct conflict with second wave feminisms outrage at what they perceived as the sexual exploitation of women. The question for the new generation is really “Who was right? Are we more empowered or are we pandering to the basest stereotypes and re-instigating a negative cycle and backlash?” These are issues the youngest generation of women artists seek to address.

The gift that feminism gave us is that now many women artists can and do explore social issues and causes beyond simply women’s issues, and instead look at national, global, and overarching human issues.  Nonetheless, if history has taught us anything, it’s to take nothing for granted. Woman artists have a responsibility to pay due diligence to  the maintenance of our progress, as well as realizing there is still so far to go before we reach true equality in opportunity and representation.