Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 623
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
At the time [the Renaissance], Bologna was unique in championing the professions of women. The home of Europe’s oldest university, which had supported female students since the thirteenth century, the city considered women artists as integral to its development. Praised by scholars, written about by biographers and adored by the locals, they were also supported by patrons of all social classes (from bankers to barbers), creating a varied culture of artistic patronage. (By contrast, in Florence and Naples, commissioning was reserved for select noble families.). Women were also encouraged to sign their work, as well as to paint self-portraits for the purpose of being known and, most importantly, remembered. No wonder scholars have recorded a staggering sixty-eight women artists working in the city between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
These notable exceptions remind us that women have always been perfectly capable of being artists. But while there could have been an abundance of women working at this time, in reality female artists were an absolute rarity, seen as ‘tokens’ rather than pioneers. (After de Rossi’s death [in 1530], no female sculptor is mentioned in the city’s records for 200 years.). And little knowledge remains of those working during the Renaissance period. Most of what we know has been passed down by male scholars and through legal documents, rarely from the women themselves.
Katy Hessel in The Story of Art Without Men
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 630
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
During the Victorian age, women, with their ‘smaller,’ less ‘creative’ brains, were considered incapable of becoming professional artists and were often restricted to ‘craft’ or ‘design’ (genres not considered ‘fine art’ by the establishment). This perception made it very difficult not only for women to be taken seriously as artists, but for their (and their female predecessors’) work to be sold. In order to get around this, nineteenth-century art dealers were known to scratch out a female artist’s signature and replace it with that of a male contemporary, which explains why many works by women have only just come to light. (No wonder so many of them hid self-portraits among their still lifes).
Katy Hessel in The Story of Art Without Men
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 626
With “Narcissist,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 28.5” x 35” framed
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Being an artist and a woman has never been easy. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading male artists – tackling five-meter-high marble sculptures and covering entire chapels with frescoes – were often termed ‘virtuosi,’ while women, simply by virtue of their gender, received neither the acclaim nor the opportunities. As time progressed, attitudes did not: it took until the end of the nineteenth century for women to be allowed to study the nude from life. Linda Nochlin has described this deprivation as though a medical student was denied the opportunity to dissect or even examine the naked human body.’ Even today, the contribution of women artists tends to be missing from history books and museum collections. It wasn’t until 1976, when feminist art historian Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris’s touring exhibition, Women Artists 1550 – 1950, opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, that women were even acknowledged as having contributed to 400 years of art. This show kick-started the scholarship, still scant, that we have on these twentieth-century artists.
Katy Hessel in The Story of Art Without Men
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 