Out of all of my behemoth readings for Art History courses that has deterred my reading on Les Miserables, the Women Artists class is being taught through Whitney Chadwick's Women, Art and Society. It's a stark contrast to the Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion.
It's one of the largest, and first aggregate art historical attempts at reassessing women artists in terms of the general European Art History canon of male genius, opportunity and fine arts. Therefore, it's clearly taking upon a social history lens in evaluating the circumstances of women and their exclusion from what created the contemporary refined images that represented geographical regions then and now. It uses an art historical approach, but I find the discourse of individual pieces of artworks, both formally and iconographically, are discussed in a short summary approach that skids over what the female artists actually depict. Women, Art and Society then becomes less of an evaluation of their works rather than the historically relevant material that explains the works' receptions, creation and ideology.
This isn't necessarily bad. Perhaps removing the evaluative aspect skillfully dodges the issue of the consistent labeling in the book of women artists. Many of Chadwick's helpers listed in the bibliography are Feminists and the book is clearly taking issue at the integration of women specifically in the field of man made art history, but it's far from the stereotypical bra-burning and facetiously sarcastic tone that the Guerrilla Girls make. Though women artists is extensively an exclusive term insinuating either triviality of importance, termed, perhaps it is dually beneficial to emphasize the term women artists. Artists, by historical writings, discourse, jargon, societal fashioning supported civically, religiously and societally, is a male of random genius who has either received training through guilds, or through divine influence that reflects generational aspirations in the artisan skill of crafting. Women, unless born in a household of a father who runs a guild, are barred from all involvement and public discussions of said generational aspirations. If they were assistants in guilds, they were typically dissuaded to sign their name only adding the anonymity of some extremely popular images said to be made by men [but later discovered not to be, by men, and then de-valued based on sex]. And somewhere throughout the elevation of painting and sculpture through the beginning of Renaissance time and now in Western-based countries, craft became much more feminine, less skill intensive and then relegated the household and domain of woman.
It's interesting. It's depressing. There's so many multifaceted ways in which it is clear that women were purposefully stunted by men and put on a lower ladder of achievement. Sure there are exceptions, such as learning, painting, illuminated texts - that was stopped by men so they could preserve their gender-ized notion of women being sexually, intellectually inferior and that they should focus on the womanly and childish domain of cooking, etc. There are women in pre, med, and proto medieval times who through feudalism began owning much of what men decided only men should own, and then stunted. The male gaze and adoption of that theory, or some would say, natural fashioning that extends throughout the sexes due to a male-based society still exists today.
Issues directly with the book would be the compounded amount of information. It'd be unfair to assume Chadwick could extensively cover each woman artist with the same amount of attention, but she generally throws out terms, names and etc. all within a chapter with non-mentioned terms. It lacks cohesiveness. For example, her Other Renaissance chapter covers perhaps, six female artists, yet the specificities of their work is overshadowed by Chadwick's attempt to include all guild names, with little background, allusions to male artists in parallels of painterly execution, with little background and so forth. It gives off the sense of convolution, when it shouldn't.
This is helping me answer Linda Nochlin's, "Why have there been no great women artists?" question. Sure, if you go by what I said, the definition of artist, which leads to master, is continually a tradition of being a male. Therefore, there are no great women artists as great women artists did not exist. But this is not true, clearly as there are some women with more skill that Coello, or with more proliferation than many of their contemporaries WITH the lack of patronage/commissions. There are great women artists. But why are these great women artists completely ignored by even contemporary male art historians who do not want to adulterate the tradition of art history or take the time in including women artists in their discourse for the sake of purity? THAT, is the question Linda Nochlin! There are no great women artists if people do not care to consistently project them as such. But that answer is tentative as I haven't even proceeded to approach the modern years of art historical methodizing. Proof of existence clearly doesn't mandate inclusion in this field.
