There are many women artists who try to make their kind of art heard and recorded in history.

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party was one of the first public works to make international news in the art world with its challenge to male hegemony.  Ms. Chicago was among many in the 1970s who called into question the "male gaze."

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Chicago

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Party#Controversy_at_the_University_of_the_District_of_Columbia

But, of course, there have been many other women artists such as Christina Rosetti in the pre-Raphaelite movement, Mary Cassat (Impressionist), Dorothea Tanner (Surrealist.)

An activist group called Guerilla Girls makes public protests about the lack of a famle perspective and funding gaps.  They are now in their 30th year.

LINK: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/#open

These Guerilla Girls are not ashamed, but rather proud, of the word feminist.

I hope this adds to the conversation.

Thanks Gloria

- I knew these Guerrilla Girls and their posters, and the artists you mention - Also Berthe Morisot and specially Germaine Richier have been important   - but I am still eager to know who is going to write art history from a woman point of view - In actual art women take an important place, indeed. But what about rewriting the past? Where was their hidden influence in the art of the past?

best wishes

Willy

Hello, Willy,

This takes on what you wish to know. 

Check the bibliography, as well.  She may have books more on art than literature since she has a chapter or two on visual art.

There are two or three women visual artists profiled from UK. Battersby does a detailed account of how women fare in art and how their art is shaped by their subject position. Don't be put off that the book is mainly billed as dealing with literature.  If you go in from the keyword "sublime" and then search art, feminism, and philosophy there should be more.

_The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference_

by Battersby, Christine, 1946

2007

Publisher London ; New York : Routledge, 2007

Subjects Sublime, The.

Feminist theory.

Sublime, The, in literature.

Terrorism -- Philosophy.

Philosophy -- History.

Contents 1. A terrible prospect -- 2. Terror, terrorism and the sublime -- 3. Kant and the unfair sex -- 4. Kant's Orientalism: Islam, 'race' and ethnicity -- 5. Egypt, parerga and a question of veils -- 6. Ourself behind ourself, concealed -- 7. Antinomies of the female -- 8. Nietzsche and the genealogy of the sublime -- 9. Nietzsche's naked goddess: reconfiguring the sublime -- 10. Terror now and then

Note Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-218) and index

Description x, 226 p. : ill. ; 24 cm

ISBN 9780415148108 (hbk.)

0415148103 (hbk.)

0415148111 (pbk.)

9780415148115 (pbk.)

9780203945612 (ebk.)

0203945611 (ebk.)

Willy

I assume you already know that your  question has been a highly active matter  in feminist circles for 30 years. See for instance :

Germaine Greer. The Obstacle Race. 1979.

One of my colleagues, Antoinette Lafagre organises wikipedia editathons to reinsert women back into the historical record.

Concha Diez-Pastori

well said. In some countries, women are still not full citizens. And it hasn't been so long in the 'civilised' west, as you explain.

Another crucial article to read is Linda Nochlin's "Why are there no great women artists"?  Since then, there are have several surveys of women in art history, and monographs on nearly every major woman artists, and there is an entire museum in Washington DC called The National Museum of Women in the Arts.

If the traditional, somewhat artificial distinctions like art/crafts and major/minor arts are discarded, and the aesthetics of textiles are given their rightful place in the history of art, much long-neglected material comes to light. I strongly suspect that textiles produced by women in domestic settings can be a window into feminine aesthetics in ancient, medieval, modern, and traditional cultures through time and space. Art history still tends to place a higher value on artistic forms traditionally dominated by men, and this is another form of gender discrimination.

Something similar may be found by looking at ceramic art, at least in some cultural contexts.

Materials and techniques alone are not valid criteria for defining what may be classified as art and what may not. That these criteria have been abused in this way is part of the problem, as I see it.

10 Influential Women of Art Throughout History;

• Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842)
• Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
• Harriet Powers (1837–1910)
• Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887–1986)
• Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)
• Caterina van Hemessen (1528–1587)
• Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625)
• Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653)
• Marianne North (1830–1890)
• Beatrix Potter (1866–1943)

There are so many brilliant and interesting women who have created artwork in a variety of media throughout all of history.   I implore you to read on about the lives of historical and contemporary artists in a variety of disciplines.

Thanks for alle these interesting answers!

Dear Concha:

We are getting into the spiny problems of the contemporary definitions of arts, which is a labyrinth with no end, as each person is free to accept, invent, or adapt her/his own definition. I understand and respect what you are saying, which is essentially a reformulation of what our generations were taught when we were younger than we are today.

I would like to emphasize that materials and techniques (e.g. textiles and fired clay, or on the other hand sculpture and painting) alone are not inextricably tied to the dichotomy of useful/nonuseful. These are potentially independent variables which should be treated separately if we are to see the problem clearly.

The other thing I would like to point out is that the utilitarian or nonutilitarian nature of an object or act is independent of its potential aesthetic impact and its power to communicate ideas, sensations, and feelings. Your example of architecture as art shows this, and the exception you accept in this category may be extended to other forms of expression, if one chooses to do so.

Aesthetic impact (I use this word in the wide, nontraditional sense) and visual communication are at the heart of what we today call "art," which is often a very different concept that that found in cultures other than the contemporary West. Hence my call to rethink our traditional conceptual categories, which can become more of a hinderance than an aid to understanding ourselves and the consecuences of our bodily interactions with our material and social contexts.

Best regards from Guanajuato,

David

To llustrate the potential of fired clay as an expressive medium, I would like to present one of the anthropomorphic sculptures from the Late Preclassic (ca. 600-200 BC) and Protoclassic (ca. 200 BC- AD 200) site of Chupícuaro, in my home state of Guanajuato, in north central Mexico. I don´t know if feminine or masculine hands modeled the clay and painted the figure with colored slips before burnishing and firing it, but the former hypothesis is viable, as there is a tradition of female ceramists in Mesoamerica. The piece represented here (you may click on the thumbnail for a closer look) is one of the most highly prized objects in the collections of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, and is used as its emblem and logo, indicating recognition of this object from within one of the influential centers of the Western art establishment.

Its utilitarian or nonutilitarian nature is open for discussion. Does its probable ritual use and inclusion in the burial of a deceased human being count as "utilitarian"? Have there ever been "art" objects with absolutely no use for society or individuals?

You can see its use as a logo here:

http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/

Image source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Chupicuaro_(Mus%C3%A9e_du_Quai_Branly_au_palais_du_Louvre_Pavillon_des_Sessions)_(3709958999).jpg

For an admirable explanation of the aesthetics of weaving as feminine art, please see:

Janet Catherine Berlo "Beyond bricolage: Women and aesthetic strategies in Latin American textiles," in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology), no. 22, Autumn 1992, pp. 115-134.

If you have JSTOR access you can download it here:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166857?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

If you don't, there is a partial view at Google Books:

https://books.google.com.mx/books?hl=es&lr=&id=Yk-vlHYi8cQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA437&dq=chiapas+textiles+morriss&ots=PIsu0dBXy6&sig=lvOdSOxnblZKFPN0AjaItB-zVGU#v=onepage&q=chiapas%20textiles%20morriss&f=false

I am attaching an image of a huipil, or pullover tunic, by way of illustration, from this page:

https://livingtextilesofmexico.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/textile-shopping-in-san-cristobal-chiapas/

And another, showing the visual effect that these textiles are meant to create, from here:

http://tramatextiles.org/

The fact that these creations were made to be worn enhances their aesthetic impact. The display of the huipil garment in the photo as a disembodied object doesn't do justice to its role in the visual and tactile enhancement of a woman's body. Bodily adornment is probably one of the earliest forms of aesthetic expression and visual language, going back to the Middle Paleolithic (ca. 300,000-50,000 BC). It is an essential part of our nature.

Sorry, Concha, I didn't mean to imply anything personal by posting Berlo's article. Please look beyond the title; she explains what I was trying to say about textiles as an essentially feminine art form better than I can.

As I stated three posts back, everyone has their own conceptual view on what can be labeled with the linguistic sign "art." To clarify my perspective, I should explain that I am at present struggling to bring my understanding of this concept into alignment with recent advances in the nature of human experience, on a biological and phenomenological level, including (but going beyond) the anthropological dimension. To do so, I am compelled to discard the ethnocentric (or eurocentric), sexist, and/or elitist undercurrents found in many contemporary expressions of art theory and criticism. The goal is to enrich the study, practice and teaching of art to the point where meaningful multi- inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration can flower. Important steps have been taken by many people, but there is still much that needs to be rethought. I don't know how far we can go with this, but the journey has been fascinating.

Dear Concha:

Just to be clear, my objection to "ethnocentric (or eurocentric), sexist, and/or elitist undercurrents found in many contemporary expressions of art theory and criticism" was not directed at you, but rather to the field of art in general, although I was thinking more of the discipline of art history, since this is the area we are discussing here.

I would like to add another thought. The phrase "art history" is problematic when one studies the aesthetic creations from cultures other than the last few centuries in the West, since the concept of "art" is a creature of this specific cultural frame.

This brings us back to Willy's initial question. If we loosen up our definitions of "art" a bit, widening the scope to include aesthetic creations without the traditional constraints, we can more easily locate, appreciate, and understand the creations of the feminine half of humanity. That is what I was suggesting in my initial post on this thread.

Warm regards,

David

Hello David, Concha, Willy, all,

Willy - this thread seems to have taken on a life of its own :) Are you still there?

Concha - Virginia Woolf - put it succinctly with the idea that a woman writer needs 'a room of one's own;.

Yes, art practice, in our social contexts, is a practice of those who can afford it. However we must not generalise over history or cultures.  In the Rennaissance, Michelangelo, Donatello, Giotto, Brunelleschi and the rest were guns-for-hire. They did the bidding of their rich partrons.

Have any of you seen The Ascent of Woman. by Amanda Foreman.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0693y0j

She makes an interesting argument that the 'barbaria' cultures were much more gender equal than the great empires (assyrian, babylonian, greek, etc)

David (Hi :) - "I am at present struggling to bring my understanding of this concept into alignment with recent advances in the nature of human experience, on a biological and phenomenological level, including (but going beyond) the anthropological dimension."

Right - Feminist art history - or historiography - has asked pertinent questions about the work of all the subjugated others - women, indigenes, the colonised... In the process it asks questions about art/craft, which (you will be unsurprised to know) I see as a version of the patriarchally inflected mind/body dual. I do think art history has been for most of its history,  a paradigm humanist/colonialist/patriarchal discipline, and as such, all its axiomatic assumptions are up for critique.

> the nature of human experience, on a biological and phenomenological level,

as David knows, I'm running a conference on this topic in December.(He's taking part)

A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts

see

sites.uci.edu/bok2016

SP

The classic answer to this question is in Linda Nochlin's 1971 article, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists." Definitely read this if you genuinely are interested in the question. 

http://www.artnews.com/2015/05/30/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists/

Here’s more from Mesoamerica.

On folio 30 recto of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (attached; please click for a closer look), a 16th century pictorial and alphabetic manuscript from central Mexico, we see a woman painting a codex. A flowery line connects her to the Aztec ruler Huitzilihuitl, whose children she bore, since his official wife was barren. It is exceptional to see a woman painting a codex, as this activity was usually the domain of men. Her name was Painter, according to a text in Castilian at the bottom of the page, not visible here.

I don’t think this makes her more of an “artist” than the women who wove textiles, and most of them did in ancient Mesoamerica. The mathematical thinking required to combine colored fibers in patterns on a back-strap loom, and the bodily interaction with the materials, require at least as great a degree of training, skill, and sensitivity. The geometric designs woven and embroidered into the cloth often reflected, reformulated, and expressed (and continue to do so, in some regions of Mexico and Central America) a profound sense of harmonious union with natural forces, codifying a woman’s role at the center of a living, sentient cosmos.

Also attached is a detail of folio 60 recto of the Codex Mendoza, another Aztec manuscript painted after the Spanish Conquest, showing a mother teaching her 14 year old daughter to weave in a domestic setting. Infant girls were given symbolic instruments for weaving during ceremonies where ritual formulae for guiding their development were pronounced.

(The two tortillas, by the way, show the proper amount of corn that should be consumed by a young lady of 14 to maintain a healthy body. Of course, hand-made tortillas cooked on a clay griddle are more substantial than the contemporary, industrially produced variety.)

Dear Willy,

In my current research work about the history of Art Education in Belgium I found that, although it wasn't perhaps their intention, women played an important part in the proces of autonomisation of fine arts (i.e. painting), especially against church and noblemen. In this case, the restrictions to which women were subjected proved to offer advantages.

I hope I'll be able to finish and to publish my work next year.

Sincerely,

Peter

Mary Cassatt - an interesting case. I will soon have my article about her published.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20161019-the-great-women-artists-that-history-forgot?ocid=fbcul

Dear Willy,

Thank you for this Information.

You are probably aware of the exhibition which takes place at this moment in Félicien Rops Museum of Namur about female painters around 1900.

I am preparing a publication about the question of the authorship of "Fountain". The author of this urinal which got attributed to Marcel Duchamp may actually be the dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

Dear Willy,

For your consideration as an artist of huge impact:

Käthe Kollwitz

A beautiful person as well as the pre-eminent graphic artist of the twentieth century. I first discovered her in my youth and have already lauded her contributions elsewhere her on RG. Allow me to offer samples as well as some pictures (she was an exceptionally beautiful person, inside and out). Also note: she made posters of astounding impact.

thanks, Karl

and then there's Angelica Kauffmann

But lest we neglect women art historians, I submit for your consideration Linda Schele.

My own documented academic background is largely in art history. I like to think of the discipline as cover for polymaths. In the 19th century, it seems that rural clergymen provided a means of living for those with wide ranging interests. In the twentieth, art history provided the same although its not much by way of means, trust me.

Linda Schele was trained as an art historian but most know her as one of the great Mayanists of our time (Maya = cultural aspect, Mayan = language group). Refer to her work such as "Forest of Kings" and "Maya Cosmos". These are steep volumes - don't go there without expecting the hard work of serious subject engagement.

Once again, thanks for the topic. I hope I have provided some useful information.

warm regards, Karl

A very interesting Polish female painter - Olga Boznańska

http://www.artinconnu.com/2008/06/olga-boznaska-1865-1940.html

What I hoped to find is a study in the sense of "L'Archéologie du savoir" by Michel Foucault (1969). 

He showed that history is not what it seems wheen thoroughly scientific investigated. 

One of the answers could be that art & crafts ought to be playing a mayor role in  art history

The global ecological society we are living in has to find one way or another to art history - and this cannot be realized uniquely from the Western (white - male) point of view.

- So new art history will not only be a gender issue but also an ethnical - may be they both come together? 

Dear Jill Walker Rettberg,

Thanks for this most interesting article by Linda Nochlin.

Written in 1971-  it kept all of its actuality!

I share her "nominalistic" views on art and the artist's identity:

"art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, “influenced” by previous artists, and, more vaguely and superficially, by “social forces,” 

but rather, that the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure, and are mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator, artist as he-man or social outcast."

May I also recall that my question here above was:

- “What about women in art history?”

which is the opposite of asking:

- “Why have there been no great women artists?””

In the fist case you ASUME that there were - but kept invisible - So why?

In the second case you ASUME that there none (Nochlin)

I am more optimistic than Nochlin's stand on woman's art history - I am more in the Foucault's idea of historical research ( "L'Archéologie du savoir" (1969). Which questions the "golden nugget—Genius" myth.

This research should be done by women scientists - here's why:

An another problem is gender and language:

I liked the Pablo - Pablita question - but how would this article be understood if Nochlin turned out te be a man?

Why is it that men are excluded of the feminist point of view?

Men never can be called "feminist" - as women never can be called "paternalist".

Being male  always is some suspicious when feminisme is concerned.

In every word a man OR a woman is speaking.

(In French-, German-, Italian- (...) grammar the speaker can only be a man or a woman - there is no gramatical in-between.)  

So gender is language.

best wishes,

Willy

Hello, Willy and participants here,

Greetings from Tucson, Arizona.

My training is in rhetoric, so I often posit a scenario with speakers and hope that I do justice to their various perspectives.

In answer to why there are feminist art historians, I believe past replies here have mentioned that women feature by orders of astronomical magnitude more as muses to male artists and as subjects of the male gaze.

When men object to "PC" in academic and aesthetic studies, they often long for the good unity that used to exist in a culture before various self-interested identity groups have broken things up to suit themselves.  I hope that is an accurate representation of the opposition to feminist art history.

Because no comprehensive motivation study has been conducted, at least some of the feminist art historians recognize that the default model of human--that one when all "non-essential" traits and perspectives have been erased in the cause of unity--will undoubtedly be male.  Therefore, males have nothing to lose if a feminist art history perspective were to vanish.  But some women in the field of art believe that this will be a setback for them, taking away their perspective on art. (And in art we know how important perspective is.)

I also share the optimistic view that more wonderful and interesting women (and all manner of) artists will continue to be found as long as we actively want to find them.

That is, as long as finding certain types of finds remain important and not dismissed.

Hope this adds to the discussion.

is this a serious question?  there are numerous feminist art-historical texts that have answered this question.

 I concur with Concha. In many disciplines, many males-in-power, in many countries,  clung to their power or were simply ignorant.

Robert Summers is correct that some courageous feminist historian activists made the case a generation ago that the question 'why are there no great women artists' could and should be asked. Similar questions were being asked in the sciences, literature, philosophy, etc. It was all part of the great feminist awakening in the Euro/English speaking world at least.

However, we should not forget that whileChina gave equal rights to women in 1947 (?), and the USA has not managed to do it yet. The current generation of young women seem largely oblivious to the battles fought on their behalf, and the current US administration isn't exactly proactive on that front :(

Dear all,

An emerging problem is likely to be that art scientists, - critics and historians more and more have had professionalized training:

"they reed but they don't look at art anymore"

They become the traject followers of works and reduce aesthetics to the narrative. But to be able to make discoveries of woman artists out of the past - you need to be trained in aesthetic appreciation.

(you need to start by looking at the work because there is no trajectory).

Dear Colleague Willi,

Just to clarify for myself, are you saying that the scientific analysis of materials in artwork runs counter to an aesthetic appreciation?

Then if this is so, then "discovery" of female artists may be harder to achieve because the angle of materials science that is now being applied is a different set of concerns, uninterested in gender of the artist?

Thanks for this thought-provoking post.

Gloria

Dear Gloria,

Today in Belgium, the originality of a series paintings by Kandinsky and Malevich - now on display at the museum in Ghent - is highly questioned by experts.

These 10 critics, specialized in Russian avant garde, never SAW the work, and don't mention any aesthetic argument - they only doubt the originality because of the traject history these works lack.

These critics can be right or wrong, and I know that art indeed is context related - but the point I want to make here is:

I cannot help notice that more and more (young) critics, even art scientists todayy, have had a training focussed on the "traject narrative" and that aesthetic research was pushed to the background.

What is important is:

- Where does it come from?

- Who owned it?

- What says history about the signification?

They are not trained to look at paintings anymore.

Personally I find a basic training in drawing should be part of their subject matter (live modeldrawing for instance). Because it can produce a way to discover aesthetic experiences and techniques.

(when you have tried to paint you know how painting feels and you can better appreciate a painting)

To discover woman artist of the past (these which have no traject history!) aesthetic training of art critics and - scientist becomes more than a necessity!

Best wishes,

Willy

Thanks, Willy. Is this similar to provenance? I appreciate what you are saying. An analogy is where doctors used to be able to do a physical exam and feel the thyroid, for instance, to know it had a growth. Now they miss it unless ordering a sonogram.

Women may no have this track they looks for. Interesting point.

Yes, Gloria, indeed, provenance, the history (trajectory, reception history, owners, ... and so on) - all but the aesthetic experience by looking at the painting - as a the physical exam by a physician, indeed.

The Aesthetic experience has to be learned and refined, worked on, it's "training" in the real sense of the word.

Visiting museums, looking at paintings an extended time (lately I asked some painters what was the longest time they had ever looked constantly at one painting on display in a museum. Some of them said without hesitation: "two hours")

Thanks for your reaction

Willy

This is really an interesting question.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/stop-reading-start-looking

ZINAIDA SEREBRIAKOVA

Art Movement: Symbolism, Expressionism, Art Deco

Painting School: Mir Iskusstva (World of Art)

Self portrait at the dressing table (1909)

Throughout the centuries, women have been involved in making art, whether as creators and innovators of new forms of artistic expression, patrons, collectors, sources of inspiration, or significant contributors as art historians and critics.

Women have been and continue to be integral to the institution of art, but despite being engaged with the art world in every way, many women artists have found opposition in the traditional narrative of art history. They have faced challenges due to gender biases, from finding difficulty in training to selling their work and gaining recognition

Olga Antonovna Lagoda-Shishkina (1850-1881) - Russian landscape painter, student and second wife of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin.

Born April 3, 1850 in St. Petersburg - the daughter of the actual state councilor Anton Ivanovich Lagoda.

She was one of the women among the first thirty pupils admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts; as an entertainer, visited her in 1875-1876, then studied in the workshop of Shishkin, becoming his wife in 1880.

Participated in an academic exhibition in 1881. In 1881-1882, her work was exhibited at the 9th exhibition of Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki) and the All-Russian Exhibition in Moscow.

She died in the village of Rozhdestveno of St. Petersburg Province, near the Siverskaya station, where she was buried. On the marble monument there is an inscription: "The wife of Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts Olga Antonovna Shishkina, born Lagoda, was born on April 3, 1850, died July 25, 1881."

In 1899 in St. Petersburg was a memorial exhibition of the artist's works (together with I. Shishkin and F. A. Vasiliev).

The works of Lagoda-Shishkina are in the State Tretyakov Gallery ("The Girl in the Grass", "Rye") and the State Russian Museum ("Forest", "Flowers in the Forest").

In the world of painting there are both male artists and female artists. Unfortunately, we should admit that few women artists know. Everyone knows only a few names, among them, for example, such as Frida Kahlo, Zinaida Serebryakova, Natalia Goncharova, Margaret Keen. Moreover, many art lovers will not even mention these wonderful creators. Meanwhile, the famous artists of the past and the present are in no way inferior to male artists. Their painting is as talented, virtuosic, original and even, what's there to hide, in the art market is valued quite expensive.

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Women in Art History

Artistic Representation of the Female Gender from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

KATRYNA SANTA CRUZ

📷

Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, 1555-6; Wikipedia

Introduction

Art is a product of its time. It is a result of the social, political, and religious context in which it was made. Because of its consequential nature, it has become the center of focus for historians interested in revisionist theories about the representation of its subjects. This research guide has compiled sources of information that lend itself to a research paper on the representation of women in art history. The sources in this research guide form connections between art and history to provide arguments for or against the idea of a factual representation of women in art.

The guide consists of a General Overview section with sources that cover a broad sense of the representation of women in art in several art periods but focusing on Victorian Art, Renaissance Art, and Art of the Enlightenment. Other sections in this research guide include Representation of Rape in Art History, Women in Religious Art and Imagery, Gender Neutrality in Art, Gender Differences in Art, and Sexuality and Eroticism in Art.

📷

Manet, Olympia, 1865; Wikipedia

General Overview

• FEMINISM AND ART HISTORY: QUESTIONING THE LITANY

In Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, authors Norma Broude and Mary Garrard place art production in social context. Through several essays, the authors show how the social, political, and religious circumstances of different art periods affect the way women were represented. Feminism and Art History includes a wide range of art periods including Egyptian Pharaoh Art, Roman Art, Medieval Art, 18th and 20th-century art and concludes with American quilts. The authors spread the content of the essays among different regions in Europe which I feel is essential to a study on the representation of women in art as it lends itself as an enciclopediac-like source for all of Europe, rather than just one country or region.

I feel this source is critical in doing research on the representation of women in art as it offers variety in content relative to the thesis, extensive evidence to support its arguments, and a generally unbiased presentation of information as it seeks to create a new art history rather than simply working with the modern version.

Broude, N. & D Garrard, M. Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

Yes, there are plenty of individual painters who happen to be women. Many of the female painters who started painting in the 1970s have met with adversity in the current retrograde atmosphere in the United States. I am sure I need not explicate in detail what this means rhetorically. (My field.)

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party was a formidable assemblage of the names of women artists, gods, and herstorical persons from the past. Her cry for recognition for Woman as Creator of Art sent out waves around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/arts/design/01party.html

And there is a book by Chicago wherein she speaks about her struggles.

The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage

LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Party-Symbol-our-Heritage/dp/0385145675/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1517838097&sr=8-3&

keywords=Judy+Chicago&dpID=51T96f1MJGL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

I gained some hope that woman artists would have the ability to see for themselves from some of these current and past artists. But the current emphasis on cosmetic beauty at the top of the political structure, the Barbie Doll, and Keen ideal of big-eyed little girls, is coming back.

My history professor friend, Prof. Fred Kellogg, here in Arizona said that everything comes in as a pendulum. Some of us wonder how far this Foucaultian retrograde swing must go before we can breathe again.

Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) "Sant' Antonio di Padova in adorazione del Bambin Gesù." 1662 Chiesa di SS. Leonardo e Orsola (Bologna).

A couple of images I forgot to include from Chicago's The Dinner party...

Giulia Elisabetta Lama (Venezia, 1º ottobre 1681 – Venezia, 7 ottobre 1747)

Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) was the first woman to become member of the Academia di Bel Arti in Florence

Oh, I *see*. Very good, Artemisia Gentilschi.

Galizia Fede, natura morta.

Sofonisba Anguissola (Cremona, 1532- Palermo, 1625)

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) - Danaë(1612)

Artemisia Gentileski - Self-Portrait in the Image of the Martyr

Artemisia Gentileski - Esther before Artaxerxes

Artemisia Gentileski - Adoration of the Magi

***

Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian pronunciation: [arteˈmizja dʒentiˈleski]; July 8, 1593 – c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

She painted many pictures of strong and suffering women from myths and the Bible – victims, suicides, warriors.[2]

Her best-known work is Judith Slaying Holofernes (a well-known medieval and baroque subject in art), which "shows the decapitation of Holofernes, a scene of horrific struggle and blood-letting". That she was a woman painting in the seventeenth century and that she was raped and participated in the prosecution of the rapist long overshadowed her achievements as an artist. For many years she was regarded as a curiosity. Today she is regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_Gentileschi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Slaying_Holofernes_(Artemisia_Gentileschi)

Bertha Morisot

Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French: [mɔʁizo]; January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.

In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar.

She was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthe_Morisot

I have learnt a lot going through the discourse.

Elisabetta Sirani

Artemisia Gentileschi

As a peacenik, I am sorry to see this, but that's art history for you.

I am familiar with many of these artists, but good to see them again. Gentileschi is not one that I know. Very interesting, though violent at times. I have to wonder what is going on to make her want to paint such scenes.

Dear Gloria,

- Camille Paglia can help us out here: "Art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson" -

(I can prefer a work in art history, but History is not mine, - that could be a definition of it)

The problem today is that we look at art from the past in a nowadays photographic, realistic, documentary point of view - which was not possible before the 19th century.

This is about myth and allegory - although the scientific observation has played its part from the renaissance on (1450)(1425).

Willy

Dear Willy,

In teaching college English we also emphasize the dangers of anachronistic evaluation of the past. Thanks for the Paglia referral.

Here at RG the mind is constantly being challenged!

Gloria

I have learnt from this discussion more than I thought

Dear Gloria,

not "evaluation" but "signification" -

Things mean what they mean because of their history.

Without history there is no meaning possible (nor a "history of meaning").

The perspective of time changes indeed -

( readings, interpretations can change over time,

Especially in art - this is what makes a great work of art - when it possesses the power to continually instigate a renewal of interpretation over ages, when it can keep track of time, and keeps on being actual, universal, human, ... (that's history also).)

But the "modernist" approach (out of the context in time) interpretation of religious texts have led to human disasters, and fundamentalism.

Anachronism = "isolated in time" = no possible evolution anymore, no other possibility of signification than that what it has represented in the past.

The popular TV-series "The Flintstones" give a good example of a "modernist view of prehistory" - it's funny, indeed, but is it right?

It shows how funny it is to look at the past as if it were the present.

best wishes

Willy

"The Slaying Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi, was inspired by the work of her teacher, Amerighi da Caravaggio, but to me her work is stronger, the women play a more active part, and she uses a dark background where da Caravaggio needs the furniture of a red cloth. Her work has a much greater dramatic tension.

There is a problem here at the level of presentation:

Here we see photographs on a digital screen, while we ought to see pictures in a museum - in doing so - in presenting painted pictures as if they were photo's - we bring them at the same optical level and that is technically spoken a wrong thing to do!

We place them in a reality where they do not belong.

(thats's why people like so much the impressionists - They have never seen them in a museum, only on poster, - When you meet a Monet or Manet in real live you can sense a rough gestuality never noticable on photo. People don't like that roughness in Impressionist style - but that's how they truly are.)

Welcoming a Black Female Composer Into the Canon

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/arts/music/florence-price-arkansas-symphony-concerto.html

They play Florence Price on our local classical music station sometimes. Antonin Dvorak worked with soprano Sissieretta Jones--likewise submerged in history.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxm_YMaBUUs

Amy Sherald

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-helen-frankenthaler-pioneered-new-form-abstract-expressionism?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sm-editorial-news&utm_content=fb-1-helen-frankenfurter

The Guerrilla Girls

Guerilla Girls of my dreams! They are such an example to all of us! (Maybe I will dress in Guerilla Girl suit for my library coffees in Nw Indiana)--for a book I am editing.

Let's also recall Dorothea Tanning, who married Max Ernst and was a wonderful surrealist herself! See painting "Birthday."

https://www.dorotheatanning.org/

Clara Peeters

Clara Peeters (fl. 1607–1621) was a still-life painter who came from Antwerp and trained in the tradition of Flemish Baroque painting, but probably made her career mostly in the new Dutch Republic, as part of Dutch Golden Age painting. Many aspects of her life and work remain very unclear, especially outside the period 1607 to 1621 from which period dated paintings are known. As Seymour Slive puts it "Not a single uncontested document has surfaced about her life but there is reason to believe she was active in both Flanders and Holland."]

She was unusual for her time in being a female painter, and is the earliest significant woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age; if regarded as a Flemish painter, she was the most famous Flemish woman of the 17th century. Most female Dutch painters also specialized in still lifes, which did not require knowledge of anatomy, among other advantages for women. Unlike Maria van Oosterwyck and Rachel Ruysch, who specialized in flower painting, Peeters painted mostly subjects including food, and was prominent among the artists who shaped the traditions of the Dutch ontbijtjes, "breakfast pieces" with plain food and simple vessels, and banketje, "banquet pieces" with expensive cups and vessels in precious metals. More than any other artist, her works often include careful depictions of different types of cheese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Peeters

Prof. P.F. Zabrodskii, many thanks!!

Florence Claxton. Claxton was the daughter of English painter Marshall Claxton, who trained her and her sister Adelaide. Best-known for her watercolor satirizing the Pre-Rapahelites, The Choice of Paris: An Idyll (1860), she made a living as an illustrator for books and the popular press.

"Florence Anne Claxton produced this watercolour as a satire on the work and ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites, (1848 - 1853.) It caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Portland Gallery in London (where the Pre-Raphaelites themselves had exhibited), and it was reproduced as a full-page spread in The Illustrated London News, a high-circulation national weekly magazine.

The satire is packed with references to members of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood and their paintings. Here the artist John Everett Millais (1829-1896) plays the part of Paris choosing the most beautiful of the ‘Three Graces’. He is awarding the golden apple to an angular, medieval-style figure who represents the Pre-Raphaelite ideal. The 'truth-to-nature' concept that formed the basis of most Pre-Raphaelite art is parodied by the man examining the surface of the outside wall with opera glasses." source: V&A collections

http://pastispresent.org/2014/fellowsfinds/womens-rights-brigham-young-and-graphic-novels/

https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/impressionist-master-berthe-morisot-traveling-exhibition-1286885

Check out Betye Saar here. She is an urban African American painter and printmaker who challenges stereotypes.

LINK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betye_Saar

Very intriguing quest,

I found a link in wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_women_artists

There is also link to artists from other countries. You can help to add to the list.

Thanks, Colleague Mamud Rashid.

Your examples mainly have been women given certified acknowledgment of being formally excellent in some way in art. There are current practitioners who have both formal value and humane projects. I just thought of this fused glass artist I met here in Arizona. She works with sometimes African motifs, but she is not only concerned with formal excellence of technique but also gives 25% of each sale to help end human trafficking.

I will make a guess that more women than men make a similar dual choice to not only become as good an artist as possible, but if their art is good enough to sell, to use it to help others. They are more in that artist-as-Bodhisattva mode. However, as a male Bodhisattva-artist, I saw van Gogh this way in his period with the miners in the Borinage (Belgium.)

The artist here in Arizona is LaVerne Thorpe.

LINK: https://www.allbyhand313.net/about/

“Michaelina” showcases the extraordinary talent of an artist who became very successful at a time when female artists were the exception rather than the rule. Michaelina was a contemporary of Rubens. She set herself apart from other female artists at the time because of the genres she chose to specialise in. From 1 June 2018, the MAS will host an exhibition of the work of this leading lady of the Baroque.

Mysterious Michaelina

We actually know very little about Michaelina Wautier (1604-1689). Her life is virtually undocumented. Born in Mons, the artist moved to Brussels in 1640 with her younger brother, the painter Charles Wautier. Neither of them married, and they lived together in a stately town house near the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle.

A bold palette

Wautier distinguished herself from her female colleagues because of the wide range of genres she chose to specialise in. In addition to portraits and scenes from daily life, she produced large-scale history paintings – something that even many male artists considered a daunting undertaking. To date, twenty-six of her works have been identified, testifying to her provocative themes and superior pictorial technique. She effortlessly depicted both religious themes and mythological scenes. Michaelina Wautier mastered all the contemporary genres, on both a large and a small scale, making her a unique and also extremely versatile artist.

But her real masterpiece undoubtedly is “The Triumph of Bacchus” (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). This large-scale work demonstrates her candid knowledge of the male anatomy. At the same time, the artist also chose to portray herself as the bare-breasted maenad, who also happens to be the only figure that looks the viewer squarely in the eye.

Rising star

Michaelina’s body of work is still being pieced together.  The artist is a rising star on the art market, where her work fetches remarkably high prices nowadays. “Michaelina” is the first retrospective of the work of this Baroque artist.

Michaelina’s body of work is still being pieced together.  The artist is a rising star on the art market, where her work fetches remarkably high prices nowadays. “Michaelina” is the first retrospective of the work of this Baroque artist.

Belgium Antwerp The Rubens House currently visiting the MAS | 01.06.2018 - 02.09.2018

https://www.visitantwerpen.be/en/barok/michaelina

"God" by Elsa von Freytag

(there is a discussion going on since 1920 : Could Marcel Duchamp's ready made "fountain" be attributed to her?)

About this you can read a number of arguments in my book "Marcel Duchamp - The Enigma of the Urinal - L'énigme de l'urinoir", 2017.

Dear Prof. Antonius P.Maaswinkel,

What we need right now is an important exhibition overlooking the work of Elsa von Freytag!

- Why?

If the authorship of the choice of this object should be accredited to Elsa von Freytag, then it appears in a totally different context -

- Namely that of a feminist manifest!

(and not anymore as a "ready made" in Duchamp's sense)

That's why it is now necessary to show and study the work of Elsa von Freytag.

- For reasons of emancipation.

But also to rehabilitate her work, to discover the context in which "Fountain" should have been put

- Otherwise she only will be remembered as the girl who brought Marcel Duchamp up to an idea.

best wishes

Willy

Dear Willy,

As she found and chose her first (let us nevertheless call it) "ready made" some years before, one may wonder if Duchamp was the only inventor of this genre.

Like you, I think that the urinal Elsa sent to the Independents is a feminist manifest. Maybe that she did not actually consider it a work of art, but a kind of revenge joke. This would confirm the problem of the boundaries of art, which became programmatic for the twentieth century. I think that Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven is not less important than Marcel Duchamp in art history. Unfortunately, she died too young.

While Marcel was well integrated to the, say, bourgeois art market, she was not. She was the genuine dada artist.

Further study of her work would certainly be useful. An exhibition could perhaps expand the exhibition "A lady's not a gent's" (Edinburgh, 2015) and several exhibitions on the Dada movement in New York, Berlin and Zurich, in the scope of which the issue of paternity was already raised.

Kind regards,

Peter

Dear Colleague Antonius Peter Maaswinkel ,

You wrote:

" While Marcel was well integrated to the, say, bourgeois art market, she was not. She was the genuine dada artist. "

The image of a dada artist integrated to the bourgeous art market is enough to make my cat laugh. (Can you hear him? He is rolling on the floor as I write.)

Thanks for giving me a chuckle as I work on my current painting Frederic Chopin befriended by Fantail Carp.

Too early to send an in-progress photo, but I am enjoying the coolness of the undersea world.

Marcel Duchamp became celebrated in the fifties and sixties, as Pop art emerged. And he died in 68, the year of Concept art.

So indeed, the succes during his lifetime was rather relative.

It was first of al his father, a rich French notary, that supported his sons artists (Duchamp Villon was Marcel's brother).

Dadaism took a politic turn in Germany after the war, that's why Huelsenbeck never admitted Schwitters (who was unmistakably the greatest dada artist of all time!) - Together with Man Ray, Duchamp represented Dada New York, while in Paris Dada went on the surrealist tour, (that's why the poet Tristan Tzara refused the invitation of Breton to join the French surrealist - a true Dadaist is "against" everything)

So, indeed, Gloria, dadaism combined with "bourgeois succes" sounds funny.

But remains that we all are very eager to see this overhal exhibition of the work by Elsa von Freytag - who will be the first?

Marcel was socially very adapted. Elsa was noticed by extravagant public Dada actions (e.g. walking in the streets of New York, wearing two tin cans instead of a bra) and was even referred to as a citizen of terror!

One should not lose sight of the fact that Marcel Duchamp was not only financially supported by his father, but also enjoyed the generous support of the wealthy art collector couple Arensberg. Elsa, on the other hand, lived in poverty most of the time, washing in public fountains in Philadelphia, sleeping on park benches, stealing to survive, and even being imprisoned.

When she was back in Berlin, she survived by selling newspapers on the Kurfürstendamm. There she met by chance another artist who purchased some of her sculptures, which are now in New York. She often begged for some money from friends. Whether the open gas tap, which led to her death in Paris, was an accident, is questionable.

Reading books on this subject, written by Amelia Jones, Irene Gammel, Glyn Thompson, and why not mine, should perhaps become compulsory for cats. ;-)