From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 01/01/03-12:06:58 AM Z
On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Shannon Stoney wrote:
> .... Why do you think women are under-represented in their survey
> of 2002? (I haven't looked at this issue yet so I don't really know the
> article you are talking about.) Does this reflect an actual
> under-representation of women in the arts? Or Art Forum's failure to
> recognize the achievement of women in the arts? Or the fact, maybe, that
> there are a lot of women making art, but relatively few who achieve the kind
> of notoriety that men do, at least in the eyes of the editors of Art Forum?
Impossible to declare one reason -- But the arguments are very much like
the ones in 1970... There were successful women then (Louise Nevelson,
Helen Frankenthaler, et al) who refused to believe there was a problem.
After all, they made it. I once wrote a letter to editor of Pop
Photography, mentioning that the current issue not only didn't show a
photograph by a woman, there was no hint that a woman could lift a camera.
He replied quite huffily that if women were any *good,* they'd show them.
(About 1980. I'll put the letter up for auction one day.)
I suggest a few reasons for current lack of representation: Look again at
the NY Times magazine. That is, it's the culture. Women are marginalized
& minimized IN THE GENERAL MEDIA. I saw a magazine cover today for someone
named "Jack" -- a guy in his 70s, full page, rugged hero look. Now
imagine that same picture for a woman in her 70s.... Done laughing?
As noted on this list, there ARE no women in the country over 39.
Certainly they do not appear in the mass media. There are no movie roles
for them, and their roles at the top in government are relatively few....
as (not) seen in the first section of the NY Times. In other words,
editors are part of their culture, even art editors.
Then, too, women generally are asleep at the switch. Because they are
treated more respectfully in academia (and women have done well in
professorships, et al -- perhaps because those jobs are easier to count,
and the qualifications are more objective, and similar reasons) they
don't realize the world isn't that way. They have careers, sometimes fine
ones, but they're losing ground. (Check the auction news.) A cadre of
younger women painters and photographers is coming up -- whether they will
stay or fade remains to be seen... I notice the lack in Artforum because
it's one of the two I read.... and provocative. And I read the NY Times.
The magazine section has become appalling.
A journalist I know says it's because the magazine's editors are gay men.
I have no way of knowing if they are, or if that's the reason -- In fact
the gay men I know are close to many women... but that may be why I know
them. But a few weeks ago, for instance, the magazine's cover blurbs were
for 4 "exciting" men... and one dead woman. That is, the point of
interest was that she had died suddenly.
> Thirty years ago there may have been actual discrimination against women in
> the arts, and there may have been institutional barriers to women then. But
> if such things still exist, they are hard to detect.
What do you mean, hard to detect? Can you count?
> It seems to me that in
> academia especially, and in the larger art world too, being a woman can be a
> real advantage, in that art departments are seeking women for faculty
> positions. If there is a choice between two candidates who are equally
> qualified, a man and a woman, most departments nowadays will choose the
> woman. I know this happened at my former university.
Right. But that doesn't get you into Artforum. In fact, like affirmative
action, it diminishes the prestige of the position.
> So why this apparent lingering scarcity of wommen of high achievement in
the
> arts? I think it may have to do with the fact that even when institutional
> barriers to achievement are lifted, women still have their own biology to
> deal with: childbearing for women has to happen between the ages of about
> 20 and 40, which are also the years where most people of high achievement
> are building their careers. I think in my next lifetime I might choose to
> be childless.
Among the artists I know, there is no correlation between artworld success
and childbearing. Some of the most successful women artists do have
children, some don't. (Although of the ones I know, none have more than
one.)
> I'm glad I had a child this time, and I'm glad I put all the
> time into it that I did, and the results were great; but if I really wanted
> to be a very successful, recognized artist, I would have to let that go. I
> think this may be true for men too, since nowadays fathers are expected to
> be very involved with the raising of their children.
If you've done your footwork early, child bearing can be overcome. But you
should have gone to the right school, made the right friends, had the
right mentor, and hung out at the right art bars....
But judging only by those I know about, some women with children "made
it," and some without didn't, so using childbearing as an explanation is
rationalization -- for results of a cultural tilt.
But you might try some counting of your own. How many women artists has
Jed Perl written about? And the New Yorker????
J.
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