The art patriarchy never said women can’t be artists, but that they can’t be great artists.
Jonathan Jones, Making Modernism review, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2022
If ever there were an exhibition that neatly sums up the challenges of being an artist woman, it’s this one: Making Modernism at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Showcasing the work of four pioneering women working in Germany in the early 1900’s - Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin - this is an exhibition that will resonate with many artist women who visit. Many of the works haven’t been shown outside of Germany before, highlighting a fact well known by creative women, that even if locally successful, women face immense barriers to their work being shared and celebrated more widely. Solidarity Sisters! That’s what I wanted to shout as I left the viewing rooms.
I was initially drawn to this exhibition for the portraiture and how it might inform my Seeing Me project, but as I walked around the gallery it was the back story contained within the art labels that peeked my curiosity and left me feeling like these four women were long-lost art ancestors. Take this label for example:
Who would paint with oil on cardboard in the early 1900’s other than a woman who had no access to her own income stream, no access to art school, no studio filled with supplies? I viewed several pieces created on cardboard and could just imagine Paula Modersohn-Becker creeping into Otto Modersohn’s (her artist husband who was very anti-Modernism) studio to steal paint and work on whatever surface she could find, or Gabriele Münter grabbing an old canvas from Vassily Kandinsky, with whom she had a long affair. Me re-using Amazon cardboard boxes as substrates because I can’t stretch to canvas this month simply puts me in good company.
In Time Out’s excellent review of the exhibition, journalist Eddy Frankel states:
When you think the works look a bit ropey or unfinished, remember that women couldn’t attend art academies. When there’s a ten-year gap between paintings, remember that these women couldn’t just be artists, they had to be wives and they had to be mothers.
Has much really changed? Sure, women have access to art school now if they or family members have the financial means to support that education, but can we “just be artists?” Aren’t women still expected to be wives/partners and mothers/single-mothers/grandmothers and now also side-hustlers/entrepreneurs/workers? I’ve certainly never felt I could just be an artist. And of course I don’t want to give up being a wife and mum, but I don’t think that’s the point Eddy Frankel is making in his article, it’s more that I don’t and have never had the choice. The systems of care and support for creative women didn’t exist in the 1900’s and still don’t exist today. I talk with artist women all the time about how to fit an hour of creative work into their daily schedule of caring for their household, how to make a tiny studio in a corner of their home because they can’t afford to rent one outside of the house, how to break out of the themes of domesticity and “women’s work” which is so looked down upon by the art elite.
As I look over my long “career” (I use that word ironically) as an artist/designer, I can see the gaps in my portfolio where life changed and my art practice was put under pressure and the “just” being an artist snatched away: Having to give up a design course I loved because my being out of the house was problematic for my husband and kids; moving to the US to support my husband’s career and leaving behind a thriving community arts practice; caring for my terminally ill mum who lived back in the UK, 6,000 miles away. It’s no wonder there are gaps in my practice and it’s not surprising I don’t have twenty years of cohesive work.
Let me be honest, there is grief around all of that - I’m pretty sure all women live in a perpetual state of loss and grief - and it’s not that I would change anything I’ve done in my life, but imagine how different our culture would be if artist women were fully supported in their creative aspirations. What an immense loss to humanity that the artistic potential of millions of women has never been realized.
I’m reminded of Lynne Farrow’s booklet Feminism as Anarchism, in which she says:
…feminist history demonstrates how women have been lured away from their interests…
How have you been “lured away” from your creative interests over your lifetime? Let’s make a list of all the “lurings” - I don’t think that’s an actual word but it works here and I’m sure you know what I mean. Pop your lurings in the comments box!
At 51 years of age, Gabriele Münter found out that Kandinsky (remember she had been having an affair with him) had divorced his first wife and secretly married a 24 year old woman. At the time, Kandinsky was in Russia - the outbreak of World War I had necessitated his return - and Gabriele remained in Germany where she safeguarded Kandinsky’s art work, hiding it from the Germans. Hearing of his re-marriage, Gabriele understandably told Kandinsky he would never see his art again but she actually kept it hidden for years, protecting it from the Nazis during World War II. A woman, putting herself in danger to protect a man’s work - hmmm, heard that one before? Then in 1957, on her 80th birthday, she gifted over 1,000 of Kandinsky’s works to the Munich Municipal Museum. It was heralded as her “greatest gift” to the art world. I would argue that her greatest gift would have been a lifetime of her own works.
Until next time.
JC
RESOURCES
Read about the Making Modernism exhibition by clicking HERE
Eddy Frankel’s fabulous review: https://www.timeout.com/london/art/making-modernism
Read about Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter here: https://kirbykendrick.com/kandinsky-and-munter-love-affair/
Find Lynne Farrow’s booklet HERE
This resonates...hard... "I’m pretty sure all women live in a perpetual state of loss and grief" ... This whole post really. The ebb and flow of work most likely correlates with births, deaths, etc? Interesting because I've never thought of it that way. (And I use the words "birth" and "death" - not just human lives, but...personas? Jobs?