WOMEN AND ARTS : 75 QUOTES Compiled by Antoni Gelonch-Viladegut For the Gelonch Viladegut Collection website Paris, March 2011 1 SOMMARY A GLOBAL INTRODUCTION 3 A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN’S ARTISTS 5 1. The Ancient and Classic periods 5 2. The Medieval Era 6 3. The Renaissance era 7 4. The Baroque era 9 5. The 18th Century 10 6. The 19th Century 12 7. The 20th Century 14 8. Contemporary artists 17 A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 19 75 QUOTES: WOMEN AND THE ART 21 ( chronological order) THE QUOTES ORDERED BY TOPICS 30 Art’s Definition 31 The Artist and the artist’s work 34 The work of art and the creation process 35 Function and art’s understanding 37 Art and life 39 Adjectives’ art 41 2 A GLOBAL INTRODUCTION In the professional world we often speak about the "glass ceiling" to indicate a situation of not-representation or under-representation of women regarding the general standards presence in posts or roles of responsibility in the profession. This situation is even more marked in the world of the art generally and in the world of the artists in particular. In the art history women’s are not almost present and in the world of the art’s historians no more. With this panorama, the historian of the art Linda Nochlin, in 1971 published an article, in the magazine “Artnews”, releasing the question: "Why are not there great women artists?" Nochlin throws rejects first of all the presupposition of an absence or a quasi-absence of the women in the art history because of a defect of " artistic genius ", but is not either partisan of the feminist position of an invisibility of the women in the works of art history provoked by a sexist way of the discipline. For Nochlin, the lesser presence of the women in the art history explains by the fact that the women simply saw each other spread from the apprenticeship and from the practice of the art for historic and cultural reasons. Nevertheless, although in Europe, since time the most put off until contemporary periods, the visual arts were in very big majority makes him men, the women played well and truly a role in the artistic production. During the last decades, the art historians, and especially Griselda Pollock, tried to rediscover the biographies of the women artists, to indicate their masterful contribution to the modern and postmodern art and to incorporate them into the art history. In 2006, the book "Women Artists at the Millennium ", taken out of a conference (University of Princeton, on 1999) on: "Why are not there great women artists? - 30 years later ", show the change obtained since the 70s. Several problems set up themselves in front of whom wants to draw the outlines of a history of the women in the art. The very first is, for numerous periods, the shortage in bibliographic data on the artists. This lack of data is striking all the more for the feminine biographies, which they represent historically only a minority among the artists. Manuscript medieval anonymity is also one of the biggest problems posed to the historians. The women were often victims of discrimination in all the artistic domains where the productions were not signed, such the weaving, the embroidery or still the lace manufacturing. During the ancient Middle Age, the illumination of manuscripts was an activity to which dedicated themselves as well the monks as the nuns. Although some artists' names leaked out during this period, the very vast majority of the illuminators remain unknown. So, no information is available for artists' whole pieces. 3 In the light of these working activities of the textile and the manuscripts, another problem is highlighted: that of the longevity of the production. These artistic productions are indeed realized in materials possessing an extreme sensibility to the outer elements, as the light, the temperature or the mold. In it is added the use of these productions, clothing and practical objects, mined by the wear and the human damages. This explains the tiny part of textiles and manuscripts produced by women still at our disposal. In the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, of numerous women artists work in studios, supervised by men, often their own father; there is no track of women in the head of a workshop. The productions of studios were signed by master, to mean a quality of the production, and not to individualize the work: it is thus difficult to differentiate the productions of different artists of the same studio. Another problem is the abandonment of the maiden name at the time of the marriage: it complicates the searches, in particular when a work of unknown origin is signed by the name of family and by a simple initial for the first name. Furthermore, references on the artists allow researches only by the surname, and not by the first name. The precise definition of the identity is nevertheless in the heart of the western concept of the "artistic genius", the creations of which should be able to be clearly centered, individualized and studied with regard to the creations of the other artists. The fact remains that when it is a question of redrawing the route of a woman artist, even the most trivial bibliographic data can mislead. So, we can assert that Jane Frank was born in 1918, while in reality, it is Jane Schenthal (Jane Frank no "was born" that 20 years later, by getting married): if we base ourselves on the surname, the searches become a real assault course. So, the loss of the maiden name at the time of the marriage, allied to a system of historic searches based on the surname, engenders a transfer of the identity of the women as social class, and muddles up the searches(researches) on the women artists as particular individuals. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we were able to attend a revalorization of the artistic work of the women by the men. Certain traders without scruples even went as far as falsifying signatures, as in the case of Judith Leyster's paintings, dishonestly attributed to Franz Hals. On the contrary, in the 20th century, the haste to acquire women's paintings led to attribute wrongly some works to women painters. 4 A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN’S ARTISTS 1. The Ancient and Classic periods. Women artists have been involved in making art in most times and places, despite difficulties in training, travelling and trading their work, and gaining recognition. In the West the Middle Ages were possibly a better period for women artists than most of the early modern period. In the latter part of the 20th Century, historians have endeavored to rediscover the artistic accomplishments of women and to give these artists their due place in the narrative of art history. Among the earliest historical records of Europe concerning individual artists, Pliny the Elder wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt. Some modern critics posit that Battle of Issus might not have been the work of Philoxenus, but of Helena of Egypt. One of the few named women painters who might have worked in Ancient Greece, she was reputed to have produced a painting of the battle of Issus which hung in the Temple of Peace during the time of Vespasian. 5 2. The Medieval era. In the Medieval era Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is a particularly fine example of a German Medieval intellectual and artist. She wrote The Divine Works of a Simple Man, The Meritorious Life, sixty-five hymns, a miracle play, and a long treatise of nine books on the different natures of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, minerals, and metals. From an early age, she claimed to have visions. When the Papacy supported these claims by the headmistress, her position as an important intellectual was galvanized. The visions became part of one of her seminal works in 1142, Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord), which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias, as exemplified in the first illustration, showing Hildegard experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen, differ greatly from others created in Germany during the same period. They are characterized by bright colors, emphasis on line, and simplified forms. While Hildegard likely did not pen the images, their idiosyncratic nature leads one to believe they were created under her close supervision. The 12th century saw the rise of the city in Europe, along with the rise in trade, travel, and universities. These changes in society also engendered changes in the lives of women. Women were allowed to head their husbands' businesses, if they were widowed. The movement to printing, and of book illustration to the printmaking techniques of woodcut and engraving, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists. Outside Europe, the products of female work have in most cultures tended to be classed as applied art or crafts rather than fine art, and often produce objects with a use other than as an artwork. There are relatively few cultures where many women have played major roles in creating the local form of fine art. This may be because of the physical effort involved, for example in sculpture, and because travel, much more difficult for women for social reasons, has often been essential in an artist's career. There are exceptions: "For about three thousand years, the women - and only the women - of Mithila have been making devotional paintings of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon.