In Her Place
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Atlantis Vol. 11 Mo. 2 Spring! I'rintemps 1986 In Her Place: Changing Images of Women in Western Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century Mora Dianne O'Neill, Guest Curator Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery Foreword Acknowledgements In Her Place celebrates the installation of I have admired Mary Sparling since my first Mount Saint Vincent University's new president, introduction to the Mount's Art Gallery more Dr. Naomi Hersom. We believe that there can be than ten years ago. For her invitation to join the no more fitting beginning for her tenure than company of curators whose exhibitions have this provocative exhibition. Dianne O'Neill has graced these walls, and for her continuing sup• risen triumphantly to the challenge of showing port and affirmation, I cannot record sufficient woman In Her Place over four centuries of thanks. changing artistic styles. With patience, tenacity and flair she has brought together over sixty To Catherine Rubinger, who first promoted works which allow us to consider how variously the idea of an exhibition which traced the history women have been perceived. of art using images of women, and to Dr. Nina Konczacki and Dr. Wayne Ingalls, who gave We are grateful to Dianne and to the individu• generously of their time and particular skills, I als and institutions who have enabled this owe much for their continuing support, stimu• insight through their generous loans. Most espe• lation and constructive criticism as In Her Place cially do we thank the Nova Scotia Department developed out of that original idea. of Culture, Recreation and Fitness for its sup• port of this exhibition. To the participating galleries and individuals who have shared their collections with us, I am Mary Sparling, Director grateful. To the curators and other officials who Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery gave so generously of their time and expertise: Christine Boyanski and Barry Simpson at the paintings which depicted women engaged in Art Gallery of Ontario, Paul Hachey at the Bea- some form of activity, not with any particular verbrook Art Gallery, Gary Hughes at the New thesis in mind, but simply to avoid the possible Brunswick Museum, Keilor Bentley at the Owens pitfall of a static series of portraits. Art Gallery, and Armgard Zentilli at the Dal- housie Art Gallery, I repeat my thanks. Considering the options available after my initial survey, I was astounded by the strength To the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, to Judy and power registered by the images of women Dietz and Patrick Laurette, to Bernard Riordon from the two earliest centuries. None of these and Deborah Young, I owe a more profound images could have been painted by artists who debt, since it was in that venue I began to trans• considered woman to'be home-bound, child- late art from a narrow academic perspective to bound, duty-to-her-lord-and-master-bound. Sud• the broader concern of an art gallery in today's denly it seemed that the exceptional women who society. skirl the pages of history, as stone-mason and goldsmith, as shipchandler and plumber, were To the editors of Atlantis, I am especially not remarkable, but rather representative of a grateful for their willingness to print this cata• social norm now lost to our sight. logue as part of the regular issue. Mora Dianne O'Neill Woman's place, I now submit, was not con• Guest Curator, In Her Place tinuously subservient throughout history, but Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery fluctuated according to the operation of various July 1986 social, religious and economic factors. Under the pressure of middle class attitudes in the nine• Lenders to the Exhibition teenth century, however, women were edited out of history. More recent historians have too often neglected to look for, or to register, evidence of Acadia University Art Gallery the active participatory woman in earlier times, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia because they have been conditioned not to expect Art Gallery of Ontario trie presence of such activity. The challenge Beaverbrook Art Gallery issued by In Her Place is for the re-examination Dalhousie Art Gallery of primary data from earlier eras. Only then can Manuge Galleries Limited the true location of woman's place in society be New Brunswick Museum fixed through time. Nova Scotia Museum Owens Art Gallery Public Archives of Nova Scotia In Her Place: Changing Images of Women in and several private collections Western Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century Preface A work of art is not a spontaneous occur• As I write, In Her Place has been a nine month rence, but an object produced by a think• labour of love and expanding horizons. The ing, feeling, and responding individual time period is circumstantial, but its symbolism who is part of of a larger social environ• is appropriate. ment. It is the total situation that is respon• sible for the meaning inherent in the art When I began the preparations of this exhibi• object. The method, style, or form of any tion, I was looking primarily for genre or history given work indicates the ideas current at women, as reflected in paintings and prints the time and place in which it was made.1 chosen to represent middle class taste and atti• tudes.2 Venturi's approach to the study of art is funda• mental to this exhibition since In Her Place The notion that woman's place is, and always attempts to trace both a history of art and a has been, in the home, circumscribed by Kirche, history of attitudes toward women from the Kuche, Kinder, is now being refuted by social seventeenth to the twentieth century. historians.3 In Her Place adds to their voices the evidence of art. If women had always been per• Paintings are both aesthetic objects and cultu• ceived as an inferior creation, limited to a non- ral artifacts. In Her Place thus addresses two active, domestically-oriented place in society, audiences. For those who regard paintings and then it would seem logical that artists have prints as aesthetic objects, the exhibition will always portrayed women with a domestic refer- trace the artistic changes which parallel the rent and this subservient demeanor in mind. In course of history and literature. For those who Her Place challenges this basic presumption of approach the pictures as artifacts, the exhibition inferiority. These images of women, produced will chart the changing attitude toward women over four centuries and in a progression of artis• in each period. Ideally, since art is the expression tic styles, demonstrate clearly that society's atti• of human experience, these two audiences are tude toward women has not been static. complementary. Depictions of women in the Baroque and Since the twentieth century experience of the Rococo Styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth viewer is far removed from that of earlier centur• centuries suggest, in both content and form, that ies, cursory summaries of major historical women enjoyed a position of strength within changes and of scientific advancements during society at those times, and refute the conven• each stylistic period form part of the introduc• tional assertion that woman's place has always tion to each Style. History, as traditionally writ• been subservient and nurturing in the past. The ten, focused on power and its manipulation in evidence of these paintings and prints suggest society. As such, history described only the nar• instead that her limitation to a domestic place row segment of the population who wielded this did not obtain before the rapid and violent eco• power. Increasingly social historians are return• nomic upheaval occasioned by the French Revo• ing to primary sources, such as letters, wills, lution and the Industrial Revolution at the end legal documents and census records, in order to of the eighteenth century. gain some indication of the lives of the ordinary people over whom this power was exercised. In The focus of In Her Place on images of this regard, paintings and prints are not only women is too narrow to permit a rounded his• aesthetic indicators of a society, but artifacts as tory of art, but the exhibition will provide, I well, providing primary data about that society hope, an introduction to the glorious continuity uncoloured by subsequent editing. Artists, as which unites the art of the European and Ameri• members of the society in which they work, will can continents. Availability of works has natur• consciously reflect in their painting a given ally been in inverse proportion to their antiquity society's artistic taste; as representatives of that or current insurance valuation. The emphasis society, they will unconsciously reproduce its on artistic styles rather than individual master• attitudes toward women. The aim of In Her pieces, however, supplies the viewer with the Place is not to represent women's roles in society, visual clues to place any work of art in its histor- but rather to suggest each era's attitude toward ial context. The option to like, or dislike, any particular work remains, as it must, with each their permanent collections an impressive sam• individual viewer. Sympathy for the intercon• pling of works which traces the history of west• nection between a work of art and the age which ern art. produced it will help that viewer to make an Most comprehensive of the six galleries from informed decision. which the majority of the works in this exhibi• tion have been borrowed, the Art Gallery of A painting is a fragile thing. The survival of Ontario includes paintings and sculpture in its one for centuries is little short of miraculous: permanent collection to represent most major paint and canvas are subject to the deteriorating artistic styles and artists from the fourteenth cen• effects of sunlight, heat, humidity and human tury onward.