“Women’s Art”: The Myth in Our Western Social Construction
Part I: Introduction
If we glace at what we know of the canonical history of Western art, there seem to be obvious differences between art made by men and women. Women often use similar mediums to each other, have a unique aesthetic, and make art dictated by a female sensibility. Some would say that women have made simply worse art than men, for example creating small-scale pieces of craft that could never rival the Great Michelangelo’s David. The Western art historical canon paints a specific picture of women, destined to make less successful art than their male counterparts because of their biology. However, a more critical and sophisticated look at Western art history brings to light the failures of the canon that, instead of being built on genuine virtuosity and greatness, is influenced by a series of damaging and borderline mythological social constructs about sex.
Part II: The Foundations of Western Social Construction
When we discuss the differences between anything created by men and women, we must first analyse the societal structures and narratives in which sex-differences occur. Ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity have become arguably the most significant pillars of Western culture and society, including Western art. Christianity has been one of the most influential subject matters in Western art since the Medieval period while Ancient Greek art is looked to as the standard for perfection and virtuosity. Outside of the art world, Greek philosophy set a strong precedent for all subsequent philosophy while Christianity has consistently been the most practiced religion in the West.
Greek philosophers such as Aristotle painted woman as “an inferior thing and a slave beneath consideration” and asserted “it is not appropriate for a woman to be manly or clever” (Aristotle, c. 400 BC). Aristotle also wrote “it is absurd to argue from an analogy with wild animals and say that men and women ought to engage in the same occupations, for animals do not do housework” (Aristotle, c. 400 BC). The Christian Bible begins with blaming woman for the Original Sin. God punishes all women after Eve is tempted by Satan, “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). Misogyny isn’t confined to the Old Testament, as Paul writes “Women should learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority […] For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived by Satan. The woman was deceived, and sin was the result.” (1 Timothy 2:12–14).
Both of these influential philosophies perpetuate male supremacy and female subjugation. They set the tone the social constructs around sex: the idea that a binary definition of sex defines an individual as either a man (dominant and powerful) or a woman (subjugated and dismissed).
Part III: The Private versus the Public
The patriarchal construct associating women with “the private sphere” (Sandell, 1980) — the home and the family — means the canon has devalued female art: labelling it as personal and trivial. Artmaking can never be more than a hobby as it can never overtake their God-given womanly purpose; artmaking for women simply cannot be a career or a skill. Women are not allowed to devote time to specialising or practising, which is integral to becoming a successful artist. Mary Delaney (1700–1788) exemplified this as, “no matter how long she spent or how hard she applied herself, painting and drawing were ‘innocent amusements’” (Laird & Weisberg-Roberts, 2009, p. 110). Linda Nochlin uses a parallel example: neither women nor the aristocracy have made successful art as the “demands and expectations placed before both […] make total devotion to profession out of the question, indeed unthinkable” (Nochlin, 1971, p. 52).
Men’s art is entirely the opposite, characterised by Lucy Lippard as “public […] associated with monuments and money, with high art and its containers, including unwelcoming white-walled galleries and museums with classical courthouse architecture” (Lippard, 1977). The patriarchy has consistently provided men with ultimate power in a very public sense throughout history from Kingship to the Papacy to the Presidency. Men haven’t faced limiting gender roles and have not been bound to the family unit. Quite the opposite, most male artists are known for staying single, taking on mistresses, even abandoning their family such as in the case of Gauguin (1848–1903). This sense of the publicity and lack of constraints on male art is exemplified by Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) David (Figure 1). Everything about it, the Biblical subject matter, High Renaissance style, colossal scale, Florentine political significance and inescapable position in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, reflects publicity and masculine power. Quite the opposite, Rachel Ruysch’s (1664–1750), still lives were seen as pleasant but domestic: without any public significance.
The last century has seen a vast change in the West: strides in availability and safety of contraception, sex education and abortions have provided women with newfound power over their bodies. The feminist movement has allowed women a myriad of freedoms outside of the home and they have entered into public life, becoming more successful in most disciplines including artmaking. Once women have gained these comparable rights and freedoms to men, their art has flourished in the explosion of women’s art in the past century. This is made clear in the Guerilla Girls’ book on the history of women in Western art, where almost 40% of the pages are solely about 20th-century female artists (The Guerilla Girls, 1998). This suggests that the reason for the lack of success of women’s art in the past is not a lack of female virtuosity or creativity but the systemic oppression of women.
Dana Arnold draws a comparison as “it is quite easy for women, and for those from minority ethnic groups, to become subcategories of art history” (Arnold, 2004, p. 27). Racial minorities have faced subjugation within a white-supremacist structure just as women have faced subjugation within a patriarchal structure. Both groups have subsequently been dismissed by the canon. As these constructs are challenged (through the civil rights and feminist movements respectively), their art has been allowed to be successful. There is no difference between the virtuosity and creativity of female and male art, just as there is no difference between the virtuosity and creativity of white and non-white art; the only differences are the unfounded, socially constructed ones.
Part IV: Hierarchies and Institutions
Karl Marx’s philosophies highlighted the fact that class hierarchies throughout history have consistently served to maintain an elitist order where those at the bottom are subjugated. This Marxist criticism can extend to a universal criticism of all hierarchy: even art hierarchies in genre and medium. These hierarchies, though seemingly arbitrary and inconsequential, have been part of the wider movement to force sex-differences onto art and dismiss women’s art.
Women have always had to be resourceful and creative when it came to mediums due to their not being taken seriously by the art world and not having access to traditional mediums. This is epitomised by Properzia de’ Rossi (c. 1490–1530) who, denied access to marble, resorted to carving peach and cherry stones (Vasari, 1568, p. 340). Women have been forced to create their own forms of expression outside of the traditional painting and marble sculpture such as quilting, embroidery, and tapestry. Artists such as Harriet Powers (1837–1910) and Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983) are seminal examples of women artists who showed incredible virtuosity, creativity, and personality in their weaving and quilting. Stölzl presents abstract forms with unique weaving patterns in Slit Tapestry Red-Green (Figure 2) while Powers tackles an incredibly complex narrative in Bible Quilt (Figure 3). Despite this, the ‘traditional’ mediums of painting and sculpture are the ones most valued by the art establishment as they are ‘high’ art within the hierarchy of genres. Quilting and tapestry and other women’s mediums have been overlooked by the canon, labelled as ‘craft’ or ‘kitsch’ rather than requiring creativity or skill. Western society has forced women to use certain mediums and the Western canon has simultaneously devalued these mediums, making it impossible for women to be recognised for talent or to create successful art.
At the end of the 19th century, another medium accessible to women appeared: photography. In its naissance, women thrived; female photographers made up 26 of the 120 members of the American Photo Succession Group founded in 1902, unusually large representation compared all other contemporary art institutions. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) became one of the pioneers of the medium. However, “photography was not generally recognised as high art in this period” (Kahr, 1982–1983). Lewis Carroll went as far as denying that Cameron’s pictures “were triumphs of art” (The Guerilla Girls, 1998, p. 53). Women were successful in this medium primarily because the medium itself was unsuccessful. It is almost as if a medium’s position within the hierarchy is based not on how interesting or ground-breaking the medium is but on how many women are making art of that medium.
Another hierarchy had similar misogynist connotations: the hierarchy of genres. Perpetuated by but not exclusive to the British Royal Academy of Art and French Ecole des Beaux-Arts’ in the 19th century, this dogma stated that large-scale history paintings were the most impressive and valuable. Paintings centred around mythological narratives, recalling the power of Greek and Roman art and society, and often depicted the nude, especially female nudes. Couture’s Romans During the Decadence (Figure 4) is a prime example of this: a complex, large scale composition scene with Antique motifs and nude figures. Women simply could not meet these requirements: they were prohibited from studying live nude models, did not attend school at the same rate as men and therefore were less likely to study Ancient texts and myths, and often couldn’t procure the large canvasses required (Nochlin, 1971, pp. 52–57). Therefore, the hierarchy of genres forced women to make art of lower value such as still life, portraiture and genre painting, despite having comparable talent to men.
Women have created art of less successful genres and mediums not because they have not had virtuosity and creativity but because of the misogynist constructs behind the hierarchies of the art historical canon. Throughout history, women’s mediums and genres have been looked down upon by the same society that has forced them to use these mediums and genres, placing them in an impossible situation.
Part V: The Female Sensibility
Some scholars have argued that there is a ‘female sensibility’ in art containing expressly feminine symbolism and characteristics that set women’s and men’s art apart. This implies they should be judged separately as they are inherently dissimilar. Walter C. Sparrow, editor of the 1905 publication Women Painters of the World, asked: “Why compare the differing genius of women and men? […] Are not some of its qualities instinct with manhood, while others delight us with […] a perfect womanhood?” (Sparrow, 1905).
Sparrow’s belief in a ‘female sensibility’ follows the idea that women historically have shared a common perspective of society very different from that of men’s, logically influencing their art. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656) gives a uniquely female perspective on the traditional story of Susanna and the Elders (Figure 5), showing Susanna rejecting the male sexual attention, perhaps influenced by being raped by Agostino Tassi. This painting “shows how a woman can […] give an entirely different perspective from what a male painter might represent” (Murray, 2020). Her Judith Slaying Holofernes (Figure 8) depicts an empowered Judith “intent on accomplishing her mission […] unafraid” (The Guerilla Girls, 1998, p. 37), very different to the male depictions of the same story, such as Caravaggio’s (Figure 7), where Judith looks reticent and afraid. This perhaps reflects Gentileschi’s empowerment and regained agency after Agostino was imprisoned. The curator of The National Gallery’s Artemisia exhibition highlighted that she made distinct art “precisely because she brought the female perspective” (Treves, 2020).
The influence of the female experience on art is evident in modern art too, exemplified by the installation Womanhouse (1972), a collaboration made by female students at the California Institute of the Arts. Judy Chicago (1939 — present) and Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) led the collaboration with the express purpose of “help[ing women] build their artmaking out of their experiences as women” (Nochlin, 1973, p. 72). Each room depicted the female experience, notably Chicago’s Menstruation Bathroom (Figure 6). Chicago believed in presenting the biological realities of womanhood in art as “however women felt about their own menstruation would be how they felt seeing it depicted” (Napikoski, 2020). Clearly, this was a female installation: made by and for women.
Evidently, there are instances in which unique female experiences are influential over artmaking. However, these don’t tend to align with Sparrow’s “perfect womanhood”, instead reflecting on the intense, the provocative, and the taboo aspects of womanhood: from the blood of the decapitated Holofernes to menstrual blood. Nevertheless, it is unfair to say all women’s art is unified by a ‘female sensibility’ and that alone.
Nochlin argues “in every instance, woman artists [are] closer to other artists […] of their own period and outlook than they are to each other” (Nochlin, 1971, p. 44). As we compare women’s art from Gentileschi to Morisot to O’Keeffe, it is immediately clear their art cannot be classified as the same. Each female artist has been influenced by male art and shared traits with their male contemporaries, not dictated solely by their ‘female sensibility’. The composition, subject matter and techniques of Gentileschi match her contemporaries Caravaggio and Giorgione (Figures 7–10). Berthe Morisot (1841 –1895), sister-in-law of Manet, made Impressionist art in the same vein as the artists she lived and worked with by painting en plein air and using loose brushstroke, a limited colour palette and similar subject matters (Figures 11–12). Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), was influenced by Wassily Kandinsky’s colours and shapes (Figures 13–14) and as the “mother of American modernism” (Life and Artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe, 2013), she influenced an entire movement of artists, both male and female. In all of these instances, the ‘female sensibility’ bears little weight.
The idea that the only factor in a woman’s artmaking is her femininity creates an illusion that she cannot have any other qualities or experiences, perpetuating a dehumanising narrative about women and their art. When art is “downplayed for being female” (Freeland, 2003, p. 95) in this way, all recognition of humanity and nuance are removed in favour of a simplified binary definition of sex. Sandell stated, “the theory of a female aesthetic is essentially limiting, since it prescribes artistic forms and contents for use by women artists” (Sandell, 1980, p. 107) while Martin took it even further: “the concept of a female sensibility is our greatest burden as women artists” (Lippard, 1976, p. 148). Women artists have been put in the awkward position where they either follow exactly what is expected of them as women deny their femininity entirely. Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), for example, claimed “I work like a man” (Kraft, 1983–1984, p. 5) while O’Keefe “pooh-poohed the idea that her works were somehow ‘feminine’” (Freeland, 2003, p. 95). It seems a balance has to be achieved; an inherently female experience can contribute to artmaking but is never the only factor.
The most unconvincing factor in the pro-‘female sensibility’ argument is that it is impossible to define. Joan Brown, someone who supported the concept, admitted “I can’t pinpoint what it is” (Kraft, 1983–1984, p. 1). Symbolism and subject matters that seem inherently feminine are in reality far less dictated by gender. Floral paintings, for example, are associated with femininity as they are pretty and delicate and ultimately inconsequential. Rachel Ruysch is an example of an extremely successful floral painter, but is that because of her gender? In reality, Ruysch’s floral paintings reflect far less on her gender and far more on 17th-century The Dutch Golden Age, where virtually every successful painter was depicting floral still lives. Her compositions are almost indistinguishable from Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s (Figures 15–16). Cynthia Freeland sums this up perfectly: “there are flowers and then there are flowers […] In order to interpret artworks, we must look beyond gender […] to the broader context that gives art its meaning” (Freeland, 2003, p. 99).
The concept of a ‘female sensibility’ is flawed as it is limiting, without nuance and impossible to define. Naturally, in some cases, sex contributes to artmaking, but human beings are complex and nuanced and their art reflects this. As Corrie Jackson articulated, “whether or not it’s made by a female artist isn’t so much the question as ‘why is this being presented in this way?’ and ‘what’s the experience that has led to this presentation?’” (Jackson, 2020).
Part VI: The Definition of ‘Great’ Art
Nochlin’s seminal 1971 work, Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists? insists that we must “question the assumptions lying behind this question” (Nochlin, 1971, p. 44). She is blunt: “The fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely Great women artists […] no amount of manipulating the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation” (p. 45). Instead of saying women haven’t been great — meaning talented and creative — Nochlin means they haven’t been Great — a separate definition, one that is dictated by our social construction.
Our understanding of art history has been “conditioned — and often falsified” (p. 46) by society. The canonised men of art history — Michelangelo, van Gogh, Picasso, to name a few — have had preferential treatment in the way we tell their stories. We have been fed hyperbolic narratives about “the supernatural powers of the artist as Imitator” (p. 48), especially accompanied by an exciting, bordering on mythological, story of a troubled life.
“The most famous, and even today the most-read” (Gombrich, 1992) and arguably the first piece of art historical writing is Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Vasari treated his supposedly objective art historical writing like a story to extol his contemporaries and period. He idealised “the divine Michelangelo” while Leonardo (1452–1519) was “a Genius endowed by God” (Vasari, 1568). Vasari’s Giotto (c. 1267–1337) defied the odds of his humble upbringing with natural-born talent, fabricating a story where he paints a perfect red circle without moving his arm (Vasari, 1568, p. 22). Vasari’s writing is designed to make the reader believe that these truly Great artists succeeded due to divine intervention.
Vasari set a precedent for the way we see art. The embellishments to Great artists’ stories continued to permeate what should be objective art historical study, evident with artists like Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). van Gogh’s art, instead of being seen solely for its artistic merit, is characterised by his “brilliant, troubled mind” (Bleier, 2018). His lack of success within his lifetime, coupled with his mental deterioration and eventual suicide, has been romanticised by history, and we see this world “troubled” describing him again and again. The story of his severed ear especially has been fictionalised and romanticised, described as “one of the most grisly and intriguing moments […] of this brilliant and troubled man” (Bell, 2016). His life was further fictionalised in the dramatic 1934 biographical novel Lust for Life and subsequent 1956 film, where Kirk Douglas plays an especially ‘troubled’ van Gogh (Figure 17).
Great artists are believed to have a God-given destiny that allows them to be romanticised outcasts from society who defy adversity to make Great art. Gauguin even goes as far as explicitly putting himself in Jesus’ position as a social outcast and God’s representative on Earth in the self-portrait Christ on the Mount of Olives (Figure 18). Here, he is both deifying himself, in the same vein as Vasari, and emphasising the image of a ‘troubled’ outsider as Christ looks dejected and alone.
Nochlin highlights that Great male artists have a lot more in common than we realise: they all tend to be white, from middle- or upper-class families and artist families. It is not Paul Cézanne’s (1839–1906) sob story of “paternal rejection and public scorn” (Nochlin, 1971, p. 48) that made his art Great but his father’s immense banking wealth that allowed him the financial security to take risks and develop his art style (Biography.com, 2019).
Our understanding of genius adheres to Kant’s insistence that “women lacked such discipline” to be geniuses (Freeland, 2003, p. 89). Our definition of Greatness is similarly but more subtly misogynist as it is not based in codified theories and statements but in an informal, unnoticeable yet ever-present web of social constructs and art histories of questionable objectivity.
While Great men are excused for poor behaviour, great women are held to a higher moral standard. While Great men are deified, great women hold the burden of Original Sin. While Great men are compared to Ancient Greek artists, Ancient Greek philosophy demeans great women as inferior, never able to reach those heights. Women’s art is no different from men’s art when it comes to greatness, but what the art historical canon really cares about is Greatness: constructs, embellishments and myths that have served to empower male artists and maintain patriarchy.
Part VII: The Cognitive Difference
When one is assessing sex-differences, it is good to turn to science for an ‘objective’ answer. If there is a difference between the male and female brain, irrespective of the social constructs around sex, this would give a clear indicator to there being an inherent difference between male and female art. Selma Kraft argued for this in 1984, stating “that there is a particularly female way of processing information and that this sensibility reveals itself in art” (Kraft, 1983–1984, p. 5).
The studies Kraft cites show that women tend to respond to many stimuli simultaneously, have better peripheral vision, are more apt at merging stimuli with their settings, and see things more broadly, with less depth and detail. This leads to the essence of her argument: that women are neurologically predisposed to respond to and create pattern art while men respond to and create pictorial art. Pattern art throughout Western history has been disregarded as ‘low’ art or craft, while ‘masculine’ pictorial art has been glorified. To researchers like Kraft, this explains a difference between male and female art.
Unfortunately, the science cited by Kraft does not provide a fair, objective answer. The history of sex-difference research has been “rife with innumeracy, misinterpretation, publication bias, weak statistical power, inadequate controls and worse” (Eliot, 2019, p. 453). As we look back at neurological research comparing men and women, clear trends of ‘Neurosexism’ have immerged, while “modern neuroscientists have identified no decisive, categorically-defining differences between the brains of men and women” (p. 453). Gina Rippon outlines a more advanced argument, stating that any neurological difference between the sexes is a result of cultural contexts, as “children’s ‘cerebral sponges’ probably differentiate thanks to the starkly pink-versus-blue cultures in which they are soaked from the moment of prenatal sex reveal” (p. 454). This idea of the ‘cerebral sponge’ explains that because women have been taught by social constructs to make certain types of art, they have replicated this, rather than having a genuine biological predisposition to do so. Additionally, modern science has begun to reject a direct correlation between sex and gender expression as well as disprove a gender and sex binary. Similar to the ‘female sensibility’, there is no definable ‘female brain’.
Kraft’s conclusion is also flawed as it cherry-picks female pattern artists such as Bridget Riley (1931 — present), disregarding the men who make pattern art as well as women who make pictorial art. Perhaps it is because instead of labelling men’s art as ‘pattern’ we give it more sophisticated names such as ‘abstract’ or ‘minimalist’. There have been many successful non-pictorial male artists such as William Morris (1834–1896) and Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) just as there have been successful pictorial female artists like Gentileschi and Ruysch. Ultimately, an artists’ aesthetic or sensibility is not related to their gendered brain but to their individual personality and the social constructs within they operate.
Part VIII: Conclusions and the Future of Gender in Art
When critically reviewing our Western art historical canon, institutions and definitions, it becomes evident that these systems are far less weighted on virtuosity and creativity and far more on a series of falsehoods and unsophisticated assumptions perpetuated by our social construction. The definitions and ideas around ‘women’s art’ support this. Following the influences of Christianity and Ancient Greek philosophy, women have been systematically subjugated in the art world and beyond so that they have made ‘different’ and ‘less Great’ artworks. The way we define ‘women’s art’ solely by the artist’s femininity is patronising, limiting and entirely without nuance.
It is evident that women do not want to, do not need to and are not biologically predisposed to make ‘different’ and ‘less Great’ art; they do it because they have been forced to by our societal definitions. The photographer Cindy Sherman’s (1954 — present) guiding philosophy is that “femininity is not real, but is the artificial product of images, cultural expectations, and ingrained behaviours” (Freeland, 2003, p. 95), which very much aligns with the biological idea of the ‘cerebral sponge’ that replicates what is expected of it. Western social constructs have prescribed the definitions of womanhood and femininity; women have simply internalised and replicated them. Angela Davis said the same thing about the concept of gender in general: “the more closely we examine it, the more we discover that it is embedded in a range of social, political, cultural and ideological formations” (Davis, 2013, p. 101).
Perhaps art made by women would be entirely different if it was not prescribed and limited by the myths around ‘women’s art’? This seems to be true: the last century has seen feminist movements ensuring more formal and informal rights for women and the trans and queer movements have refuted the habitual definitions of gender and sex. This has directly coincided with the boom in successful female artists. It is clear that when our traditions on sex and gender are subverted, women’s art can flourish.
It is obvious that the most limiting and damaging practice is that of defining art by a binary definition of gender. Many Eastern and Western cultures throughout history have understood the complexities and lack of binary when it comes to gender. In art, this has manifested itself in Classical sculptures of hermaphrodites as well as the ‘femminielli’, a third gender class, depicted in 18th-century Italian art (Figure 21). The strict gender roles imposed by the Classical world and Christianity have attempted to disregard the nuances of gender and sex, but Western society is beginning to progress past these limiting teachings. There have been increasing numbers of gender non-conforming artists in the last century such as Heather Cassils, Greyson Perry, and Claude Cahun. Cahun epitomised their gender identity, but also this wider idea of the complexities of gender, with “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation” (Tate, n.d.).
Art from the 21st century has continued this trend and become is increasingly non-gendered. Both Rajni Perera’s Traveller 6 (Figure 24) and Esmaa Mohamoud’s Half Man Half Amazing (Figure 23), works made by women in the past three years, question the social construction behind gender and gender expression by presenting an image of gender neutrality and fluidity. These signify the prevailing trends, suggesting the future of art can only become freer and more diverse when it comes to gender expression and representation, with a focus less on the gender of the artist and more on the virtuosity, creativity and personality the art possesses.
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