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Disclaimer:
I've been assigned to write an essay on the
subject; 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' after having been
given Linda Nochlin's essay of the same name from 1971 to read first.
I despise the fact that we are asked to discuss this in a
public forum considering that we are clearly expected to pander to outdated,
sexist and racist ideas.
The
answer is in the very word art. Art implies that what you are viewing was made
by an artisan. An artisan is a skilled laborer who makes objects with their
hands. The making of art was considered a skilled trade until the 19th Century
when the invention of photography allowed relatively affordable unskilled
photographers to replace the skilled portrait and landscape artists that were previously
appointed by court, state and church.
Till the twentieth century all types of artisans
be they cabinet makers, shoemakers, iron smiths, masons and painters started
their careers as apprentices. Training from an early age at the expense of
their master who hoped to one day see a financial return on the investment. The
investment of capital and time explains why historically the idea of the
artistic genius was so very important. The reason we see so many surnames
referencing a skilled trade; Smith, Walker, Tanner, Zimmerman or in English;
Carpenter is because for thousands of years professions were handed down through
the generations, so if a family was in the business of sheepherding there was
little to no chance that their offspring would be employed as anything else
other than a shepherd, their last name would also probably be ... yup you
guessed it Shephard. People simply didn’t have the luxury of being able to
pursue a career of their own choice. Up until only 1923 when Oregon became the
first state to mandate compulsory education, professional training and
education was not readily available to the vast majority of Americans.
For millennia prior to then the onus was on the trade master to pay
for the room, food, education and training of an apprentice for a fixed period
of time until the apprentice became a journeyman. If the family business
needed to expand the number of employees the master would need to look outside
of the family for a young apprentice and then the master would need to make certain
assurances that the person that they were about to invest decades of money,
knowledge and trade secrets into would have some natural talent. Employing only
children who displayed a gift for the trade in the workshop was the masters
best guarantee of a financial payback on years of investment. Society has
changed very little in the years since; we still have entrance exams for many
of the top schools today. Similarly, universities offer scholarships to talented
students and athletes, major league sports teams send out scouts to schools to
seek those students who display a gift for sports so they can sponsor them in
athletics programs and big city firms head hunt students heading into business
and law schools, offering to pay for college costs on the signing of a fixed
contract upon leaving education. Aspiring artists can thank their
lucky stars that artistic genius is no longer the only ticket to being an
artist. Like the parable of the tortoise and the hair, those who may not have a
natural gift for art can excel and surpass those who do through hard work education
and practice.
Those few women in
history who became artists were typically trained within the family by a father
who was himself an artisan Only those few from the lower ranks of
the aristocracy, who could afford not to spend their days at work, could find the time to
paint for their own amusement, but they were few and far between as it was seen
by the aristocracy and the Landed gentry (an elite social class that made money solely from the rent of their
vast farming estates) as vulgar to perform manual labor and art was of course
the work of the poor and lowly commoner.
Class
mobility is an outdated term, so I'll refer to its modern reincarnation: Socio
economic mobility which in itself is nothing new, but being able to move from
poverty to wealth and vice versa is far more common now than ever before in recorded
human history. To arrive at this point there have been many historic stages
when western civilization gradually freed up the confines of power enough to
allow anyone from any gender, class, race or other social background to follow
their own chosen career path.
Because the USA was initially founded and
predominantly colonized by northern Europeans much of what has happened over
the last millennia in northern Europe has influenced the 224-year history of
the USA, so I have included that in a short list of WASP culture's slow progression away from totalitarian
power to equality for all:
Magna Carta (England)
1215 - Bill of rights.
The Black Death (Europe) 1347 - Signaled the beginning of the end of
European feudalism.
Peasants revolt (England) 1381 - Demanded the end of servitude.
Reformation (Northern
Europe) 1517 - 1648 Decentralization of religious power.
English Civil War 1642 - 1651 - Democratic parliamentarian power replaces
hereditary aristocracy.
Industrial revolution (Europe and the USA) 1760 - 1840 Entry of women
into the workplace.
American revolution 1775 - 1783 Democratic Republicanism.
Mexican - American War 1846 - 1848 End of Mexican Feudalism in Texas, Colorado,
California, Arizona and New Mexico.
American Civil War 1861 – 1865 Signing of the Emancipation proclamation.
Women’s Social and Political Union (USA) 1903 – 1920 Women’s vote.
World War One and WWII - Women filled the vacancies left by the men who enlisted to
fight.
American Civil Rights Movement 1954 - 1968 End of segregation.
In Linda Nochlin's diatribe she points the finger
squarely at those who hold the most power in this country. For those who still
consider, 49 years later, the race of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men to be
the prime hinderance to female advancement in 2020 I'd point towards the pew
research analysis of the 2016 presidential election between a man and a woman.
When you look at how the two genders voted you can see that there was just a
seven per cent difference when comparing the 41% of American males who voted
for a female president and the 48% of American women who voted for a
woman, while a nearly equal 46% of American women voted for a man. Within the
last four years there was a golden opportunity to have a female president of the
USA, and a nearly equal half of American women voters rejected the chance to
have a woman hold the highest job on the planet. For those who are still
not convinced that American women are as responsible for holding themselves
back I'd then point to Europe where women have been for decades regularly
elected to become a Prime Minister, Chancellor or President and then
conclude that it is currently neither race nor gender, but instead it is the
American culture that holds American women back from progressing. If anyone
still disagree then I'd ask that reader to provide me an example of a race that
has created a culture that has advanced towards equality for all, more than the
northern European WASP culture, For decades women have been entitled to receive up to 18 weeks paid
maternity leave and 52 weeks protected leave regardless of the length of their
current employment across Europe. Even the patriarchal catholic countries of
southern Europe are decades ahead of the USA in terms of gender equality and
the protected legal rights of women. White men are no longer to blame, it is
American culture that is at fault. If you want to change this culture then it
is down to you to be proactive. You can start by pressuring schools to end
cheerleading teams that promote young women to subserviently hero worship men, you
need to vocally dismiss the catholic patriarchal culture, boycott
companies that continue to charge more for women's products than men's (pink
tax) and pressure those in political office to introduce new
progressive laws and for you to get out there and vote for reform. It is your
fault if you don’t
.https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
You will never find a more stubborn breed than Americans, where the only thing metric, is bullets. Do you think the U.S. has hit a turning point where it can start to embrace these ideas that the rest of modern world has or do you think it will take many more years of learning and strife before the new generation can move forward?
ReplyDeletethink there are two types of American patriot; The first is like a good parent who is willing to do anything to ensure that their child is always, learning, growing and improving. The second is like a petulant child who boasts to everyone that their dad is the biggest and the best. Our job is to make sure we're the parent and not the child. Under its current leadership the USA has become very nationalistic with its mantra of America First. We are resting on our laurels as we pat ourselves on the back. The good news is that the national psyche is always changing, we haven’t always spent our days wasting away looking in the mirror like Narcissus. We are at our best when we are striving for a better world and I’m sure we’ll get there again.
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