My paper

Women’s Art History, Out of the Dark Ages.


My project for Women in Art History was created around an on line blog that sought to both educate and inform its readers about the depth and breadth of women in the visual arts from the stone age to the present. This process began with a sense that finding earlier records of women artists would be problematic but surmountable. It was anticipated that as the centuries progressed more information would become available and that by the end of the process of discovery there would be such a plethora of information that choosing what to portray would be difficult. This estimation turned out to be correct only in the latter portion of the twentieth century.
Art history, for the first few centuries of recorded human history, has no mention at all of women artists. One would think that by using the depth and breadth of the resources of the Internet it would be possible to turn up obscure references to women artists in ancient times. Such things do not exist, or were not within the discoveries of this author. With the coming of the Renaissance women artists began to appear on the scene but their numbers were few in books and fewer still Internet resources are dedicated to the exploration of them or their art. It would seem that the age of enlightenment was specifically dedicated to the enlightenment of men.
A token number of entries accessible on the Internet deal with women artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are the predictable “famous” artists and the level of exhaustive research is minimal. One can find volumes dealing with the Michelangelo’s and the Caravaggio’s but with the exception of Artemisia Gentileschi there are few even minimally celebrated female artists. In general the inclusion of women artists will refer to their art as “in the style of” a male artist of the time.
The nineteenth century finds more women artists enjoying a level of recognition reflected in Internet pages. The blog became easier to administrate as the class moved into the nineteenth century. With the coming of new styles and new thought in art came a corresponding rise in the popularity and history of women artists. This made finding material to include in the blog much simpler.
The twentieth century was the true rise of the woman artist. Women became more involved in the formation of art movements and more prolific in the production of their own art works, this moved them into the limelight from which information can be gleaned. This is reflected in the number of Internet pages pertaining to these women, and it is much simpler to research and to view their works on line.
The latter twentieth century and the early twenty-first centuries are a virtual explosion in the pixilated world of the Internet. In this time period there are online galleries dedicated to women’s artwork, online discussions of women’s art, online college courses on women’s art, and web sites by women artists about their own work. At this time in the blog project it was necessary to do more evaluation and winnowing of information before posting due to the masses of material available.
As the blog project continued into postmodernism it became more apparent that the art world was becoming more tightly integrated with the world outside itself. This level of integration and its resulting presence on the web lead to an exploration of other incarnations of postmodernism. It was interesting to note how all the various views and implementations of postmodernism bled together to form a whole. The rise of the woman artist goes hand in hand with the rise of modernism and its resulting transition to postmodernism. Women have been able to gain entry into the world of postmodernism and the art world by championing its tenants. Postmodernism, by its very nature, is inclusive and able to draw on a wide variety of influences, cultures, materials, and to expand the definitions of what is and is not permissible within its sphere of influence. The data unearthed and posted to the blog does not form a direct connection with a conscious decision by women to champion the postmodern, rather it appears that the relationship is symbiotic and, in many ways, unconscious.
The blog project, Art of the X Chromosome, was an informative process. The act of searching for information on women artist’s who were centuries dead did much to confirm the fact that there is little history of women in the art world until the eighteenth century. It was also impressive to note the explosive growth of both women artists and the acceptance of their work as the centuries progressed. Today’s prevalence of women’s art and women artists has reached a near parity with men, in quantity and quality if not in economics. Economics remains the last true barrier to women artists as equals compared to their male contemporaries. In all other observable aspects women equal or better the work of men. Whether it is quantity of work, type of media, quality of work, or the willingness to embrace new forms of artistic expression women artists have demonstrated mastery. This is true, in no small part, thanks to the continuing efforts of women to demand equal treatment and to lobby for it where it does not exist. The Guerrilla Girls are a prime example of women taking the world by the horns and demanding, through artistic and inventive expression, to be treated as equals. The Guerrilla Girls are not the only group to have done so, each and every woman that braved the slurs and derision of their male counterparts and continued making art in spite of the rocks and stone thrown at them did their part to make a place for women’s art in the world at large. Much of the work of women artists was traditionally looked in askance by art critics and art historians of their respective times, this is especially true the further one looks back in history.
As one looks forward into the future of art and women’s art in particular it is possible to use history to predict probable results. The art world is currently in the death throes of the postmodern era and more and more artists are looking forward toward the next major movement. It is this authors belief that, based on the acceleration of women’s influence on art and art movements, that the next incarnation of artistic expression could well be led by women artists. This possible development, based on the predictors of the past, is eagerly anticipated by the art world at large and myself in particular.