I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.
Talking about our children is an easy thing to do. In fact, many days I have to make myself step back from conversations to make sure that subject isn't dominating. Often times, we think about, talk about, relate based on what we know...what we know about ourselves, our lives, our communities, our families.... We think about the world in relation to those things. As a mother, I am constantly looking at how the decisions I make will directly impact my two daughters. I think about how their experiences, their educations, their closest friends and relationships, their community all these factors influence who they are and will become as people. Lately, I have been thinking about how current legislation will impact them...whether it be their sexuality or their rights as women in general. And I am not alone. Several of my closest friends have expressed that they wrestle with the same concerns (as many others do). Therefore, they seemed an obvious group with which to discuss gender and females place in history.
These three women come from different backgrounds: one is an engineer, one a elementary teacher, and one a pharmaceutical rep. All highly educated. Two of the three do not have any background in the arts. The third is the child of an artist and teacher who is heavily involved in the local arts community.
Before discussing the Nochlin article, I challenged the group to name as many female artists as they could (I might have helped a little). This process was a bit more painful than I had imagined and took much longer than anticipated. Many of these artists couldn't be named immediately, but rather their work was described (i.e. "the famous celeb photographer" "the lady who painted the flowers/vaginas" "dinner party"). Collectively, we could only name NINETEEN female artists...almost all of these were/are practicing in the twentieth century.
Looking at the list below is sobering. So many missing names....
Although this exercise transitioned into a discussion of Nochlin's article, the discussion centered on WHY we could name so few female artists and the group took a very honest and open turn. For them it was lack of education, interests outside of the arts, lack of experience (i.e. traveling to "art" museums), failure to see the importance of relevance of the arts in general, lack of visible women working today in the arts (visible was described as "in the media"). Only one mom felt comfortable asserting culture as the culprit, the others held fast to this as a personal preference. Breaking down the stereotypes of "feminine art" was challenging and seemed impossible. Thinking about female and male artists as simply "artists" was also challenging for this group. Gender seemed to be permanently linked to the identity of the artist. "A woman paints a certain way because she is a woman" and vice versa. Attempting to challenge this mentality, I showed this work by Meret Oppenheim (my own contribution to the list):
This "masculine" work was identified with "hunting" as "primitive" and "rough." The one participant who attempted to guess its maker credited it to Marcel Duchamp.
The discussion also revealed key ideas about gender and gender construction. The question "what is gender" elicited an array of responses from the "biological sex of a person" to "the roles that a person chooses or feels most comfortable with." One mother was adamant in her belief that while women can and should be anything they wanted, there are clear roles for women and men. Wanting every opportunity for her child, she would push her daughter while teaching her what she believed to be right about gender. When challenged to think about how this reinforces a misogynistic viewpoint, she remained firm in her belief concerning the "definitive roles" of men and women.
When pressed to the think about women in terms of their contributions rather than simply in relation to their field, the group shifted the conversation to "girl empowerment" referencing women like Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, Katherine Olivia Sessions, Jane Goodall, Hillary Clinton, Marie Curie, Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Blackwell, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Sally Ride, and Rosa Parks.
Our initial discussion was open and honest and started a conversation about the roles of women; the expectations we knowingly and unknowingly have placed upon ourselves and place upon our children; how we view and define gender; how we are defined by gender; and how we plan to share or change those understandings with our children. In addition, we were all challenged to think more broadly about women in the arts and move to celebrate female achievements in every field.
During our second meeting, each woman was asked to bring a female artist (not mentioned in the first meeting) to add to [our] list of women in the arts. Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Faith Ringgold, Alice Rahon, and Shirin Neshat were those added to the list. These additions demonstrate a heightened awareness of race, ethnicity, gender, and accomplishments of women from diverse backgrounds and time periods - a deliberate attempt to understand and celebrate the accomplishments of someone different from ourselves.
My challenge moving forward: get the conversation started, keep it going, and follow where it leads.
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