By Ruth Skilbeck
Today we can take
a moment to reflect on the ongoing struggle of women and girls for the rights
of women to equality of cultural participation and dignity of being, in all
aspects of social life. The struggle to value domestic and carer’s labour the “traditional
unpaid realm of women’s work”. The struggle to value the worth and being, of
mothers, even –and especially- if they are not in traditional marriages. The struggle
against violence against women on all levels. This begins in the
home-every home.
Happy
International Women’s Day to all who support women’s and girl’s struggle
against oppression around the world- and who appreciate what women give the
world.
In appreciation of
the great struggle over the past fifty years for women to participate fully in
the public cultural realm as artists, and make art from their own personal
experiences and perceptions of the world.
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Ruth Skilbeck, Matrix of Creation, 2013 |
Women artists, of
all women, are those who most visibly represent, express, and champion the rights
of women to participate as equals in what, until the 1970s, was still a male
dominated public realm of visual and intellectual culture.
Through the
history of modernity, women have struggled against oppression to enter the
cultural realm as artists- instead of in the roles allotted them in the history
of male-dominated western art- as models, muses, wives, mistresses, mothers,
and all-round life support systems.
Since the 1970s,
in increasing numbers, women have asserted that right and entered the public
realm of arts and culture as artists in their own right. Women’s
representations of women, of themselves, and of their subjects, are made
through women’s subjectivity, and there is naturally – and culturally- a very
large qualitative difference. That is seen in the images that are made of women- by women
artists. Rather than being represented as object of desire, women artists are subjects
of their own desiring gaze. Looking at an image of a woman by a woman, a self portrait, - or a non-representational
conceptual work- gives a real insight not only into what it looks like, appearance, but beyond appearance and representation – into female subjectivity and nowhere perhaps is this shown more intensively
than in women’s self portraits of their bodies, and of maternal
subjectivities. The Madonna and child is
an image that has appeared like a recurring motif throughout art history, from
biblical times, through the renaissance to now. In the hands of women artists,
and mother artists this takes on a power of self-expression that matches the
most esteemed works of the expressionists and old masters.
However, at around
the same time that women started to enter the art schools in equal numbers, it
seems that a new taboo and wave of censorship sprang up- a censoring aimed at
the body. Life drawing has suffered and what has been the target in Australia:
mother artists’ representations of their bodies, and of children. Although male
artists have represented women, girls, mothers and children and naked
frolicking cherubs for centuries, with imaginative and often licentious
abandon, no sooner did women start to seriously paint and display images of
children and themselves, than the "art police" started stepping in and closing down
shows. And I do not mean this metaphorically. Several exhibitions of women artists’
works showing female subjects- of subjectivity, artists self-portraits, in
pregnancy, and of their own children – have been visited and closed down by the
police, in recent years in Australia. In other cases, individual art works have been censored.
This has happened recently,
and over the past ten years, to numerous prominent and award winning Australian
contemporary women artists, Cherry Hood (winner of the Archibald Prize, 2002) –
for portraits of children. Del Kathryn Barton (winner of the Archibald Prize
2008), for a portrait of her own son, and separately for Ella Dreyfuss for sensitive
photography of pregnant women. Diane Mantzaris for self- portraiture… to name a
few recent cases. All these artists continue to work, and exhibit their works,
and without them, it hardly needs to be said, Australian culture would be a lot
less vital and interesting.
It is shameful that it is women artists, and
specifically it seems mother artists who should be covertly targeted and
intimidated in this way. It is like a kind of secret bullying. But it does not
stop them making their work. This is an occupational hazard of being a mother
artist, and a woman artist, in Australia today making figurative work. However,
despite the preoccupation with “OH and S” (Occupational Health and Safety) in
the Australian workplace, it seems that so far this hazard has gone unacknowledged-
at least officially. There should be
public warnings in art schools, and advice for female students on how to deal
with the harassment they may encounter if they pursue a career as a figurative
artist. Instead it is still little talked about.
So let us start to
talk about it and appreciate our women artists!
Today let us
celebrate International Women’s Day by paying homage to all the brave and
expressive women artists around the world, who illuminate how it feels to be a
woman, expressing the inner world and outer reality of women as subjects not
objects of the male gaze. They give
women and girls’ strength and confidence in being female, and able to follow
their creative paths as artists. They
give men a chance of empathizing, knowing and understanding how women feel, and
see the world as artists; as women have done for men for centuries. They make
our world a better place to live in.
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Jenny Saville, The Mothers, 2011
Oil on canvas
106 5/16 x 86 5/8 inches (270 x 220 cm) |
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Del Kathryn Barton, You are what is most beautiful about me, 2008 |