Gender Inequality in the Art World (Jaxon Matan)

Gender Inequality in the Art World

Jaxon Matan

 According to sociologist Taylor Whitten Brown, the statistics the last  

few decades had confirmed that the art world is not one of gender parity,  or gender equality. While in auction, female artists’ works have been  composed into a small share of collections, within the U.S. and Europe.  Until the 1870’s, women were prohibited from achieving artistic  professions and training. 

The differences between men and women’s ability to make different  kinds of art, considering the art valuation can seem very offensive to 

some people. A hypothesis on sociological theories of gender, when  supported, would explain the mechanisms in understanding the vast  spread of reproduction through time and context, as the artistic talent of  women continues to progress.  

“Culture gender norms that are learned from Childhood and throughout 1 the contexts of adulthood shape everything from the color and cut of  clothing and hair to preferences in hobbies and the age of romantic  partners” (Taylor Whitten, March 2019).  

Some artistic examples of Cultural Gender Norm include textile works  such as the Study Rug, based on an original tapestry in 1926, and an art  piece from a collection of textiles called Connections. Both works are by  textile artist, Anne Albers. More textile works are produced more often  by female artists than male artists. However, men are not unskilled or  incapable of weaving. Throughout the history of art, it is more common  to see women produce textiles is because textile arts were a skill that  they were permitted or encouraged to adopt.  

1 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-work-female-artists-valued-work-male-artists

The Study Rug Connections 

Noted German architect Walter Gropius, believed that  

women worked best in two dimensional art and that they should weave  rather than study agriculture or design. However, not all women had  worked this way. Through the tradition of female weavers and cultures  across millennia, female artists were more likely to take pride in  

themselves as they had envisioned their own work. This would explain  why textiles are more commonly produced by female artists today.  

“It is necessary to identify the way in which gender inequality is being 2 defined and understood internationally” (Coon, Chelsea. October 25,  2019).  

This quote is important to keep in mind because gender usually refers to  the socially constructed characteristics of roles, norms, and relationships  between men and women, according to the World Health Organization.  In conversations regarding gender inequality in the arts, it is important to  acknowledge that this topic has been and still remains to be an  international issue to this day.  

Last Month, the New York Times had reported the astonishing  percentage of 11% of artworks had been created by women. Since the  article was released, a necessary discussion had reoccurred in order to  acknowledge the issue in the inequality of arts.  

Another example of a feminist artist who had recently acknowledged a  significant impact into art history is Judy Chicago.  

Judy Chicago is a U.S. feminist artist who has impacted art history with  decades of influential art, fighting the erasure of female artists like her.  

https://theartling.com/en/artzine/gender-inequality-art/ 2

There have been five dozen openings in La last weekend, where a  collection of Judy Chicago’s early sculptures were on display at the  Jeffrey Deitch gallery.  

The Dinner Party 

Her seminal installation of The Dinner Party had caused SF MOMA to  have the artwork return to the Jefrey Deitch museum next year for an  encore.  

The Dinner party was almost entirely omitted from postwar art history. 

This is ironic, considering that most key themes of Judy’s work touches  on the topic of the erasure of women’s achievements from their  historical record.  

Rainbow Pickett is another famous sculpture from 1965 made by Judy  Chicago. It is a series of plank sculptures that form a “growing gradient 3 of hypotenuses along the southern wall of the gallery” (Slenske,  Michael. September 10, 2019.)  

https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/judy-chicago-los-angeles/ 3

Bigamy Hood 

Birth Hood

  Flight Hood

Unlike male Contemporary artists, Judy Chicago’s work had been  unfortunately demonetized due to the content and color of her work.  Judy states in agreement that her color and imagery had gotten her into  so much trouble. Examples of this were the Bigamy Hood, Birth Hood,  and Flight Hood. All three paintings consisted of car hoods from 1965.  These paintings were a testament to Chicago’s technical and conceptual  rigor. These were also seen as examples of double standards that had  persisted in the art world that praised L.A. male artists who embraced in  

industrial techniques while female artist’s techniques, such as the male  artists’, were seen as insignificant. 

Another piece by Chicago that never made it into the gallery is 1965’s  Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks. It’s an uncanny piece that allows the  viewer to assess the landscape. It explores the development of Chicago’s  complex color system, which is designed to show emotion and feminist  formalist tropes. 

It had amplified her use of uncommon material, such as auto lacquer,  plastics, and smoke.  

According to The Countess Report, an independent artist run initiative  that publishes data on Australian contemporary art worldwide, only 25%  of the exhibited works at the National Gallery of Australia were made by  women. Last year, 73% of art, such as painting, drawing, print,  photography, sculpture, decorative and design arts, and indigenous art  exhibited were by male artists. Female artists only exceeded male artists  in contemporary art. Four years ago, the NSW art gallery had amended  their international acquisition policy, making it their priority to develop a  stronger collection of modern and contemporary female artists. They  held an exhibition of 22 female artists earlier this year, showcasing  works that were mostly acquired under the guidelines that they had  revised. Australian galleries, museums, art prizes and art schools have  been doing a lot better than their peers in the U.S and Britain. 

 “Between 2008 and 2018, only 11% of works acquired by US galleries 4 and museums were by women and only 14% of some 57000 exhibitions  were works by female artists” (Davies, Lisa, October 30, 2019).  This quote tells us that that more male artists are more skilled in creating  artwork than female artists. The reason for this is because women were  historically discouraged from participating in the arts. Many female  artists that defied convention had discovered that their careers had  favored more male artists winning than female artists. It is safe to  assume that male artists are more mentally prepared because their work  has dominated the spaces with public art galleries.  

In most art museums, we are more likely to see more women depicted in  in art rather than the piece created by a female artist. To support this  statement, these two quotes reads “By some estimates, over 50% of  visual artists are women but less than 5% of artists featured in the  world’s most popular art museum galleries are female” and “Few 5 female artists who worked prior to the 20th century are considered part of the great art canon, and very few women artists are studied in art  

history textbooks”(Kopf, Dan, June 25, 2015).   

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/art-s-gender-imbalance-affects-way- 4 we-see-the-world-20191030-p535un.html 

5 https://priceonomics.com/just-how-big-is-the-gender-gap-in-fine-art/

An example of this is the Guerrilla Girls, who are a group of female  activists who are mostly concerned for the representation of females in  Contemporary art galleries rather than major collections. According to  Priceonomics, they had to search through the National Gallery of Art’s  online collection of nearly 100,000 pieces of art just to find out how  many artists were women and if the gender gap for women in fine art  was decreasing over time. They had estimated that there was a 4%  

chance that any piece from the National Gallery of Art was made by a  female artist. In ranking artists based on the amount of works collected,  only 4 of top 100 artists were women. The reason for this is because 

most collections were of art from 60 years ago. Therefore, the vast  majority of highly trained artists were men.  

Sources:  

Whitten, Taylor “Why is work by Female Artists still Valued Less Than  Work by Male Artists?” Supply-Side Mechanisms and the Social  Construction of Gender, Editorial, March 2019.  

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-work-female-artists valued-work-male-artists 

Coon, Chelsea. “Still Happening: Gender Inequality in Art.” The Artling.  October 25, 2019.  

https://theartling.com/en/artzine/gender-inequality-art/

Slenske, Michael. At 80, Judy Chicago is Claiming Her Rightful Place  In L.A. Art History September 10, 2019.  

.https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/judy-chicago-los-angeles/ Davies, Lisa. Art’s Gender Imbalance Affects Way We See the World."  The Sydney Morning Herald, Editorial, October 30, 2019.  https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/art-s-gender imbalance-affects-way-we-see-the-world-20191030-p535un.html 

Kopf, Dan. “Just How Big is the Gender Gap in Fine Art?”  Priceonomics June 25, 2015.  

https://priceonomics.com/just-how-big-is-the-gender-gap-in-fine art/