Women Can’t Paint: Gender, the Glass Ceiling and Values in Contemporary Art 9781788310802, 9781501359033, 9781501352775, 9781501352768

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Women Can’t Paint

ii 

Women Can’t Paint Gender, the Glass Ceiling and Values in Contemporary Art Helen Gørrill

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Helen Gørrill, 2020 Helen Gørrill has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Arianna Osti All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gørrill, Helen, author. Title: Women can’t paint: gender, the glass ceiling and values in contemporary art/Helen Gørrill. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019025908 (print) | LCCN 2019025909 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501352768 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501359033 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501352751 (epub) | ISBN 9781788310802 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501359033 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788310802 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501352751 (epub) | ISBN 9781501352768 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Women artists–Social conditions. | Women artists–Economic conditions. | Art–Economic aspects–History–21st century. | Pay equity.| Sex discrimination against women. Classification: LCC N8354 (ebook) | LCC N8354 .G67 2019 (print) | DDC 704/.042–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025908 ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1080-2 PB: 978-1-5013-5903-3 ePDF: 978-1-5013-5276-8 eBook: 978-1-5013-5275-1 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

“Women don’t paint very well, it’s a fact”. Georg Baselitz, 2013

vi 

Contents List of figures Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: Women can’t paint

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

xi

Masculinities and femininities in painting: The new androgynous aesthetics in contemporary art 21 The price of being a woman artist: Dollars, dirhams, pounds and euros 51 The museum exposed: Gendered visibilities and essentialist aesthetics through equality 73 Gender parity and arts prizes: ‘Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness’ 99 The importance of wearing the Right Old (Art) School Tie: Networking, gender and painting values 117 Sexism and ageism in visual art values: ‘But men are allowed to be old or ugly!’ 133 Smashing the glass ceiling of women’s art: Manifestos for equality that could actually work 155

Conclusion: Baselitz’s folly: Women can paint

171

Glossary

183

Appendices Appendix 1 Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 1992–4 London auctions

189 190

Appendix 2 Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 2012–14 London auctions

193

Appendix 3 Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 1992–4 London auctions per cm²

196

Appendix 4 Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 2012–14 London auctions per cm²

199

Appendix 5 Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The United States

202

viii Contents

Appendix 6  Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The United States

203

Appendix 7  Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The Middle East

204

Appendix 8  Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The Middle East

205

Appendix 9  Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The UK

206

Appendix 10 Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The UK

207

Appendix 11 Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: Europe (other than the UK)

208

Appendix 12 Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: Europe (other than the UK)

209

Appendix 13 How gender/the brand of femininity impacts upon aesthetic variables and sales

210

Appendix 14 How gender/the brand of masculinity impacts upon aesthetic variables and sales

211

Appendix 15 Gender equality (age at creation of artwork) in the Finnish National Gallery: A global comparison

212

Appendix 16 An assessment of the levels of abstraction or figuration in contemporary paintings at the Finnish National Gallery 213 Appendix 17 An assessment of the subject matter in contemporary paintings at the Finnish National Gallery

214

Appendix 18 An assessment and global comparison of the average scale of paintings

215

Appendix 19 A global assessment of the use of media in contemporary paintings

216

Appendix 20 A global assessment of supports in contemporary paintings

217

Notes References Index

218 253 278

Figures   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12 13

14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21

Figuration and abstraction in contemporary painting  35 Subject matter in contemporary painting  36 Painting mediums in contemporary art  37 Picture format in contemporary painting  37 Painting support in contemporary art  38 Overall average lightness in contemporary painting  39 Size/scale of contemporary painting  39 The use of the signature or annotation in contemporary painting  40 Words used to describe female, the feminine and female artists  46 Words used to describe men, the masculine and male artists  46 Global gender values in art sales at auction  53 Global gender values in art sales (per cm²) at auction  53 Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the United States (see Appendices 5 and 6) demonstrated through a tornado chart  55 Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the Middle East (see Appendices 7 and 8) demonstrated through a tornado chart  55 Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in Europe (excluding the UK) (see Appendices 11 and 12) demonstrated through a tornado chart  56 Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the UK (see Appendices 9 and 10) demonstrated through a tornado chart  56 Female visibility in global contemporary art auctions  59 Global gender value gaps for contemporary painting  60 Gender value gaps in the UK: Painting prices compared to EHRC income data (1992–4 and 2012–14)  62 The impact of an artist’s gender upon painting price through aesthetics and painterly qualities  63 How price fluctuates through the use of a signature/annotation in the work of female and male artists in the UK market: A detailed study  65

x Figures

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

How price fluctuates for abstract/figurative work created by female and male artists  71 The impact of an artist’s inclusion within the Tate upon their painting’s prices at London auctions 1992–4  76 The impact of an artist’s inclusion within the Tate upon their painting’s prices at London auctions 2012–14  77 Female artist visibility: A 2016 global survey of gender visibility in art collections  92 Gender differences in overall average lightness within contemporary paintings: A global comparison  96 A global assessment of overall average lightness in contemporary paintings 96 Tornado chart demonstrating arts prize gender disparity  103 The impact of arts prizes on economic values: A British case study  112 The impact of arts prizes on museum inclusion: A British case study  112 The impact of location of an artist’s place of birth and their inclusion in the Tate collection  119 The impact of where an artist lives/works and their inclusion within the Tate collection  120 The impact of where an artist studied (undergraduate art education) upon painting’s auction price  121 The impact of where an artist studied (postgraduate art education, if any) upon auction price  122 Average MFA graduate auction price based on sales of all contemporary British paintings reaching London auctions 2012–14  124 Average age at validation through prizes  140 A global comparison of the average age of artwork creation and age of the artist in 2017  143 A global comparison of gender equality and the average age at creation of work by artists when it becomes visible  144

Acknowledgements For Paul, Matt, Leon and Cheryl

This book is dedicated to my extraordinary and inspirational little family, without whose strength and support I might have struggled to find the confidence to stand up and fight for what I believe in. In battling against the system, I have been faced with many obstacles. In retrospect, I believe it is such obstacles that give us the strength to find our omnipresent inner warriors and for that I am grateful. For every door that has been slammed in my face (of which there have been many) and for every institutional cover-up, this book would not have been written were it not for you. Our great institutions and research funders do not seem to fund (in)equality research. Such research has been labelled (by both female and male decisionmakers) as unnecessary or even embarrassing and is usually instantly dismissed at the first hurdle. During the course of writing this book, I have been constantly reminded of the battles faced by our foremothers in the early twentieth century, and of their social condemnation for equality seeking. Not very much has changed in the twenty-first century. Institutions and those in power still sneer at those who attempt to achieve a status quo. When I recently wrote a column on institutional arts inequality for The Guardian, the comments got so vicious they had to close them down. I received hate mail and a barrage of criticism so furious I thought it might be a joke. And most of that hate mail was from women. I have noted later in this book how one major British institution chose to support an ‘important’ research project on, hypothetically, a set of Victorian brown shoes over a project that might have made a real difference to the inequality in our society. For this reason, I have to applaud The Society of Authors for their generous support of this book. I am eternally grateful for their recognition and openness to change in order to make our world a better place to live in. I very much hope that one day I will be able to contribute to this important fund in order to enable another book to be written, and especially if

xii Acknowledgements

our universities are still failing to support such vital writing. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the foresight and generosity of both Kati Kivinen, Chief Curator for Collections at the Finnish National Gallery; and Tamsin Russell and Sharon Heal at the Museums Association for offering to support and collaborate with me on a new and groundbreaking arts equality project. Let’s hope that we are able to receive the funding so that we can work together to make change for our future generations. I have been extremely lucky to have been encouraged by some wonderful educators during my somewhat-delayed education, in particular Gareth Longstaff; and Rosie White who expertly steered me through my MRes in Gender Studies. I thank my wonderful PhD supervisor and mentor Judith Mottram, who gave me an amazing opportunity and continued to support me when she became the dean at the Royal College of Art, also Jill Journeaux (of  course), Tim Sparks and Simon Bell for their huge support, along with Juliet Simpson and Jenny Walden. I give sincere thanks to Sue Williams and Eiman Elgibreen for their thoughtful and incisive constructive criticism which has served to strengthen the contents of this book. Finally, I salute my editor Lisa Goodrum at I.B. Tauris, who had faith and passion in the project from the get-go; and of course to Frances Arnold and team at Bloomsbury. During the writing of this book, I have been lucky enough to spend time with many internationally renowned and prizewinning visual artists who were willing to discuss this often-tricky subject – including Kate Brinkworth, Paul Collinson, Eileen Cooper, Margaret Harrison, Annie Kevans, Julie Roberts and Lexi Strauss. Some have asked to remain anonymous. It was a pleasure to spend time in these artists’ studios, an experience I will never forget, and I am indebted to all of them for their generous and valuable contributions, open or anonymous. Finally, this book is also dedicated to every student I have had the honour to teach: you have been a tremendous inspiration.

Introduction: Women can’t paint

This book was stimulated by Georg Baselitz’s widely publicized doctrine ‘What’s the Biggest Problem with Women Artists? – None of Them Can Actually Paint’.1 His claim that women lack the basic character to become painters led to the reconsideration of Linda Nochlin’s widely contemplated question and exploration of a worldwide art historical issue stemming from 1971 entitled ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy observes that it was the fine art tradition of painting that art historian Linda Nochlin had in mind when she asked her famous question, and the field of painting appears to have been particularly affected by discrimination based on the gender of the artist.3 Perhaps specifically as the book seeks to determine – if women’s art is valued drastically lower than men’s – what exactly is it that has caused the lower economic and symbolic values in contemporary painting, and how could this be overthrown? In fact, Women Can’t Paint has discovered eleven distinct glass ceilings enforced upon the values of women’s visual art achievements. In this book, shocking gender pay (value) gaps are exposed, and institutional flaws revealed. The art critic David Sylvester was ambiguous in his references to why women can’t paint. Artist Jenny Saville stated: When my show opened at the Saatchi gallery, I met David Sylvester at the door … on that day, he said: ‘I always thought women couldn’t be painters.’ Later, I asked him why, and he said: ‘I don’t know. That’s just the way it has always been. That’s how it is.’ He was right.4

Baselitz, however, made the judgement ‘women can’t paint’ in his observations of the economic valuation of work by female artists, stating, ‘Women simply don’t pass the market test, the value test. … As always, the market is right.’5 A flurry of global press reports have indeed suggested that painting by women does tend to be valued economically lower than painting by male artists, and according to research carried out by the University of Luxembourg in 2017, ‘affluent men consistently rate women artists lower than their male counterparts, leading to a discrepancy in prices at auction’.6 This book highlights major new findings in

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respect of gender, the glass ceiling and values in contemporary art ranging from unique discoveries relating to masculinities and femininities in contemporary art to institutional responsibility; from sexism and ageism against women in the arts to the simple price of being a female artist. Women Can’t Paint will discuss the root causes relating to the current position for women in the artworld today. Undoubtedly, a serious problem exists, and many surprising and respectable forces of establishment could be said to be complicit in their discrimination as the book will outline, from charitable organizations to esteemed institutions. Griselda Pollock has observed that our institutions and education are largely to blame for the undervaluation of women’s achievements in the arts.7 If my own undergraduate art education was typical of that offered by other institutions, on the surface it appeared that I was operating within a majority female environment occupied by only several male practitioners. Within my own institution the male canon endured, with students who questioned the issues of gender within the fine art field actively discouraged or perceived by the peer group to be noticeably under-marked. Art history lectures brushed over the achievement of women artists, and continue to do so: in 2018, I wrote a new Access art and design course8 for a prestigious Scottish university, underpinning the contextual studies design with equality rather than the traditional white heteromasculinist canon, detailed in my 2018 published paper ‘Disrupting the Masculine Canon in Fine Art Education: Equal Futures through More Female Role Models’.9 Two male colleagues made attempts to remove this vanguard, but I stuck to my guns and received a tremendous backlash, which struck a chord with a book I had read years earlier: Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. Faludi concluded that the ‘backlash was designed to put women “back in their place” and stop the feminist movement in its tracks’.10 I sincerely hoped the framework I constructed might survive as a gender-equal example in today’s backlash against our fight for equality in the arts. Sadly, as soon as I left the institution the vanguard was immediately quashed, with only a tokenistic selection of women and BME artists (less than 6 per cent of the total) represented in art and design lectures, and the white masculine canon alas endures in that particular institution for new generations of future artists and designers. Meanwhile during my own education, the feminist art movement was dismissed as an embarrassing blip on the radar of postmodernism. Male lecturers strutted around studios packed out with young women, and the few male students desperately mimicked their powerful role models through their

Introduction  3

attire and mannerisms. Visits to museums and galleries were dominated by grand shows of male artists’ work, often displaying tokenist pieces by a female artist annexed off in their own space entitled ‘women’s art’. My own degree show was sectioned off and censored by the police (at the art school’s request) for containing scantily clad submissive men, yet scantily clad females publicly dominated the towering billboards in the streets outside the university, the women promoting alcohol, lingerie and chocolates in provocative poses. We are accustomed to female provocation and nudity, it appears, yet the male nude should be censored (‘to protect whom?’ reported The Guardian of my degree show in 2009).11 At home my teenage children watched music videos featuring fully clothed male singers in sharp suits surrounded by writhing, semi-naked women. Where women were the star acts, their oiled-up bodies continued to writhe on the beach into the waves and through bed-sheets, yearning for the sharp-suited man to take her back under control. In art school, the books they guided us towards were full of the grand achievements of men, containing hardly a mention of female artists who would be role models to the majority female cohort. In fact, to find anything of note on women artists, we had to look at books of womenonly, 100 Women Artists You Should Know! and so on, yet curiously the women artists I studied did not appear to be good enough to pass the value test of those compiling the big books on art. Like many art schools, often one of the three options presented to us was the writing of feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, whose doctrine of differencing was ironically used by lecturers to defend the myth of the lofty genius male artist, citing Pollock’s insistence that the work of women artists be judged differently and separately to the work of men. The second of three options in the exploration of women’s art was Linda Nochlin’s eponymous essay ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’, where Nochlin suggests there is no such thing as a feminine or masculine style and notes, ‘No such common qualities of “femininity” would seem to link the styles of women artists generally.’ Pollock’s and Nochlin’s texts present a perplexing problem to the young art students: women have to be seen as different and have their work judged differently to that of men; yet according to Nochlin, women’s work is actually no different to men’s. Alongside this, the third option: the oftperplexing theory of Judith Butler’s fluidity of gender (there is neither male, nor female). Rather than appraising the qualities of the artwork, we are cursed with a plethora of contradictions in how we should, and should not, read a female artist’s creative output. The fact remains that if you are a male artist, you will

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Women Can’t Paint

simply have your work appraised. When reading the work of a woman artist, however, one is doctrined to first scramble through a contradictory deluge of heavy, theoretical instructions relating to the artist’s gender (or non-gender), before we even look at the artwork. In The Obstacle Race, this is possibly one future obstacle that Germaine Greer did not foresee. This book analyses patterns in creativity of the work of men and women, side by side. A simple methodology, one might think, but one that is controversial and anathema to the work of many of our great feminist theorists (and their followers) who prefer to difference the work of our women creators, in that the work of women artists should be examined differently to that of men. A further problem with differencing is the examination of women-only writing about women only because it is arguable that this also contributes to an inadvertent inequality through the segregation of the genders. The big question here is why should we want to exclude men, if after all we are seeking gender equality? Indeed, this issue has frustrated many of the artists and gatekeepers I have spoken to during the course of writing Women Can’t Paint and their criticism of endless books and almanacs hypothetically titled Women’s Art and Art by Women and so on. The respected feminist art journal n.paradoxa up until its cessation in 2017 ‘publishe[d] scholarly and critical articles written by women critics … on and about the work of contemporary women artists’ as does the Australian Feminist Studies journal published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis (‘By the way, no “Sirs” here!’ they exclaimed to me by email – as though the lack of men in their feminist office were something to celebrate).12 This anti-men stance could stem from a feminist reaction to earlier studies on art practice and creativity in academic research such as that conducted by Emanuel Hammer (1964). Hammer’s research did not even mention female artists because historically, art practice was considered to be a male-dominated sphere of activity, despite the fact that male art students and graduates are now in the minority.13 This enduring masculinity and male domination will be explored in depth in Chapter 1 (‘Masculinities and Femininities in Painting: The New Androgynous Aesthetics in Contemporary Art’) alongside an analysis of contemporary paintings that proves there are few differences in the work of women and men. The long and eagerly awaited fine art education I had anticipated as creative, liberal and all-inclusive subversively crept up as the anathema, and it was very quickly apparent gender power games were at play that ran far deeper than the structure of the art campus itself. As a mature female student, this gendered

Introduction  5

disparity perplexed me, and as such I have persistently sought to understand the endurance of the male canon that operated within my own female-dominated environment. Women Can’t Paint will provide startling findings, as I evidence and discuss the ways in ways in which an artist’s gender significantly impacts upon their art’s various values. The book spans various geographies supported by rigorous case studies on the British market, the United States and pockets of Europe and the Middle East. The price of being a woman artist is shown to run deep through the ascribed values, and throughout all forms of artistic currency: the social (networking and peer evaluation), symbolic/cultural (prizes, awards and museum inclusion) and economic (financial worth and caps of value on artwork). I do of course acknowledge that I am very much ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ who I refer to throughout the book, and appreciate that a great deal of work by others has gone before this text.14 While I have been critical of some theorists and writers at times, this is very much with good intentions and to stimulate progress in the gender equality of our artworlds. Polemics – it is hoped – will lead to progress. Nevertheless the subject area is one that is provocative and contentious, and the book’s findings are certain to stir the honey pot. We are embedded in a culture that calls male artists ‘Artists’ and female artists ‘Women Artists’. Women are seen as secondary and tokenist – as the book will evidence – by the wide variety of gatekeepers that parade and patrol today’s cultural territory. Snippets of artist interviews will be woven throughout the text, in response to the statistics, and the global database of artwork aesthetics and biographical details of their creators. The database could also be considered as a digital compilation of partial catalogues raisonnés: ‘[An] essential tool for art historians, curators, and dealers whose research focuses on understanding the development and oeuvres of individual artists’, and one which contains entries for multiple artists, rather than a monograph of a single artist’s oeuvre.15 As you will shortly read, a framework of ‘rules and regulations’ stamped by great theorists from many angles has left a massive void which appears to have somewhat ironically assisted in enabling the glass ceilings of our women artists to remain firmly in place. There are feminists who instruct us not to research human activity based on the basis of whether we have been born male or female. There are feminists who are rigid in their avoidance of the quantitative, hostile to the idea of embracing the supposed ‘masculine’ use of numbers. There are those who use numbers every day – the economists – who criticize people outside their field for encroaching upon their techniques, and meanwhile we come across those within the arts who are afraid and mistrustful of the use of numbers for

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Women Can’t Paint

what they might tell us. Polemics and contestations aside, it is surely time to end any fear of territorial encroachment and breach the gap in knowledge. If we want to find out if and why paintings by women artists are valued drastically lower than those by male artists, and what it is that has caused these lower economic and symbolic values, then we must break new ground. While it is clear this breaks many of the rules and regulations set as standard by previous feminist strategy and manifesto, my own thoughts are that the biggest risk in writing this long-awaited book would be not taking any risks at all. Conflicting theories appear to have tied us in knots. Many scholars have told me they are afraid to tackle them due to the sheer force of the hugely respected minds who have created them. Nevertheless, Women Can’t Paint contests some of these theories and as such, takes you on an alternative journey to establishing, exploring and potentially solving the problem of the gendered glass ceilings set above the heads of our female creatives. The establishments have also cemented their power and suppression of women artists through manipulative public relations or PR (as we shall explore in Chapter 3, ‘The Museum Exposed: Gendered Visibilities and Essentialist Aesthetics through Equality’). If enough force is exerted upon it, cement can of course be struck apart and foundations can crumble; the myriad of glass ceilings can be shattered. In Women Can’t Paint, you will also read a selection of manifestos which will pave the way to a better future – if of course, enough force is applied to forcefully shove the gendered boundaries aside and enable growth and prosperity for all.

Setting the scene: The trouble with gender In the preface to Gender Trouble, Judith Butler noted that she ‘understood [herself] to be in an embattled and oppositional relation to certain forms of feminism, even as [she] understood the text to be part of feminism itself ’. Butler was concerned to find presumptions in feminist theory that prescribed limits upon the meaning of gender, assuming that feminine and masculine genders would automatically be constructed upon female and male bodies with no room for difference or choice. She concluded that ‘Gender Trouble sought to uncover the ways in which the very thinking of what is possible in gendered life is foreclosed by certain habitual and violent presumptions’, and hoped this might lead to opening up the field of possibilities for gender.16 As such, the breakdown of gender binaries might lead to equality and disband the issue of discrimination

Introduction  7

and misogyny such as that outlined by Jack Holland in Misogyny: the World’s Oldest Prejudice. Holland presents a chronological and comprehensive overview of the history of misogyny, questioning how do you explain the oppression and brutalization of half the world’s population, by the other half, throughout history? Holland’s text elucidates examples of misogyny from ancient Rome, travelling through time to our contemporary society, and notes, for example, the rise of misogynist Christian writings in the Old Testament that borrowed ‘scientific proofs’ of women’s inherent inferiority: ‘God has intervened in human history in the person of Jesus Christ to save mankind from death, sin and suffering, the evil effects of the fall from grace brought about by women.’ By comparison, the text notes differential treatment of the genders today such that in 2002 a Nigerian woman was sentenced to death for having a child out of wedlock, while the baby’s father remained unpunished for his role in the conception.17 At the time of writing this book, women in Saudi Arabia have only just been allowed to drive a car, potentially opening up the doors of greater opportunity to its 17 million female citizens. Nevertheless this new freedom has come with great criticism from the country’s leading clerics: ‘Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving must remain because they lack the intellect of men!’ declared Sheikh Saad al-Hajari.18 The sheikh explains that women are ‘not on the same cerebral level as men’ because they are not able to pray as often as men due to the monthly inconvenience of their periods.19 The industrial revolution brought the prospect of more paid employment for both women and men, although the significant gender pay gap experienced by our ancestors was noted by Jack Holland: ‘Like the men, women had become wage-slaves, their subordinate position emphasised by the fact that on average they were paid around half of what men earned for performing the same work.’20 Exploring the latter part of the industrial revolution in his book Inventing the Victorians, Matthew Sweet observes the perceived imbalance of power between the genders: The nineteenth century is remembered as a time when women’s lives were more severely policed and circumscribed than in other historical epochs. … Emblematic of the Victorians’ bad attitudes to male and female roles is their doctrine of ‘separate spheres’, a notion which used research into the biological differences between the sexes to demarcate their different social functions.21

I perceived that biological differences between the sexes were still being recognized by gatekeepers in the contemporary artworld and specifically within the sphere of

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Women Can’t Paint

contemporary painting – an activity that may have been demarcated as masculine territory, and an issue woven throughout this book. The Victorian era also imposed a clear placement of social values prescribed to women and men, which led to inequality of opportunity and a regime of social punishment and exclusion for women who did not comply. Since Victoria’s reign in the UK, women over thirty were able to vote; yet a century later women still remain unequal within the social framework of most societies. While women in the United States were able to vote in all states from 1920, Gulf News recently reported this has been a long struggle for women all around the world, noting that ‘Oman [made] the step in 1994, Qatar in 1999, Bahrain in 2001 and Kuwait in 2005’.22 The enculturation of female marginalization appears to have been entrenched and reinforced since our birth and childhood, with female characters still underrepresented in infants’ picture books.23 Women are still side-lined and made invisible in our faith systems, as evidenced in Pope Benedict’s 2010 book for children Gli Amici di Jesu (The Friends of Jesus), in which Benedict XVI removed all biblical women from his Catholic teachings.24 According to the Fawcett Society at the time of writing this book, the mean pay gap between British men and women is currently still 13.9 per cent, and the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) lists only 26 per cent women with directorships in their Top 100 companies and 20 per cent female directors in the Top 250 companies.25 In UK politics only 29 per cent of MPs are female, while across the water the United States’ female politicians number only 19 per cent.26 Women make up only 25 per cent of judges in England and Wales,27 slightly higher in the United States with female judges averaging 36 per cent of the federal judiciary.28 Accolades for female achievements fare no better: in the article ‘Knights Command Majority of the Highest Honours with Only Seven Dames Named’ it is noted how men outnumber women by almost 5:1 in the highest of the queen’s birthday honours announced in June 2015.29 Throughout the wider reading relating to this book, it became more apparent that the term ‘gender’ itself is problematic. In Gender and Aesthetics, Carolyn Korsmeyer states: Although reference to gender is now familiar in feminist discourse, the scope of that term remains a subject of contention. Writers in the early years of contemporary feminism in the 1970s distinguished between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, where the former term refers to biological differences in the reproductive morphology of males and females, and the latter refers to the many ways that cultures mould their members into different social roles.30

Introduction  9

The millennial generation is increasingly challenging conventional stereotypes, which has meant that the binary ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories are often criticized in today’s climate of gender fluidity: Half the US millennials surveyed by Fusion agree gender isn’t limited to male and female. OkCupid and Facebook now offer custom gender identities to include a variety of options such as ‘androgynous’. In the US some universities accept gender-neutral pronouns – allowing students to be called ‘they’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’.31

This shifting status has often been contentious within the academy. In Gender Trouble Judith Butler argues that when gender is independent of sex, ‘gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one’.32 Within this research, it has, however, been necessary to revert to the basis of biology and binary of the genders (female/ male) in order to carry out a quantitative analysis of painting, where categories have to be created and variables inserted accordingly. I wanted to provide an alternative solution, to challenge Pollock’s differencing of the canon and Butler’s denial of the genders as I perceived the refusal to sex or genderize was holding back research which could lead to the generation of new methodologies and theories. Through the use of initially categorizing female artists into a unified group separate from men, an accurate picture of the state of equality does start to emerge. This is a contentious issue within the arena of gender studies, because Butler argues that if men and women are seen as fundamentally different and separate, then equality apparently becomes impossible. Nevertheless, Camille Paglia, who describes herself as a ‘dissident feminist’, ‘recently took feminists and women’s studies programs to task for failing to acknowledge biological gender differences’.33 Paglia’s doctrine is important to consider here, for it is arguable that Butler’s non-genderization may not allow for inequality to become irrefutably visible, and thus allows a climate for action to be taken in order to generate a more equal (art) world. Indeed, fluidity of gender may be very important, but it has not brought with it a fluidity in equality: gender fluidity has not stopped rape, nor violence against women, nor the alarming gender pay gaps that have been disclosed recently by the presses. Fluidity of gender has neither stopped sexual harassment in its tracks, judging by the overwhelming surge of the publicity campaign #MeToo which has drawn attention to thousands if not millions of (mainly) women who have been subjected to unwanted harassment.

Women Can’t Paint

10

Hashtag feminism In ‘Hashtag Feminism: An Analysis of Social Media as a Feminist Platform’, Katelyn Giel explores the relationship between feminism and social media. She argues: In the decades before social media became an integral part of culture, the popularity of feminism deteriorated and feminist voices were unsure that it could be revived or popularised again. However, in recent years women have used social media as a mechanism to communicate and disseminate feminist ideas.34

Here, we consider how feminism gives voice to the silent victims of abuse. Feminism gives women the right to regain power and equality through deciding what they do, and do not do with their bodies. Hence, we have witnessed the explosion of such Twitter campaigns as #TimesUp, #ToTheGirls and #MeToo. The original purpose of #MeToo back in 2006 was for the movement’s founder, African American civil rights activist, Tarana Burke to ‘empower women through empathy’.35 On 15 October 2017, the actor Alyssa Milano began to spread the hashtag #MeToo in order to reveal sexual harassment in the workplace. It met with resounding success: the tweets went viral and the hashtag was used millions of times by victims and supporters, a chief data scientist describing it as having cemented itself ‘as a movement on social media’.36 It is widely assumed that the majority of #MeToo victims are female, and in a new survey of American citizens Vox confirmed that over 80 per cent of American women have been sexually assaulted or harassed.37 Nevertheless it is of course important to remember that not all women are victims, and not all men are perpetrators, many men having also revealed #MeToo allegations against those in power. In the artworld, a number of women have also come forward about their experiences of sexual harassment forced upon them by high-profile artists such as the painter Chuck Close and photographer Thomas Roma. This has led to the cancellation of major exhibitions and heated debates about whether or not sexual misconduct should be able to devalue a perpetrator’s artwork such that it is rejected from exhibition. In her article ‘#MeToo in the Artworld: Genius Should Not Excuse Sexual Harassment’, Irina Aristarkhova rightly points out that ‘if sexual harassment is wrong then the value of artwork being exhibited in a public museum is questionable’. Bad Feminist author Roxanne Gay stated: ‘I remember all the silence, decades and decades of enforced silence, intimidation, and manipulation, that enabled bad men to flourish. When I do that, it’s quite easy

Introduction  11

for me to think nothing of the supposedly great art of bad men.’38 Gay’s comment suggests that there is of course more to #MeToo than sexual harassment, and that it has a far wider impact on our value judgements and sense of self-worth as human beings, whether we happen to have been born female or male and irrespective of our gender today. If the great museums had continued to exhibit the work of sexual predators, surely that would have given the message that such behaviour, or masculine domination is sanctioned. In the post-Weinstein film industry, those complicit with predatory behaviour have been removed from filmsets, and through naming and shaming, prestigious artworks have been removed from public view. This at least gives the ‘impression’ that cultural gatekeepers do not condone social oppression against women, although some cultural gatekeepers do appear to condone other forms of gender inequality (as I evidence throughout Women Can’t Paint). Feminist author Gloria Feldt states that many [gatekeepers] are ‘being forced to make changes in response to #MeToo and #TimesUp, for example, examining gender-based pay differences [and disclosing] diversity statistics’, such as the film industry campaign instigated by the actor Geena Davis (the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media).39 It would be wonderful to see a veteran artist such as Bridget Riley setting up a similar campaign to support other women in the visual arts, although this is unlikely given Riley’s negative comments on feminism.40 Feminism, it seems, is not a popular movement within the artworld. Writing in Rolling Stone, Carina Chocano blames patriarchy for the power games symptomatic of #MeToo, as does Leah Fessler in Quartz at Atlantic Media. Chocano describes this enforced intimidation and manipulation as ‘a system of oppression in action’ against women, while Fessler blames culture for raising ‘all men with toxic ideals about masculinity’.41 Toxic masculinity relates to the socially constructed roles that we might associate with men, defined by words such as ‘machismo’, ‘forcefulness’ and ‘aggressive’. This is dealt with in Chapter 1 where you will see polarized word clouds representing character traits used to describe both female and male artists: the differences are vast. In ‘The Good Men Project’, Michael Carley asks, When does masculinity become toxic? When it derives from a rejection of the perceived opposite, femininity, that is so pervasive as to become unhealthy for both men and those around them.42

Here we might read Baselitz’s idiocy, for his determination to reject the supposed feminine qualities of all women painters without clear or reasoned justification.

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Women Can’t Paint

In the artworld, toxic masculinity spreads like a viral infection, stemming from such influencers as our esteemed critics (Sewell, Sylvester et al.). It infects our gatekeepers who govern important collections and museum acquisitions – and gallerists, collectors, educators, students, art writers, even the artists themselves. But are there any masculine or feminine qualities in contemporary painting at all, of which Baselitz speaks? The weakly constructed arguments constructed by Baselitz et al. are smashed apart in Chapter 1 (‘Masculinities and Feminities in Painting: The New Androgynous Aesthetics in Contemporary Art’) when it is evidenced that Baselitz’s toxic masculinity has surely influenced his poor judgement.

A note on intersectionality Psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and writer Susie Orbach observed that #MeToo ‘has allowed for all sorts of previously invisible agendas to be seen’. She states the movement is ‘cross-ethnicity and cross-race’.43 During the course of writing this book, I spoke to a wide range of artists of varying ethnicities, and the question of intersectionality was raised on numerous occasions. In their book Intersectionality, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge state that if they were to ask for a definition of the term they would ‘get varied and sometimes contradictory answers’; nevertheless they offer the following definition of the term: Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organisation of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.44

In her article ‘Intersectional-what?’ Eleanor Robertson describes how the original description of the term ‘intersectionality’ came about. In 1989, law scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw describes how black women laid off by a car manufacturing company were not permitted to bring an unfair dismissal lawsuit – because ‘black women’ were not recognised as a class which could suffer discrimination. They could bring a lawsuit based on race discrimination, or gender discrimination, but not a

Introduction  13 combination of the two. … She took a basic observation – black women are subjected to racism by a predominantly white feminist movement, and sexism by male-dominated anti-racist organisations and asked why this dynamic repeats itself in places such as anti-discrimination law and domestic violence services.45

When I originally applied for funding to complete additional research on an intersectional study, I was rejected by each and every institution almost immediately. I was dismayed at the lack of interest in this important field demonstrated by funding bodies, and major British universities claiming to have an interest in this area. This wider funding gap in the research area of equality is one which I address in Chapter 7, where I find that I am not alone in receiving systematic rejection of such a crucial topic. As a result, a more detailed systematic intersectional study has not yet been carried out and perhaps should be, yet there are issues with the use of the term ‘intersectionality’. Crenshaw has since stated that she is now ‘amazed at how [intersectionality] gets over-used’.46 One African American female artist I spoke to perceived that intersectionality had become too complex. Cheryl (not her real name) stated that ‘too much segregation, too many categories’ simply did not work. Cheryl had recently had a DNA test and found that she was more ‘White European’ than she had previously believed; she said, ‘Am I black? Am I white? Does it matter? I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m an artist, that’s what matters to me’ (several others disagreed, stating their heritage is certainly a key driving factor in their practice). Nevertheless, it is fully understood that women of different races and sexualities may experience inequality in different ways. I have therefore ensured that I have interviewed a wide range of artists from very diverse backgrounds in order to complete this research. Throughout the book, women artists will be referred to as ‘women artists’ or ‘female artists’ and male artists will be referred to as ‘men artists’ or ‘male artists’. While this may seem obvious at first glance, many established texts refer to male artists as simply ‘artists’ thus asserting the assumption that art is masculine and that work by ‘women artists’ is ghettoized and that of ‘other’. In Differencing the Canon, Griselda Pollock notes, ‘If we use the term women of artists, we differentiate the history of art by proposing artists and “women artists.” We invite ourselves to assume a difference, which all too easily makes us presume that we know what it is.’47 Therefore within this text, the biology of all artists (female and male) are referred to when necessary, thus the book attempts equilibrium in the non-femininity or non-masculinity of painting.

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Women Can’t Paint

Counting, after all, is a feminist strategy The findings and revelations within Women Can’t Paint are based on samples of numbers and categorization of painting. Some might term this ‘painting by numbers’, in this case, where numbers are used to analyse both the contents of the paintings and the variables of the artists who have made them. Carrie Mott and Daniel Cockayne argue against what they define as ‘white heteromasculinism’ within academia, believing it ‘oppresses diverse voices and bolsters the status of already privileged and established white male scholars’.48 I have been mindful during the writing of this book to attempt to include a wide range of writers and researchers, but unfortunately at times have had to quote from the white heteromasculinist canon described by Mott and Cockayne due to a lack of visible research being carried out by more diverse voices including women. The following passage is a prime example. There is some contestation between the visual arts and external fields in relation to methodologies. Economist David Galenson criticizes the fact that much literature in this area is ‘suspicious’ because many of the writers do not have any training with which to justify the ‘statistics’ amassed or opinion of the findings of the quantitative data.49 It has to be noted, however, that those working within the arts are also very often suspicious of the quantitative methods. David Galenson observed that in 1998 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curator Robert Storr declared ‘artistic success is completely unquantifiable’, and Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s curator Michael Rooks also criticized the quantification of art and artistic output. Guggenheim Museum Curator Robert Rosenblum was quoted in 1998 as stating: ‘I immediately distrust anybody trying to detect patterns … in art.’50 David Galenson has previously argued that ‘art historians have neglected quantitative approaches to their discipline. Such work can offer new insights … and in so doing adds another dimension to existing work based on traditional approaches’.51 More recently, in Globalisation and Contemporary Art (2011) Jonathan Harris notes how he perceives that ‘art history provides little of the quantitative skills to enable a response to the dilemmas generated when quantitative analysis encounters the long-held assumptions and perspectives that art-historical selective and interpretive practices presuppose’.52 While other very interesting databases have been analysed externally to the field, they have usually incorporated all artworks from all ages, and from a visual arts perspective the results tend to be too general. It was therefore decided that a more intimate database with greater numbers of variables to take in contents analysis – or

Introduction  15

pictorial qualities of artworks – would be the best way forward for carrying out an in-depth analysis of the positioning of gender within the visual arts today. None of the economics-led surveys have yet done what this book has – and arguably, with databases extending to often millions of cases – this would not be possible to do because the intensive analysis of this book’s 3,000 paintings alone has been extremely time consuming. I was not interested in recycling previous databases as many economic surveys do, because I wanted to solve the problem with a fresh and new, groundbreaking approach. Women Can’t Paint provides many charts and calculations created from the quantitative methodology which are spread throughout the book and sited within the appendices at the rear of the text. The data is presented as simply as possible, to enable a wide readership throughout the breadth of the visual arts, humanities and social sciences. In Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Anne Hermann and Abigail Stewart note the uses of what they term ‘Alpha Bias’: Alpha bias has had a number of effects on our understanding of gender. An important positive consequence of alpha bias, or focussing on differences between women and men, is that it has allowed some theorists to assert the worth of certain so-called feminine qualities. This assertion has the positive effect of countering the cultural devaluation of women.53

It is noted, however, that Hermann and Stewart also issue a warning of the uses of ‘alpha bias’: ‘Unfortunately, exaggerating gender difference does not always support the aims of feminism. By construing women as different and devaluing them, alpha bias fosters solidarity between men by construing women as a deviant out-group which can then be devalued.’54 This suggests there would be a risk to the detriment of the feminist cause if one were to attempt to discover whether or not there were any femininities or masculinities within artwork qualities. Perhaps one may find there were significant femininities and masculinities, in which case the research would ‘foster solidarity between men’ and create a greater inequality. Perhaps, however, one may find there are no significant differences in the work of female and male painters, in which case the research could contribute towards a leap forward in knowledge and possible reduction of the equality gap. Certainly, this would enable support of Anita Silvers’s heed in ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ in which she states: ‘Regardless of why it has been so unusual for women to rise to eminence in the arts, it might be argued that the feminist program could best succeed by looking to the future and creating conditions under which women’s art will flourish.’55

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Women Can’t Paint

This is an important issue that I encourage the reader to embrace in Chapter 7 (‘Smashing the Glass Ceiling of Women’s Art: Manifestos for Equality that Could Actually Work’). The anti-statistical (or anti-numbers) stance seems to be a slightly obstinate approach, although not all feminists, or those interested in equality, agree with it. Maura Reilly is a curator, arts writer and executive director of the National Academy of Design in New York. She was previously the founding curator of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. In ‘Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures and Fixes’, Reilly argues that artworld statistics are essential in order to judge inequality, and to be able to highlight any incorrect ‘equalities’ which are often reported via institutional PR departments. Reilly cautions: If we cannot help others to see the structural problems, we can’t begin to fix them. What can we do to promote just and fair representation in the art world? How can we get those in the art world to recognize, accept, and acknowledge that there is indeed inequality of the sexes? How can we go about educating disbelievers who contend that, because there are signs of improvement, the battle has been won?56

I salute Maura Reilly for this pragmatic approach. ArtNews and ‘Women in the Art World’ have also recently stated: ‘[Numbers] are irrefutable’, that is, it is impossible to deny them.57 Here, Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco also notes that ‘it is important to pay attention to statistics when evaluating women’s representation in exhibitions, museum’s collections, and gallery rosters’, and Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu states: It’s absolutely necessary to look at raw numbers in order to grasp the gender imbalance in any situation or context. The numbers can be shocking and glaringly honest, and without them people wouldn’t be fully convinced of how uneven the playing field is.58

We also have to include and salute the Guerrilla Girls’ counting methodology, along with the Hebron Gallery Tally and East London Fawcett (ELF)’s Art Audit.59

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater Jacqueline Rose argues that ‘feminism today needs a new, louder, bolder, and more scandalous language – one that “does not try to sanitize itself ”’.60 Perhaps

Introduction  17

we may read here that some of the anti-quantitative feminists are keen to cleanse our methodology of what they perceive to be the masculine; however, the use of the quantitative in feminine methodologies may be the ‘louder, bolder and more scandalous language’ of which Jacqueline Rose talks. Maura Reilly concludes her 2015 paper by stating: ‘And, yes, we need to keep crunching the numbers. Counting is, after all, a feminist strategy.’61 Here, Reilly perhaps refers to Marilyn Waring’s 1990 feminist economist text If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, which argues that by not counting, women have not seen how unpaid work, traditionally done by women, has been made invisible within national accounting systems.62 It is not unlikely that anti-quantitative feminist strategies may have also missed similar and significant analyses within the artworld and thus prevented the shaking of obstacles and the subsequent generation of new perspectives and possibilities. In a study of literature awards, Nicola Griffiths also argues for the strengths of data analysis to further gender equality. She states: ‘Data is the key. We have the tools now to accumulate, analyse, display and share easily. Data will show us patterns. Patterns will lead to correlations. Correlations will lead to possible causes. Causes will help us find solutions.’63 The issue of the non-binarization of gender is also highlighted in Nicole Ward Jouvre’s Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender, in which she argues: Without the much-denounced so-called binaries – male and female, masculine and feminine – there would be nothing: no generation … to throw out the binaries themselves as a discursive form that makes for suppression or oppression is to throw out the baby with the bathwater … unfashionably in the 1990s I find myself at odds with the main trends, which want to dispose of the very word, woman, as one which has been tarred by the ways femininity has been constructed.64

This statement by Ward Jouvre certainly starts to make sense when it is analysed alongside the arguments presented by Griselda Pollock, Judith Butler et al. None of us want to throw out the baby with the bathwater – of course we should respect the work that has gone before, but the rules and regulations appertaining to what can and cannot be done in a feminist enquiry are open for debate, experimentation and risk taking. How can we end speculation of what is and what is not feminine/masculine in art? Let us turn thousands of artwork aesthetics and artist’s biographical details into variables and numbers, and run them through a statistics database to test for significance. Let us find out exactly what is – and is not – feminine, or masculine. This is the problem that will be solved in Chapter 1

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(‘Masculinities and Femininities in Painting: The New Androgynous Aesthetics in Contemporary Art’). Rather than endless speculation about what is and is not masculine or feminine in art, the construction and analysis of an innovative new database has enabled precise pinpointing towards a new androgynous aesthetics in creative practice. You will read about the enduring masculinity of paint, of feminine and masculine aesthetics: how women and men artists have used abstraction/figuration in art, along with subject matter, medium, picture support, painting format, overall average lightness/darkness, scale/size and the use of a signature/annotation. Here, a new theory of androgynous aesthetics in contemporary art is revealed for the first time. In Chapter 2, I have uncovered the global economic (in)equalities in art values (‘The Price of Being a Woman Artist: Dollars, Dirhams, Pounds and Euros’). New global gender value gaps (as opposed to gender pay gaps) are revealed in contemporary art. The results are startling – particularly in those supposed gender-equal countries where things are not quite as they seem. Chapter 3 (‘The Museum Exposed: Gendered Visibilities and Essentialist Aesthetics through Equality’) bares the reality of our unequal collections and enduring masculine museum foundations. This chapter is structured around a case study of the Finnish National Gallery, whose equal collections have led to the discovery of a new ‘essentialist aesthetics’ through greater freedom of creativity, evidencing for the first time that when women and men are presented as equal, greater creative expression is enabled through the revelations of our femininities and masculinities. In Chapter 4 you will explore how gender impacts upon arts prizes and awards (‘Gender Parity and Arts Prizes: Only Men Are Capable of Aesthetic Greatness’), presenting surprising results from the countries we often perceive as being very unequal and disadvantaged. The prizes examined encompass a range of award bodies from the UK, the rest of Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Using the Tate as a case study, Chapter 5 reveals how the locations of birth, art school education and studio optimize an artist’s chance of being included in respected art museum collections. This chapter evidences that location is key – mainly due to artist networks and communities of practice. Moreover, ‘The Importance of Wearing the Right Old (Art) School Tie: Networking, Gender and Painting Values’ reveals the art schools and locations (rightly or wrongly) most likely to result in economic and symbolic success. Nevertheless, women are proved to be at a disadvantage even when location is taken into account, as networking is impacted by motherhood and family commitments.

Introduction  19

The horror of the artworld’s gendered ageism is exposed in Chapter 6 (‘Ageism and Gender in Visual Art Values: But Men Are Allowed to Be Old or Ugly!’). In this chapter, the artworld’s younger emerging artists are seen to be promoting their brand alongside sexualized selfies, while older women artists are shunted towards the back of the crowd in photo opportunities. In common with TV and film industries women are expected to remain perfect and desirable on the outside, even when it is their artwork rather than their appearance that is on focus. Chapter 7 lists a series of discussions and strategies in ‘Smashing the Glass Ceiling of Women’s Art: Manifestos for Equality that Could Actually Work’. A final summary and response to the book’s findings follow, entitled ‘Baselitz’s Folly: Women Can Paint’. Back in the 1970s, Helen Reddy’s song ‘I am Woman, Hear Me Roar’ captured ‘her growing passion for female empowerment’ through music.65 This book has been written in the vanguard of hashtag feminism, where women are roaring on the platform of social media and objecting to injustice. Today Women Can’t Paint objects to unfairness in our artworld, revealing the accurate, irrefutable and chilling position of gender inequality and discrimination. It is anticipated and very much hoped that this book will become a much-needed resource, as well as an enjoyable, stimulating and provocative read that may help to bring about much-needed change.

20 

1

Masculinities and femininities in painting: The new androgynous aesthetics in contemporary art

In this chapter, I will reflect upon the masculinities and femininities in contemporary art. I refer specifically to painting, although many of the arguments could equally be applied to other traditionally masculine mediums or art forms. I will occasionally step in and out of the discipline of the visual arts in order to draw from external perspectives and provide alternative viewpoints. The chapter will introduce and reveal the first of the results from the initial intensive painting aesthetic survey, based firstly on a case study of 1,200 contemporary British paintings. Throughout the book I also refer to data from other markets: those elsewhere in Europe, and in the Middle East and the United States. I weave snippets of conversations and interviews held with established and respected international artists from all over the world, many of whom are renowned both in and out of the artworld, not only for their art but also for their teaching of fine art in key institutions. It has been a privilege to listen to the stories and experiences of those who have achieved acclaim, and I am grateful for permission to share their stories here. Some have kindly agreed to have their names revealed, and others have asked for first-name-only pseudonyms to be used. The artworld is well known for its lack of morality and lawlessness, and this is eloquently dealt with in High Price by Isabelle Graw who notes, ‘The art market knows only unwritten laws and is rife with murky goings on. The picture of a close knit secretive community reluctant to reveal its practices is regularly evoked.’1 Rather than being unwilling to reveal its practices, it has become clear that had some artists exposed themselves by name, it is possible they may have been cast out by their galleries or museums for breaking the unwritten code of silence, at least according to several of the artists interviewed. In this first paragraph, it already appears that the world of visual arts is not perhaps the ‘progressive

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Women Can’t Paint

and liberal community’ many perceive it to be, but as American curator Helen Molesworth argues, ‘that doesn’t set us apart from the larger cultural forces at play’.2 Much of this is of course entwined with gender, and the very masculinities and femininities of our heritage and herstories, as we shall see. In order to carry out a gendered evaluation of the sociology of our women artists, it has been necessary to binarize the genders into the categories of ‘woman’ ‘man’. Many of our key theorists in the realm of gender and the arts are highly critical of gender-based readings, including Griselda Pollock, who states: Gender based readings mean limiting the artist to what is projected onto her as her female gender on which derive circumscribed meanings to the artwork. … The work of feminist interventions becomes that of differencing the canon, not reifying the difference of women as the other gender, but allowing a desire for difference … we must offer differencing stories, more stories that aim to resist all ghettoization, separation and categorisation.3

Additionally, Judith Butler argues that when gender is independent of sex, ‘gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one’.4 Within this research, it has, however, been necessary to revert to the basis of biology and binary of the genders in order to carry out a data mine. Although this was an ambitious task, I wanted to challenge Pollock and Butler’s denial of the genders as I perceived the refusal to sex or genderize was potentially holding back gender and arts research which could lead to the generation of new methodologies and theories. While the basis of biology is a key consideration of the book’s research, through the use of initially categorizing female artists into a unified group separate from that of men, an accurate picture of the state of equality does start to emerge. This is a contentious issue within the arena of gender studies, because Butler argues that if men and women are seen as fundamentally different and separate, then equality becomes impossible. This means that in order to accept a quantifiable feminist methodology, a feminist framework has to embrace an essentialist or binary rather than anti-essentialist standpoint, which is based on biological difference. The contentious issue here is that it is arguable that an essentialist standpoint aligns itself with a supposed masculinist approach to gender, in other words, that one is born either female or male, and gender may not have the fluidity claimed by such theorists as Judith Butler.



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

23

Here the paradoxical battle between Griselda Pollock’s feminism and the quantitative emerges clearly, because in order to carry out a feminist intervention into the gendered differences in paintings made by female and male artists, and to establish if there are any significant exclusive ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ qualities in contemporary painting, it has been necessary to adopt a quasi-quantitative methodology which depends upon categorization. With due respect, I wish to argue that in polarizing the quantitative and qualitative as binary gendered positions, anti-essentialist feminists may fall into their own trap of binarification, which other feminists oppose and fight against in their research propaganda. Therefore while Pollock and other feminists remain advocators of sexual difference being socially constructed rather than biologically formed, this book has taken a combination of both approaches: categorized biological difference or gender binaries have been analysed in order to investigate discrimination through the quantitative, alongside an additional analysis of socially constructed sexual differences and stereotyping through the qualitative. Despite potential feminist oppositions, the use of quantitative methods enables the precise pinpointing of inequalities such as artworld gender pay gaps within this research. We could also align with Judith Butler, who argues that we must adopt our own gender performance (in this case through a new hybrid methodology), and by choosing to think differently about it we might work to change gender norms and the binary understandings of femininity and masculinity. My own reflections are that we need to be aware not only of our society’s achievements in equality but also of the difficulties and inequalities we are still faced with. If it takes an essentialist and ‘masculinist’ approach to identify those difficulties and inequalities, then perhaps we need to re-adapt and redefine a feminist fluidity of gender to establish an androgynous research territory in order to make new ground and explore and generate new knowledge for the benefit of future generations. In addition, there can be no harm in introducing new methodologies to the field, as Griselda Pollock herself notes how her own interventions have conflicted with much feminist literature in art history.5 Pollock therefore had to take a similar calculated risk and break the established rules in order to attempt to effect a paradigm shift in the field. Moreover, and referring to Judith Butler’s dictum, the fluidity of research methods is perhaps as relevant here as the proposed fluidity of gender itself.

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Women Can’t Paint

On the masculinities and femininities of paint: ‘IT’S NOT FOR GIRLS!’ The fault, dear brothers, lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education – education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs and signals.6 Griselda Pollock Coventry Patmore’s poem ‘The Angel in the House’ was first published in 1854: ‘Inspired by his wife, Emily, the poem charts their traditional courtship and marriage. Today it is known for the way in which it idealised women as devoted, docile wives and mothers; paragons of domesticity, virtue and humility.’7 In her paper ‘Professions for Women’, Virginia Woolf urged ‘fighting off the spectre of Victorian respectability named after the poem’.8 The statement ‘Women can’t paint, women can’t write’ has long been considered a Victorian prejudice, reflecting on the standpoint of Woolf ’s parents who believed women should focus instead on their presided domestic and social roles.9 This Victorian narrative has prevailed into the twenty-first century, and it was as recently as 2008 that the art critic Brian Sewell declared, ‘Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness’, stating the British artist Bridget Riley was a ‘second rate’ painter.10 Again, Georg Baselitz also suggested that painting was a masculine occupation by declaring, ‘Women don’t paint very well, it’s a fact’, an opinion he later reasserted in a 2015 press interview.11 It is clear that the likes of Baselitz and Sewell believe there are no great women artists simply ‘because women are incapable of greatness’.12 It is therefore necessary to question the assumptions made behind such statements relating to women artists. In response to Georg Baselitz’s statement that ‘women can’t paint’, Griselda Pollock noted that women are held back by several factors, ‘but principally the “myth of the painter,” the image in the West of a lonely, tortured white man’.13 During discussions with many internationally recognized artists and household names, it became clear that the respondents believed the masculinity of painting had a historical basis, instilled initially in artist’s early training within schools and art schools, and via institutions.



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

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Femininity lives elsewhere Margaret Harrison (b.1940) is a British artist and one of the 1970 founders of the London Women’s Liberation Art Group. In 2013, she won the Northern Art Prize and was the recipient of a prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists.14 Margaret discussed her struggles at art school in the 1960s when she perceived painting was seen by the institutions as masculine – the crafts, or textiles as feminine – and observed that female art students were actively discouraged from attending painting classes: There were very, very few women [that] went into the painting area or the sculpture area, there was only the two areas then, and everybody recognised me as the best draughtsperson, guys did – everybody – but they tried to persuade me to go into dress and fashion and textiles which would have been fine, but I didn’t want to do that.

Margaret Harrison’s statement is supported by the research of Angela McRobbie in British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?15 who argues that the 1960s/1970s art school was institutionally sexist and highlighted ‘the exclusion or marginalisation of girls from the fine art culture which still prevailed’.16 In Gender and Popular Culture, Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer state that ‘women were shunted away from fine art and towards fashion design’.17 Margaret Harrison’s perception is also supported across the Atlantic by Judy Chicago in Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, a text that discusses the notion of women being ‘steered away from fine art’ into such ‘feminine’ areas as textiles.18 Margaret described how two female colleagues were forced into the textile area, and simply accepted the art school’s guidelines, despite the women’s wishes to be in sculpture and painting respectively. She believes it was her own personal strength and determination that enabled her, as a woman, to cross that barrier of masculinity and enter the realm of the painting studio. It is striking that strength and determination are two qualities also traditionally associated with positive male attributes, and pertinent that it was Margaret who questioned with intended irony that perhaps one may have to ‘become a man’ in order to paint well. In Differencing the Canon, Griselda Pollock defines the canon as ‘fundamentally a mode for the worship of the [male] artist, which is in turn a form of masculine narcissism’.19 The canon is problematic for women artists and for those writing a differential art history. Pollock argues, ‘There can … be no way of, and no point in, adding women to the canon’ and wishes to move

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Women Can’t Paint

beyond the concept of binary gender difference in order to explore differential methods of the female canon.20 However, this approach seeks to claim that there is a different kind of greatness for women artists, and this again is potentially problematic because it makes the assumption that there are differences in the qualities of artwork made by women and by men. Looking through the transcripts of the artist interviews for Women Can’t Paint it became clear that art students may be indirectly taught that painting is seen as a masculine-favoured occupation. However, as noted in the Introduction, 74 per cent of the UK’s fine art graduates are female, and across the Atlantic, the United States’ students are also imbalanced: ‘Females make up 60 per cent of arts graduates but only 46 per cent of all working artists’, according to Artists Report Back, a 2012 national study on arts graduates and working artists currently living and working in the United States.21 A paradoxical situation arises that begs the question: ‘How can we understand the endurance of the male canon which operates within a female-dominated environment?’ Nicola (not her real name) is a graduate of the Royal Academy, a British artist who has been the recipient of several major awards and prestigious residencies worldwide. She is particularly critical about the current lack of female role models in the fine art department of her institution, referring not only to art history lecturers but also to lecturers who are also practising artists: We don’t have any women professors, we’ve only in the last two years had two women promoted to senior lecturers so we’ve got a massive fucking problem. So what does it say to me about my trajectory of us in the University, but what does it say, more importantly, what does it say to women students who are the majority of our students?

Margaret Harrison described how her husband, the artist Conrad Atkinson, also sought to redress the lack of promotion of women artists in education, by starting up a ‘women’s group’ with his postgraduate students at a prominent American university. The students said they believed they knew of equal numbers of female and male artists, but when Conrad asked them to write down how many male artists they knew, and how many female artists they knew, the gap in knowledge was substantial. In the Introduction it was noted that many art history texts dating from the 1950s contained hardly any work by women artists. The latest edition of Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art (published 2015) is recommended as a key text by numerous university history of art programmes including King’s College at Cambridge University, Leeds University and the Open University.



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

27

This latest edition contains only one image of work by a woman, Kathe Kollwitz, a clear lack of female role models to inspire our future artists and art historians.22 Painter Jenny Saville also noted the lack of women artists in text books: I never thought: I’m a girl, I can’t [paint]. It was only when I got to art school that I realised that the great artists of the past were not women. I had a sort of epiphany in the library: where are all the women? Only then, as the truth dawned, did I start to feel pissed off.23

In Penelope Lockwood’s study on gender ‘Someone Like Me Can Be Successful: Do College Students Need Same-Gender Role Models?’ she argues that ‘because women face negative stereotypes regarding their competence in the workplace, they may derive particular benefit from the example of an outstanding woman who illustrates the possibility of overcoming gender barriers to achieve success’.24 If our art history texts are continuing to present a lack of female role models, the situation looks particularly dire, and the one-sided game of thrones noted in the Introduction may well endure. Many of the international artists interviewed for this book perceived painting to be situated firmly within the realms of traditional male territory, some considering that women had been forced to fight to be able to paint or, as Margaret Harrison suggested, ‘become a man’ in order to do so. The women I spoke to appeared to have an acute awareness of the territory they encroached upon, with some perceiving they had overstepped a boundary seldom crossed by women; however, the visual arts and painting is not the only area in which traditional male territory has been compromised. An interesting parallel in the world of sports proposed by Kajsa Gilenstam et al. may help to enlighten the obstacles which have endured through Virginia Woolf ’s lifetime (and beyond): Women were allowed into certain sports as early as the 1880s … the entrance of women into sports was carefully guided by the ‘knowledge’ of medical science at that time. Strenuous exercise should be avoided, which limited the number of sports ‘suitable’ for women. … By following the expertise women did not challenge the structure, and they could perform sports without risking their femininity. … Over time women have managed to increase the number of sports ‘allowed’ for women. This has not been without difficulties, and gaining admission to those sports traditionally considered as ‘male sports’ (such as sports involving physical contact and ball games) has proved to be difficult.25

Gilenstam et al. offer an insight into an historic culture where medical experts strongly advised women against any kind of strenuous or physical activity. Martin

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Women Can’t Paint

(not his real name), an award-winning British painter, perceived oil paint ‘not to weigh very much’, and he stated that ‘it’s not a big effort to really shove it around if you wanted to’. However, if Kajsa Gilenstam and her colleagues’ sporting research can be applied to the visual arts, it is likely that Victorian medical experts would have considered the stretching, manoeuvre and execution of paint upon large canvasses as being too strenuous and therefore unsuitable for women. It is likely that large heavy oil paintings were subsequently masculinized and smaller, lighter watercolours feminized. Indeed, the American artist Martin, and Steve, a ‘Young British Artist’ (YBA, not his real name), suggested the notion of masculinity and painting, and the need for physical strength, was still tied in with the constructed male stereotypes ‘control, strength, competitiveness, toughness’, as defined in The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy.26 A good deal of research has been carried out on the dangers of long-standing gender stereotyping, notably in the field of mathematics education.27 These studies found that women who believe in feminine stereotypes within their subject area ‘were more likely to endorse gender stereotypes about their abilities, predicting more negative selfperceptions of … competence and less interest in continuing study in one’s field’.28 If one reflects upon the artworld, this notion of a cause and effect, intensification and aggravation, or vicious circle, could be a possible contributory factor as to why many women appear to drop out of artistic practice, a concern that will be built upon later in the book in Chapter 6 (Sexism and Ageism in Visual Art Values: ‘But Men Are Allowed to Be Old or Ugly!’). While top prizewinning artist Anya (not her real name) regarded painting as a masculine occupation, she considered that women have been more successful in less masculine mediums, for example video and performance. Anya perceived there had been some ‘very sexy’ female artists, though they were not necessarily painters. She related this to the relationship between the woman’s studio and her domestic arena, territories she felt often encroached upon each other. Anya perceived there was a lack of successful female painters because ‘one can edit a video from home, rather than being in the all-consuming environment of a painting studio’, and clearly saw painting as being on a grand, imposing scale and requiring a dedicated and possibly quite substantial studio space. There are, however, many other methods of art beside video editing in which it would be possible to work from home, or within a domestic arena. For example, watercolour painting is often perceived to be a feminine medium, one which is easily portable and often created on a smaller scale which would not readily encroach upon the domestic arena.29 Anya’s statement also assumes the



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

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interruption of the domestic in a female painter’s daily life, something which did not arise as an issue during discussions with the male artists interviewed for Women Can’t Paint. Anya additionally suggested that other art mediums could be more feminine than paint, thus proposing the concept of the masculinity of paint. She cited Tracey Emin as an example for ‘helping to put female subject matter back on the map’. If one relates Anya’s term ‘female subject matter’ to the oeuvre of Tracey Emin, this encompasses a stream of consciousness narrating of the female experience, for example the subjects of abortion, menstruation, female power, miscarriage, rape, relationship troubles and the self-conscious feminine coming of age. Anya must also refer to the mediums used by Emin. While Emin’s practice has encompassed a wide variety of mediums and processes including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation and video, her fame has also arguably brought the use of domestic crafts such as stitch and embroidery back into the arena.30 British painter Lexi Strauss is a Royal College of Art graduate with works held in the all-female New Hall Art Collection at Cambridge University, curated by Eliza Gluckman.31 Lexi, one of the recent shortlisted artists for the John Moores Painting Prize, relates the use of painting and the gender subject matter to women dropping out after art college, ‘because they often lose confidence and become subtly discouraged if they feel a lack of channels to express themselves honestly’. Yet, if women are to express themselves honestly, the issue of their gender could be prominent in subjects such as homemaking and childrearing – subjects noted by Barbara Howey in the Real Lives Painted Pictures exhibition catalogue, in which Lexi’s work features.32 Some of Lexi’s work features ‘witty portrayals of men attempting breastfeeding [which] appear “clownish and vulnerable” exuding anxiety and confusion’.33 Rebecca Fortnum also observed that ‘the subject matter that has been important to women at certain times does not have value within the art community’.34 Lexi Strauss noted: I’ve found that many well-meaning tutors, both male and female (though predominantly male) tried to discourage my line of work at art college, sometimes in rather brutal and publicly humiliating ways, or because (at the kinder end of the scale) they said perhaps ‘people will laugh at you for it!’.

Lexi also perceived that former peers were unaware that their voices may be subtly repressed and had already started to wind down their practises. She noted how ‘some refused to discuss it openly for fear of compromising their careers and many chose to make work that followed a conventionally male lineage’. In

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Women Can’t Paint

spite of their sincere engagement with feminist rhetoric, Lexi suggested they may have had a subconscious or subliminal awareness of their ‘masculine’ practice. While stitch and embroidery are perceived to be placed firmly within traditional female territory,35 perhaps award-winning artist Anya observes that women perform better when they remain within their own traditionally bound territories. It is thus possible that a lack of art historical male role models in the mediums of textiles and the applied arts, new media and performance, has encouraged – or rather not discouraged – women artists to take these up. Indeed, Barbara Howey has noted that ‘it was difficult as a female painter to try to position yourself as there were few female role models or a theory of female painting practice’ during her education.36 According to economist Tyler Cowen in his essay ‘Why Women Succeed, and Fail in the Arts’, ‘There was a lack of institutional training in photography: Photography was a new art with no academies, no formal schools and no established techniques. Many women … have achieved the highest rank in this medium.’37 Cowen notes how women were successful in photography ‘almost immediately after the birth of that genre’. In her article ‘The Price of Being Female’ Sarah Thornton raises the issue that Cindy Sherman’s work fetches comparatively high prices at auction, but questions if this is because Sherman works in a medium that has ‘only recently been elevated to the status of art and is not overwhelmed by a legacy of male geniuses’.38 Indeed, Sherman herself notes that many women of her generation worked in photography ‘precisely because it didn’t compete with painting’.39 In Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing, Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon have argued similarly in relation to the emergence of new contemporary drawing practice alongside the birth of the feminist art movement. Thus, a gender neutral space of ‘otherness’ has allowed women artists to flourish, such as Tracey Emin who was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in 2011, described as an ‘outstanding draughtswoman’ and whose strong drawing practice ‘conveys emotion through the texture of a line’.40 Sherman and Meskimmon and Sawdons’s comments on drawing practice suggest that first, women had no institutional bias to reckon with, and therefore were not held back by other people’s perceptions of the gendering of that medium; and second, collectors’ and gatekeepers’ perceptions of the medium of paint may be tainted by the perceived masculinity of the medium. Lexi Strauss perceived that it was not just paint – but overall art – that was masculine: ‘The language or rhetoric of art is of course over-ridingly male, since so few women have yet been permitted to play a serious part in its development.’



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

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Julie Roberts is a British painter whose work is included in the collections of Tate Britain and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, as well as museum and private collections throughout the world.41 Julie noted how women artists attempt to insert themselves into the masculinity of paint: Men want to get the ball and keep hold of it, they won’t let you join in the game of football, it’s like when you’re a kid at school and all the boys played football in the centre of the playground and all the girls stood on the edges either talking to each other or doing each other’s hair or watching, I used to watch the boys playing and I used to think even as a five year old, why can’t we play in that bit in the middle? I’m still interested in how we play in the middle and I don’t think we can, I think maybe I’ve got to play my game on the edge but play such a bloody good game!

Julie related this to a famous British female artist she knew who had managed to join in the boy’s game of ball and thus transgress the masculine boundaries, perceiving it was the artist’s determination and ambition that had allowed her to succeed where she felt others, including herself (and despite her obvious talent and success), had failed. While Julie noted how her femininity enabled her to play the game only on the periphery of the action, British photo-realist painter Kate Brinkworth perceived that how one chooses to play the game of femininity and masculinity is dependent upon one’s upbringing.42 Here Kate describes how her own family’s outlook has enabled her to readily and successfully encroach upon male ground: Dad always used to say to us whatever a man can do you can do equally well or better and that was our mind-set so you know at 14 or 15, I’d be racing mountain bikes, rock climbing, it’s more of a male environment but I’ve never felt treated anything less than a woman. I was doing some climbing with Dad up on the Isle of Skye, there was one day it was dead misty, this guy climbed up and he’s in a bit of trouble and we’re like just latch onto us we’re going to the summit! And he got to me and he said bloody hell! It’s a woman! And he presumed – but it was complimentary and you couldn’t take it offensively cos there aren’t many women around here so he’s just saying something obvious!

Here Kate suggests that women operating within traditional male territory may be too sensitive to comments made by men, and this is supported by Julie Roberts, who noted she was still ‘really hyper sensitive’ about perceived gender exclusion. Those who had managed to successfully encroach on male territory appeared to have ‘just got on with it’ and joined in the boys’ game rather than accepting

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that the ball would stay in the masculine court. This notion of ‘holding onto’ something was also noted by Kate, who observed that ‘there’s still this thing of a man being a great painter and having female muses and I think [the masculinity of painting] is still holding around a bit.’ Kate Brinkworth offers a similar view to Linda Nochlin in her essay ‘Women, Art, and Power’ where Nochlin argues that many art historical visual images represent women in positions involving power – ‘most usually its lack’: I refer, of course, to the ways in which representations of women in art are founded upon and serve to reproduce indisputably accepted assumptions held by society in general, artists in particular, and some artists more than others about men’s power over, superiority to, difference from, and necessary control of women.43

I digress here to briefly discuss the unlikely subject of chocolate. The Yorkie Bar’s £3.5 million ‘Not for Girls’ new wrapper campaign launched on 1 April 2002 featured heavy text stating, ‘IT’S NOT FOR GIRLS!’ with a red prohibition sign of a woman clasping a handbag diagonally crossed out by a red stripe. The wrappers were changed ten years later in 2012 because ‘the representation of masculinity consumers associated with Yorkie was outdated and therefore lacked relevance’ in today’s society; however, Yorkie’s research into its advertising campaign revealed key consumer insights that are relevant to understanding the persisting masculinity of painting and the notion of feminine encroachment: The rise of feminism has led to a decreased role for men today. The media are constantly reminding us of the increasing success of women in today’s society. Whether it’s better reading ability of girls at primary school or female graduates now getting better degrees than men, the rise of the woman, particularly to men, seems unstoppable. With women now having the gall even to drink pints (of Guinness!), you have to agree with one respondent who said, ‘There aren’t many things a man can look at and say, “that’s for me”’.44

This suggests rightly – or wrongly – there is an expected understanding that femininities and masculinities ought to be kept separate and appropriate to gender.

A discovery of androgynous aesthetics After a great deal of reading and re-reading key art texts, it became clear that many attempts to understand the feminine and masculine in contemporary art



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were speculative. A more substantive approach to this research was required, borrowed from our colleagues far across the campus and down long corridors in other departments, namely, those of mathematics, economics, statistics. The wonderful thing about numbers in visual arts research is that they are, as stated by ArtNews editor Sarah Douglas, ‘irrefutable, that is, it is impossible to deny them’.45 Rather than rely on previous speculation, or create further speculation myself about what may or may not be feminine or masculine within our contemporary output, I decided to create a new database, to settle the score not once and for all, but to provide a new platform for future research and an optional avenue of exploration for those who may have been similarly frustrated with the rules and regulations of existing feminist, and visual arts methodologies. I had stimulating and eye-opening debates with eminent professors across Europe working in statistics, and much support and experimentation ignited a new method to analyse artwork. The new database would be capable of interrogation by statistics software, for which I received training and one-toone sessions where I ironed out my ignorance and attempted to dally with the scientific. The original database was formed of around 1,200 contemporary British paintings, a complete sample of all paintings created by a living British artist (or an artist living and working in the UK) which had appeared at major London auctions or been selected or shortlisted for a key UK arts prize during 1992–4 and 2012–14. This data was also tested through the incorporation of a much wider sample of paintings from the United States, the Middle East and other pockets of Europe up to 2017, both those from auction market and featuring in museum collections. It became clear that a global perspective was important to understanding geographies beyond the UK, and so a new database was formed to supplement the original data, with a complete sample of paintings selected from national museum collections in Paris, Finland, the United States and Qatar, alongside recent contemporary art auctions at the major houses in those region. This amalgamated database contained nearly 3,000 paintings and around 100,000 independent data points. Unlike most of the larger-scale databases constructed by those working in the arena of arts-finance, this new database incorporates the key element of contents analysis alongside perceived value and artist biographical details. Each artwork’s overall size, shape, media, painting support, average lightness and subject matter were analysed; it was noted whether the artist had painted with an abstract or figurative approach, and if the painting contained a signature or artist annotation.46 Each of these categories were given a numeric value or coding, which was input into the new

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Women Can’t Paint

database, and compared alongside artist biographical details, including artist’s age at creation of painting, age at sale (if appropriate), place of birth, where the artist lives and works, which art school was attended, prices attained at auction and symbolic recognition such as the award of an arts prize and of course the gender of each artist. This huge spreadsheet was then analysed at the click of a command, whereupon hundreds of graphs and charts appeared, and further tests were needed to test the ‘significance’ of the figures provided. As a newbie to statistics, I was fascinated by the patterns formed and detected by the software, which are not always evident to the naked eye.47 Indeed, in ‘How Computation Changes Research’ (Switching Codes: Thinking through Digital Technology), Ian Foster argues that automated analysis ‘can [of course] detect patterns that a human cannot’.48 A curious pattern of feminine and masculine encroachment emerged during the analysis of the paintings, in most although not all variables. The results of a gendered aesthetics have found that there are few differences in contemporary paintings made by women and men across the globe with the exception of the paintings analysed in Finland. This anomaly will be discussed in depth in Chapter 3 (‘The Museum Exposed: Gendered Visibilities and Essentialist Aesthetics through Equality’). Griselda Pollock et al.’s ‘differential’ seeks to claim there is a different kind of greatness for women artists, but this chapter contests such theories, or at least it appears to do so within the realm of the sample of contemporary painting and the requisite boundaries of Women Can’t Paint. The evidence to support this claim sits below, in the form of vertical bar ‘tornado charts’, perhaps a quite aptly named way to present comparative information from the 1990s to the present day. Bear with a short description of the findings sited above each chart, whereafter the discussion will continue as ‘Female!’.

A gendered analysis of figuration and abstraction in contemporary painting In an analysis of artists’ employment of figuration or abstraction in contemporary painting (Figure 1), 46 per cent of female artists painted abstract works during both 1992–4 and 2012–14. In 1992–4, 39 per cent of female artists painted figurative works of art, a figure which increased to 54 per cent in 2012–14. In 1992–4, figuration was dominated by women (the feminine), whereas



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting 46%

2012-14 figuration

44%

2012-14 abstraction

54% 46% 39%

1992-94 figuration 1992-94 abstraction

35

54% 35% 58%

Female artists Male artists

Figure 1  Figuration and abstraction in contemporary painting.

abstraction was dominated by men (the masculine); in 2012–14, figuration was mainly dominated by women (the feminine), whereas the area of abstraction was occupied by both female and male artists equally. In 1992–4, 58 per cent of male artists painted figurative works, a figure which decreased to 54 per cent in 2012–14. Therefore, during this timescale male artists’ use of figuration increased towards the feminine, and female artists’ use of abstraction increased towards the masculine. If in the 1990s the use of figuration could be described as majority-feminine or feminine and the use of abstraction as majority-masculine or masculine, the masculine has shifted towards the feminine and thus a form of androgynization appears to have occurred in artists’ appropriation of abstraction or figuration.

A gendered approach to subject matter in contemporary painting Each painting was categorized by subject matter according to an adaptation of the museum standard methods advised by the J. Paul Getty Museum ‘Categories for the Descriptions of Works of Art’.49 In an analysis of the subject matter (Figure 2), in the 1990s female artists were mostly painting people, with men mostly painting places. In 2012–14, it was found that the majority of paintings made by both women and men were of people, with no change for female artists but a 2 per cent increase in the painting of people by men. Women’s use of abstraction as a subject matter reduced by 9 per cent, while the use by men saw no change. Women’s depiction of nature decreased by 14 per cent, while men’s use increased by 5 per cent. Male painters also increased their depiction of symbolic works by 4 per cent. If in the 1990s the painting of people could be described as majority-feminine or feminine and the painting

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36

2%

2012-14 Symbols

3%

2012-14 Places

17%

22%

2012-14 People

39% 9% 2%

2012-14 Nature

14% 7%

2012-14 Abstract

30% 2% 14% 39% 7% 16% 21%

2012-14 Objects

29%

1992-94 Symbols

24% 7%

1992-94 Places

28%

1992-94 People

27%

1992-94 Objects 1992-94 Nature 1992-94 Abstract

9% 2% 24%

Female artists Male artists

Figure 2  Subject matter in contemporary painting.

of places as majority-masculine or masculine, the masculine has shifted towards the feminine and thus a form of androgynization appears to have occurred in artists’ selection of subject matter in contemporary painting, as shown in Figure 2.

A gendered approach to painting mediums in contemporary art The analysis of painting mediums (Figure 3) demonstrates that during both periods, both women and men were mainly painting in oils. The medium of household paint has emerged since the 1990s, and both women and particularly men have significantly increased their use of mixed media.



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

12%

2012-14 watercolour

6%

2012-14 oil

52%

46%

2012-14 mixed media

19% 6%

2012-14 household

25% 7%

10%

2012-14 acrylic

12%

11%

1992-94 watercolour

11%

1992-94 oil

74% 11% 5%

1992-94 mixed media 1992-94 acrylic

37

70% 11%

Female artists

8%

Male artists

Figure 3  Painting mediums in contemporary art. 13%

2012-14 square

16%

2012-14 portrait

42% 35% 21%

40%

2012-14 landscape 1992-94 square

33%

1992-94 portrait

32%

1992-94 landscape

30% 9% 35% 45%

Female artists Male artists

Figure 4  Picture format in contemporary painting.

A gendered approach to picture format in contemporary art According to the evidence presented in Figure 4, in the 1990s women were painting mostly on a portrait format, while men painted mainly on landscape. In the 2012–14 set of paintings analysed, it was found that women had increased

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their use of landscape format and portrait format while decreasing the use of the square. Men decreased their use of landscape significantly and increased use of the portrait and square formats. If in the 1990s the portrait format could be said to be majority-feminine or feminine, men could now be said to be painting in a manner formerly associated with the feminine. The use of the square as a picture format also appears to have androgenized.

A gendered approach to painting support in contemporary art According to the evidence presented in Figure 5, in the 1990s both women and men were painting mostly on a canvas or linen support. However, in 2012–14, it can be seen that women decreased their use of canvas in favour of wooden grounds, while men increased their use of canvas.

A gendered approach to the overall average lightness contained within contemporary painting An analysis of lightness of each painting was carried out through compressing and blurring the images in Photoshop, taking an average colour sample and running the resulting code (referred to as a ‘hex-code’) through an online hex converter. A ‘hex-code’ is simply a way of ‘specifying colour using hexadecimal values’ (please visit Glossary for further information).50

23% 17%

16%

2012-14 paper

16%

2012-14 canvas

53% 17% 23% 60%

2012-14 wood

63%

1992-94 wood

16%

1992-94 paper

16%

1992-94 canvas

Figure 5  Painting support in contemporary art.

60%

Female artists Male artists



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The findings are that in the 1990s, women’s paintings contained an average of 55 per cent overall lightness, whereas men’s paintings were darker at 49 per cent lightness (Figure 6). However, the matter of lightness and darkness in contemporary painting has androgenized in the later figures: in 2012–14 women painted darker pictures at 45 per cent lightness compared to men who painted lighter paintings consisting of 54 per cent light. Thus if it was considered in the 1990s that lighter paintings were feminine and darker paintings masculine, an androgynization appears to have occurred in 2012–14 whereby the feminine has merged towards the masculine, and the masculine has merged towards the feminine, demonstrated in Figure 6.

A gendered approach to overall average scale of contemporary painting In the 1990s, women’s paintings were smaller than men’s, at 17,159 cm² compared to 19,346 cm² (Figure 7). However, the matter of scale or the association with women’s work being smaller and men’s work being larger seems to have androgenized in the later figures: in 2012–14 women painted larger pictures

45%

2012-14 overall average lightness %

55%

1992-94 overall average lightness %

Female artists

53%

49%

Male artists

Figure 6  Overall average lightness in contemporary painting.

18,252 cm²

2012-14 overall average scale

17,159 cm²

1992-94 overall average scale

17,778 cm²

19,346 cm²

Figure 7  Size/scale of contemporary painting.

Female artists Male artists

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than men at 18,252 cm², while men painted the smaller pictures at an average of 17,778 cm². Thus, if it was considered in the 1990s that smaller paintings were feminine and larger paintings masculine, an androgynization appears to have occurred in 2012–14 whereby the feminine has merged towards the masculine and the masculine has merged towards the feminine.

A gendered approach to the analysis of the artist’s signature or annotation of an artwork Both women and men appear to have increased their use of a signature or annotation on their painting (Figure 8), an increase of 3 per cent for women and a significant increase of 12 per cent for men. The possible reason for this anomaly will be discussed further in Chapter 2 (‘The Price of Being a Woman Artist: Dollars, Dirhams, Pounds and Euros’).

female In Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, Rob Pope uses the term ‘female’ to attempt to register the complexly dynamic nature of this relationship. Seen as two arrows or two forks, it points to the reciprocally defining movement of the relationship; how far it is motion from or towards, an opening or closing, depends on which ‘arrow’ or ‘fork’ you take to be attached to which of the two components.51

The key word here is ‘movement’. This study in Women Can’t Paint presents evidence that both female and male artists have ‘moved’ towards or converged in their use of abstraction, subject matter, scale and orientation, with similarities

56%

2012-14 signed works

53%

1992-94 signed works

59%

47%

Female artists Male artists

Figure 8  The use of the signature or annotation in contemporary painting.



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detected in patterns of creativity such as within the use of overall average lightness, support and the use of a signature. Pope’s figure may thus read as ‘fe±male’. This plus-minus sign generally indicates the option of two possible values, one of which is the negation of the other, or if we look at chess the sign indicates ‘a clear advantage for the white player; the complementary sign ∓ indicates the same advantage for the black player’.52 In his text, Pope refers to a key text The Art of Loving, written by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Fromm argues that a ‘bisexuality’ of behaviour is essential for creativity: ‘Creativity is realised through the coming together of the “male” and “female” polarities.’53 Indeed, while femininity was seen as being vital to creativity by theorists such as Carl Jung et al., Jung cites women as being only male muses of inspiration: ‘[The woman] brings forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilize the feminine side of the man.’54 There is no notion, ironically, of man’s seed fertilizing the masculine side of the woman. In Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, Pope describes such theories as the idea of ‘men abrogating the procreative power of women for their own purportedly superior “creative” ends’.55 While the work by female artists in the British sample has arguably become more ‘male’, Fromm and Pope’s creativity theory suggests this polarized convergence (or ‘wholeness’) of masculinity and femininity is essential for what has been accounted for as ‘genius’ in the past. The merging of the feminine and masculine could also be defined as androgynous – ‘partly male and partly female in appearance … of indeterminate sex’. Evidence of such androgyny within the painterly qualities of the assessed artwork points towards the beginnings of a new metatheory, that of an ‘androgynous aesthetics’ in contemporary painting. As noted in the Introduction, Judith Butler’s suggestion is to encompass a fluidity of gender, where ‘man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine might just as easily signify a male body as a female one’, pertinent here, where such a concept aligns with the new emerging theory of androgynous aesthetics.56 The term ‘androgynous aesthetics’ was used by British artist Brendan Jamison in reference to his active attempts to merge the female and the male and his intention to blur the boundaries between gender through sculpture and installation.57 However, this is an intrinsic practice, and while writer Angela Darby notes the importance of the artist’s authorial intention, such an approach in terminology could be criticized by Barthenian scholars. In ‘The Death of the Author’ Roland Barthes opposes the reading of a text (or artwork) centred on authorial intention. Barthes argues that meaning is shifted from the focus

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of the author (or artist) to the objective reader (or viewer).58 Thus, it is argued an assessment of an artwork should be based on one’s (exterior) response to the actual work, rather than the author’s (internal) intention. The new term of ‘androgynous aesthetics’ referred to in this book is one which aligns with Barthes’s observations, rather than the very different intentions stated by an artist upon the creation of an artwork. Such an approach in the visual arts is also supported by Cynthia Freeland according to Art Theory.59 Any writing or authorial statement regarding the paintings included within this book has not been taken into account in order to attempt to achieve an external and objective perspective of the artworks. It is through such an approach that the new findings of an androgynous aesthetics in contemporary (British) painting have been made. Smaller samples of other geographies (excluding Finland) such as in the Middle East, the United States and other pockets of Europe suggest that a similar androgynization has also occurred elsewhere. The anomaly of Finland’s ‘essentialist aesthetics’ will be discussed further in Chapter 3. In Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, Christine Battersby summarizes the Jungian theory of the androgyny of creative genius, stating, ‘The great artist is a feminine male.’60 While Carl Jung believed that the mind of a male benefits from the emotion, the moodiness and love associated with his inner femininity, by contrast the masculine woman merely ‘parodies’ the male.61 Thus according to Jung, while a polarized aesthetics may benefit the male artist, it may only ever be used to devalue a female artist’s work. Indeed, an experiment carried out on male fine art students in 1964 by the psychologist Emanuel Hammer at New York University found that the most successful (male) artists required a fusion of both feminine and masculine qualities in order to produce what the psychologists judged to be an ‘outstanding’ painting. No parallel study was carried out on female fine art students and no feminine qualities were noted, but the masculine qualities of ‘good’ artists were a ‘high degree of strength, confidence, determination, ambition and power’.62 It has previously been suggested that artists such as Tracey Emin may have achieved longevity in her success because she had perhaps consciously or unconsciously developed a hybrid sexual persona in order to survive and succeed in the artworld. Emin perhaps also has fewer domestic commitments than other women because apart from her pseudo-wedding where she married an inanimate piece of stone in 2016, she has remained childless and unmarried.63 Conversely, Christine Battersby appears to be committed to the recognition of women’s creative potential and achievement devoid of any male or masculine



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contribution.64 Battersby also observes that ‘the great artist is a feminine male’. However, there is no reason why a great artist cannot also be a masculine female: both feminine males and masculine females should be equals in androgynous terms. In Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving he observes, ‘Man – and woman – finds union within himself only in the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity.’65 In the more recent Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, Rob Pope defines such creativity as ‘realised through the coming together of the “male” and “female” polarities’.66 Such a creativity can be seen in the new emergence of the theory of androgynous aesthetics in contemporary painting.

On feminine and masculine aesthetics When Georg Baselitz made his statement ‘women can’t paint’, and Brian Sewell referred to Bridget Riley’s paintings as being ‘second rate’, it is assumed the writers referred to a noticeable female aesthetic which they found to be inferior to that of the male painter. In her debate against a possible different kind of greatness for female artists, Linda Nochlin offers the following possible feminine aesthetic: ‘[Female works could be described as] more inward-looking, more delicate and nuanced … daintiness, delicacy and preciousness.’67 However, Nochlin argues strongly that in fact, feminine and masculine aesthetics cannot exist. I will return to this statement shortly. Only three of the artists I corresponded with, including Annie Kevans and Paul Collinson, agreed with Nochlin, believing there was no such thing as a feminine or masculine painterly quality. Annie Kevans is a British artist whose entire degree show series of thirty paintings of dictators as young boys was famously purchased by Charles Saatchi: ‘Kevans’ paintings reflect her interests in power, manipulation and the role of the individual in inherited belief systems. She looks at alternative histories and how they relate to current issues and creates what she describes as “anti-portraits” that may or may not be based on real documentation.’68 Annie Kevans spoke strongly against the notion of a male or female aesthetic, discussing the non-masculinity of Van Gogh’s irises and sunflowers alongside work by more contemporary artists. Paul Collinson is a British artist who has twice been selected for the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition.69 Paul also objected to the notion of gendered aesthetics and disagreed with the notion of ‘a masculine or feminine brush mark in terms of

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Women Can’t Paint

technique’; however, he paints war scenes and felt that his subject matter may be more relevant to the masculinity of a painting: The origin of my artwork does have a preoccupation with the masculine – model making, using miniature military modelling kits, art history, contemporary and historic landscape ideologies, politics and origins, historic and contemporary architectural features – all traditional male-oriented subject matter. The large scale of my paintings does have a presence that I seek – this may be a macho thing – maybe more bombastic and ‘unquiet’ (Baselitz’s ‘idiocy’?).

Paul Collinson’s preoccupation with the masculine is related to the ideologies of power relationships past and present. He does keep to Baselitz’s view of the male idiocy in the artworld – as Paul states, ‘the male is more likely to play the art game and adhere to stereotype’. Annie Kevans also strongly disagreed that one could easily recognize paintings created by one’s own gender, and thus respond to discernible female and male qualities in paintings. Annie gave the example of a recent panel discussion where the head of a photography gallery in London said that when photographs were blind marked for art prizes, about 60 per cent of their selected winners were women: They have no idea what photos are by men or by women, there’s really no difference. I agree it’s like that with painting, if you walked into an exhibition, you’d be very hard pressed I think to say man – woman – man – woman – who’d done what, I don’t buy that at all.

Within the music industry and in order to explore the perceived prejudice against women in the male-typed environment of major symphony orchestras, Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse compared the success of women and men when the orchestras did (‘vs. did not’) use a screen to hide the identity of the musicians who were auditioning.70 Goldin and Rouse found that the screen increased women auditionees’ success by around 50 per cent and made them 1.6 times more likely to be successful in securing an orchestral position. It would of course be interesting if Georg Baselitz et al. were similarly to be challenged with a selection of anonymized paintings and asked to judge them on their merits rather than by authorial gender. I return now to Linda Nochlin’s belief that a separate masculine and feminine, or differential aesthetics, cannot exist. She argues that art is not a direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that, great art never is. … The language of art is, more materially, embodied in paint and line on canvas or paper … – it is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper.71



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Here Nochlin ignores Louise Bourgeois’s autobiographical art and Tracey Emin’s confessional works which have arguably dominated their entire practices. Perhaps it may be time to acknowledge that art can be both a sob story and a confidential whisper, if the artist – whether they be female or male – so wishes. Granted, in 1971 at the time of writing ‘Why Are There No Great Women Artists?’ Emin was only eight years old and Bourgeois fifty-nine years old, eleven years prior to the French artist’s catapult to arts notoriety with MoMA’s retrospective of her work, headlining Bourgeois as the ‘inventor of confessional art’.72 Nevertheless, when ‘the confessional’ is portrayed or performed by a female artist, it has been considered inferior to the male attempt. In a recent article about the singer–songwriter Joni Mitchell in The Guardian, the term ‘confessional artist’ is criticized for being thought of as reductive and heavily gendered, imbued with a sense of guilt and shame – and specifically female: A male singer-songwriter might play on the same themes as a female singer-songwriter and it may end up being assumed that the girl is singing from her diary, and the boy is making statements on the big themes of life.73

Similarly, the popstar Taylor Swift commented that ‘a man writing about his feelings from a vulnerable place is brave; a woman writing about her feelings from a vulnerable place is oversharing or whining’.74 In Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, Christine Battersby states that ‘the feminine – generally used as a sneer-word in reference to artworks by women – takes on a much more positive connotation when applied to males’.75 The problem lies in the fact that confessional art is also seen as ‘feminine’ and therefore often viewed in a derogatory sense. It is perhaps this issue of female or the feminine and inferiority which needs to be dealt with rather than the issue of what is, or is not, feminine or masculine. The analysis of the artist interview transcripts suggests this may be a grass-roots issue of misogyny that goes far deeper than the discussion of what constitutes a differential aesthetics. In the 1995 publication Old Mistresses, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock argued that the acceptance of a feminine and masculine aesthetic was not currently possible, noting a basic Lacanian theory which represents women as ‘other’ or as a cultural absence: Within the present organisation of sexual difference which underpins patriarchal culture, there is no possibility of simply conjuring up and asserting a positive and alternative set of meanings for women … feminine means merely not masculine: it has no positive significance and merely indicates a psychic lack.76

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Women Can’t Paint

This aligns with the view put forward by a British artist who noted that when a painting was seen as ‘feminine’, it was sometimes in a negative way and thus female qualities in a painting can be seen as being inferior to those created by a male: ‘You know when someone says oh it looks like a woman’s done that, I don’t know why that should be a negative, it should be oh it’s lovely it’s a lovely piece, gentle, or soft or you know all things you associate with women.’ Indeed, the perceived gendered characteristics of women and men, female and male artists, were startling during my conversations with the artists, as can be clearly seen on the word clouds created from descriptive words used by the artists following the transcription of the in-depth interviews (Figures 9 and 10).

Figure 9  Words used to describe female, the feminine and female artists.

Figure 10  Words used to describe men, the masculine and male artists.



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There are many examples of gendered work presented in Pat Kirkham’s edited collection of essays The Gendered Object. Kirkham discusses the gendering of handkerchiefs and notes how tissues have to be rendered ‘masculine’ or man-size in their greater strength and size. Kirkham observes that ‘the insecurities seem to be around the male use of a delicate or fragile product; in order for it to be acceptable for men to use them’. Kirkham also refers to the ‘specific histories of the original coding of the particular object as male or female’.77 This could partly account for the assumption that first painting is seen as masculine, and second the misnomer or possible assumption that men’s paintings are still larger than women’s when this book has shown that this is no longer the case (Figure 7). Within The Gendered Object, Juliet Kinchin explains the feminine connotation with ‘lightness’ as a masculine attempt to control matter out of place, thus reinforcing threatened boundaries.78 The original coding of women’s painting being small in scale or light in tone has resonances with Kinchin’s debate, although again, in terms of contemporary painting this chapter has demonstrated that women’s painting is neither smaller than men’s nor significantly lighter in tone (Figures 7 and 8). One issue raised by award-winning painters Leon and Anya (not their real names) was that they also believed a new hybrid feminine-masculine or perhaps a new androgynous aesthetics is now appearing in contemporary painting. Anya felt it was ‘genuinely interesting how aesthetics are appearing now – there is a feminine male and a male feminine’, which she felt was generating more scope for cultural expression. This is an issue also broached by Linda Nochlin in her updated essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists: Thirty Years After’: ‘Although I can only hint at it, I would like to indicate the impact, conscious or unconscious, of the new women’s production on the work of male artists.’79 Along with the respondents Leon and Anya, Nochlin perceived this as an impalpable concept, but it is possibly an area that could build upon research carried out on the feminine and masculine of differential aesthetics. The new theory of ‘androgynous aesthetics’ and research presented in this book therefore develops upon Nochlin’s suggestion of the influence of feminine upon the masculine.

Women cannot paint: They simply don’t pass the market test, the value test80 It appears quite simply that Georg Baselitz and Brian Sewell have aligned and confused the economic value of art with the artwork’s aesthetic worth. Similarly in Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current

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Women Can’t Paint

Conditions and Future Scenarios Maria Lind and Olav Velthuis comment that ‘[in boom periods] the actors in the art market tend to equate or rather confuse market value and artistic value … in times of crisis, by contrast, they realise that market values are essentially unreliable’.81 In High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture Isabelle Graw noted that the (then) Sotheby’s Contemporary Art director (Tobias Meyer) ‘brazenly claimed that the most expensive works were the best’, and ‘the best art is the most expensive because the market is so smart’.82 Meyer thus asserts that because work made by men sells for a higher price than work made by women, men are better artists than women, although it is noted that Meyer had a vested interest in making this claim and in flattering his wealthy clientele. If he were to suggest that the high selling work was of poorer quality to some of the cheaper work on offer, this could impact on collector purchasing decisions and thus upon the significant seller’s commission Sotheby’s make on selling artworks at auction, ranging from a net of 12 per cent to 25 per cent.83 Neither Georg Baselitz nor Brian Sewell explain what is meant by their gender-specific term ‘aesthetic greatness’, or deliver a list of female aesthetics which they find to be inferior to those of men. As no great or ‘weak’ gendered aesthetic qualities have been detected and in fact a new androgynous aesthetics has arguably emerged, then one can only assume Baselitz and Sewell refer to the biological characteristics of the painting’s creator in their judgement of a painting’s worth. Such a finding was also asserted by Roman Kraussl at the University of Luxembourg in a recent statement on a new body of research relating to gender and value (Adams et al. 2018).84 Kraussl stated: ‘The results of this study deliver proof for the disadvantages women face in the art world solely based on their gender.’85 The brand of ‘masculine’ is thus judged to be more valuable than the brand of ‘feminine’ in a work of art. The feminine is perhaps seen as the inferior, with the masculine a superior choice or option during the evaluation of a collector or gatekeeper’s decision-making process. Perhaps here, it is appropriate to note the comment made by well-known British artist Molly (not her real name), referring to the femininity of silver and the masculinity of the most desirable and expensive metal gold, stating with intended irony: ‘Why [would a collector] have silver (the feminine), when [they] can have gold (the masculine)?’ It was suggested by the Art Newspaper that the artworld should be more progressive than other institutions in respect of gender equality, and it has already been noted how curator Helen Molesworth responded that the artworld was ‘a



Masculinities and Femininities in Painting

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progressive and liberal community, but that doesn’t set us apart from the larger cultural forces at play’.86 It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that several of the artists interviewed for this book perceived there are stereotypical gender character traits within contemporary painting when the research suggests that few exist. The notion of differencing or a differential aesthetics has thus been challenged by this chapter’s new findings.87 In addition, if Baselitz, Sewell et al. cannot refer to a differential painting aesthetics – and indeed within the realm of contemporary painting this chapter has demonstrated that one does not exist – then it is not unlikely that such opinions, placing lower economic and symbolic valuations on work by women painters, are based quite simply on the biology of the artworks’ creators and the long-standing misogyny our societies have placed upon both female and male observers. Shockingly, in our apparently genderequal twenty-first-century societies and the emergence of a new androgynous aesthetics in contemporary art, whether one is born man – or woman – could very well dictate our creative values circumscribed thereafter.

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2

The price of being a woman artist: Dollars, dirhams, pounds and euros

Where are all the women artists? In 2015, Rachel Spence writing for the Financial Times asked, ‘Where are all the women artists?’1 Following in the wake of many other similarly titled observations, Spence’s article notes the lack of symbolic and financial values attributed to women artists in the supposedly gender-equal twenty-first century. Preceding this was a scenario suggested by the Guerrilla Girls in their 1985 poster campaign which stated: ‘Women in America earn only 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do.’2 Numerous press inches have been devoted to the lack of female artists in ‘Top 100’ auction charts, including those published by the United States’ National Museum of Women in the Arts: ‘Only five women made the list of the top 100 artists by cumulative value between 2011-2016,’ and ELF noted there were no women at all featuring in the ‘Top 100’ auction performances in 2012.3 If we pause for thought, we notice that these publicity campaigns and headlines – and indeed many other surveys of art – include all cumulative value artworks produced since time began, and therefore include masters from the days before our mistresses were allowed to succeed. In referring to contemporary artworks only, in this day and age will our women artists fare better, in accordance with the widely held assumption that we all ‘live in an age of gender equality’?4 In order to present an accurate picture of the situation for today’s (rather than yesteryear’s) artists, sales of over 2,000 paintings (of around 80,000 datapoints) at auctions worldwide have been analysed. The original ‘Top 100’ artwork sales charts created for discussion with the artist interviews are attached as Appendices 1–4 sited at the rear of this book, and will be referred to later in this chapter during the discussion of the descending glass ceiling pressing

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Women Can’t Paint

upon our women artists. The charts include the original sales prices of the works in discussion, along with an analysis of the work per cm², in order to analyse every possibility that the prices for the works could have been flawed by scale differences. These ‘Top 100’ charts, which were based on the UK market only, gained much criticism during some of the initial artist interviews, particularly from a high-profile artist who subsequently withdrew from the study because of her perception that the charts were surely inaccurate. It was in fact perceived by several artists that the figures were flawed and did not provide an accurate representation of the place of the current economy for practising artists, although the figures were based on a complete sample of two very specific timeframes and so cannot have been anything other than 100 per cent accurate, particularly as the data had also been provided directly by auction houses and tested with statistics software for significance. It was therefore decided that new and fresh data would additionally be provided for this book, encompassing a more recent and wider area of study – updated figures encompassing samples from the UK, the United States and pockets of the Middle East and Europe. In ‘How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail’, the journal American Scientific advises: Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.5

In response to this, health and political science scholars Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler advise us to ‘acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion’.6 Perhaps the female artists who were unable to believe in any economic inequalities are simply afraid of the truth, their own worldviews and future hopes and dreams potentially under threat by this conflicting data. Despite numerous frank discussions with gallerists during the writing of this book, none were willing to disclose the exact primary sales prices of anonymized selected artists. In Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art Olav Velthuis similarly responds to his experiences of attempting to communicate with gallerists: ‘In the middle of one of the interviews which I conducted for this study, I decide to give up, desperate as I felt about the respondent’s reluctance to respond to my questionnaire.’7 Velthuis



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used the phrases ‘refused to discuss’ and ‘unwillingness to answer my questions’ in his description of his experience of interviewing art dealers, and described the reason for the lack of their cooperation as being due to dealers wishing to have their role perceived of that of philanthropist and art lover, a role devoid of commercial objectives when it was clear to Velthuis that large profits were usually a priority.8 In High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture Isabelle Graw also notes, ‘The art market knows only unwritten laws and is rife with murky goings on. The picture of a close knit secretive community reluctant to reveal its practices is regularly evoked.’9 In reading of Velthuis’s experience and Graw’s comments on the gatekeepers of the artworld (along with my own), it was decided that the secondary auction market would provide the most reliable and transparent source of information on artwork sales, given that the data for this market is readily available through a variety of sources.10 The findings from the global surveys indicate that male artists’ work achieves significantly higher prices than that of women. This is demonstrated in Figures 11 and 12, where the second chart (Figure 12) takes into account scale differences to ensure accuracy and consistency. The results are disturbing in £177,004

USA

£261,689

£859,339

UK £54,257 £20,121

£522,990

Middle East

£72,748

Europe

£58,650

The price of work by women The price of work by men

Figure 11  Global gender values in art sales at auction.

£26.03

USA

£19.07

£129.11

UK

£5.36

Middle East

£5.72

Europe

£99.47 £5.48 £9.66

Sale of female artist's work, price per cm2 Sale of male artists work, price per cm2

Figure 12  Global gender values in art sales (per cm²) at auction.

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today’s supposed gender-equal societies. While in most industries it is applicable to describe this as a ‘gender wage gap’ or ‘gender income gap’, in this case as the works are at auction they are not usually a wage or income at all but rather a value attributed by collectors. According to the Roman writer Publilius Syrus (100 BC) ‘everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it’;11 therefore, as the artists are not directly reimbursed in full by auction sales, the term herein for such a gap is referred to as a ‘gender value gap’. As with the previous set of analyses, in order to account for scale differences, each work of art in the sample has also been analysed per cm².

Tornados striking the artworld In order to best present the information on gender and income in contemporary art, tornado charts have been created for Women Can’t Paint. Here, data categories are listed vertically instead of the standard horizontal presentation, and the categories are ordered so that the largest bar appears at the top of the chart, the second largest appears second from the top and so on. They are so named because the final chart visually resembles either one half of or a complete tornado. The Oxford English Dictionary offers one definition of the word ‘tornado’ as ‘a person characterized by devastating action or emotion’. The word ‘devastating’ is used in the headlines of numerous articles regarding the gender income gap and so the tornado charts here are perhaps a perfect fit: for example, ‘The gender wage gap is even more devastating for American mothers’, and ‘In 2017, black women still face a devastating wage gap.’12 The World Health Organization also refers to a destruction in their definition: ‘Gender inequality damages the physical and mental health of millions of girls and women across the globe, and also of boys and men despite the many tangible benefits it gives men through resources, power, authority and control.’13 In a gender-equal society, the tornado charts that follow would be as symmetrical as a butterfly. Where an unsymmetrical chart is presented, this demonstrates a high imbalance in gender equality and income: the greater the imbalance, the greater the force of destruction to the less-represented side. The tornado charts represent the Top 10 bestselling female and male artists in each country or region, including the United States, the Middle East, Europe and



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the UK. The exact sale price or income achieved for each work of art has been converted into dollars, dirhams, pounds and euros, and presented as Appendices 5–12 sited to the rear of this book. In all cases, the left-hand sides of the charts indicate wealth through female artwork income. The right-hand sides of the charts indicate wealth generated through male artwork income. Here you will also notice that in some cases, the female income is so slight compared to that of the male, that it appears diminished and invisible alongside the larger male incomes ( Figures 13, 14, 15 and 16).

Figure 13  Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the United States (see Appendices 5 and 6) demonstrated through a tornado chart.

Figure 14  Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the Middle East (see Appendices 7 and 8) demonstrated through a tornado chart.

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Women Can’t Paint

Figure 15  Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in Europe (excluding the UK) (see Appendices 11 and 12) demonstrated through a tornado chart.

Figure 16  Tornado representing gender value imbalance for the Top 10 bestselling artists in the UK (see Appendices 9 and 10) demonstrated through a tornado chart.

An insurmountable obstacle The tornados are clearly very much skewed towards to the right-hand side (the male or masculine) and therefore a strong visible gender imbalance is present in this data. These are harsh findings in today’s climate of supposed equality, where according to The Guardian, ‘two thirds of men think there is equality of opportunity among the sexes’, or that equality is almost upon us.14 We can clearly see that if the tornado charts were to be rotated anticlockwise so that the darker (male) charts stretched upwards and the lighter (female) charts cast a poor shadow relation, there is a huge journey to accomplish before women can



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climb to reach the same heights as their male contemporaries. These findings here contrast starkly, and curiously, with current headlines such as ‘Right Now Is a Blockbuster Moment in New York for Female Artists’15 – and even more curious, ‘Why Old Women Have Replaced Young Men as the Art World’s Darlings’16 (more about this later in Chapter 6, ‘Sexism and Ageism in Visual Art Values: “But Men Are Allowed to Be Old or Ugly!”’). The title of Germaine Greer’s 1980 analysis of painting The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work is important to consider here. On the back cover of her book, Greer describes such obstacles as ‘both external and surmountable, but also internal and insurmountable’. Almost four decades later, and with this current analysis of the state of play for contemporary women (and men) painters, it is doubtful that the obstacles for the race to an equal wealth or income in painting are all external and surmountable. In Chapter 1, it was argued and demonstrated that if our friends and well-known commentators on women’s artwork Georg Baselitz and Brian Sewell cannot refer to a differential painting aesthetics (and indeed within the realm of contemporary painting this book evidences that one does not exist), it is not unlikely that such opinions placing lower economic and symbolic valuations on work by women painters are based simply, on the biology of the artwork’s creator. In this respect, and particularly if we honour the writing of Roland Barthes in his 1968 essay ‘Death of the Author’, the internality of a painter’s obstacles is surmountable and rather it is the external obstacles that are more troublesome to surmount because it is the brand of femininity that is seen as inferior by purchasers and gatekeepers of art, with the brand of masculinity perceived as a superior attribute to any speculator (the gold vs silver concept referred to previously by Molly). While the published auction figures often cite the lower worth of work by women, it is surprising that the measure of gender on an artwork’s value is something which is ignored by many commentators.17 In The Value of Art, Michael Findlay notes that ‘to arrive at the market value of a work of art, the following five attributes must be known and weighed carefully: provenance, condition, authenticity, exposure, quality’.18

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In Women Can’t Paint this chapter presents the argument that a sixth category of ‘gender’ ought to be taken into account here, and thus to arrive at the market value of a work of art one must currently also perhaps know and weigh carefully the artist’s gender upon their artworks’ respective values. Although she makes no reference to the impact of gender, in The Obstacle Race Germaine Greer specifically notes, ‘The same painting may be worth a hundred times as much when attributed to one painter as it is when attributed to another.’19 In their 2013 paper ‘The Art Machine: Dynamics of a Value Generating Mechanism for Contemporary Art’, Victoria Rodner and Elaine Thomson make no mention of gender being a possible contributory or participatory factor in an artist’s projected career. As stated above, Michael Findlay makes no mention of gender contributing to the values in works of art, and instead gender is assumed to be a neutral and non-contributory category. Judith Mottram’s PhD thesis Critical Concepts and Change in Painting: The Relationship of Influence highlights gender as an issue for further investigation in the analysis of art and value, but little seems to have been carried out since the publication of this research.20 In 1988 Mottram suggests: ‘The question of gender difference in association with patterns of practice is also an area which would benefit further investigation.’ This subsequent gap in knowledge is possibly due to the previously mentioned texts by Pollock et al. which have cautioned scholars against essentialism and the highlighting of any gender differences. Indeed, in Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, Judy Chicago observes Pollock’s persuasive and influential epistemological influence on the academy, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.21 This new finding on the income gap identified here also aligns with the 2005 study on Dutch market gender incomes of artists carried out by Olav Velthuis.22 More recently in 2017, the University of Luxembourg released their own findings of a 47.6 per cent (gender) value gap.23 Velthuis commented that the gender gap would soon change due to the ‘rapid “feminisation” of the profession of artist’. This book, however, challenges the assumption that paintings made by women and women’s work are judged on an equal footing to that of men, and that we could be mistaken in our assumption of gender neutrality. Gender fluidity may well be an important movement today, which has encroached into many research areas. Unfortunately, it surely also carries with it the assumption that gender is a neutral category, when it is not. Even in a gender fluid age, we are still ultimately judged on the grounds of whether we are born female or male.



The Price of Being a Woman Artist 16.8% 24.6%

USA

59 83.2%

UK

75.4%

11.4%

Middle East

88.6%

13.8%

Europe

86.2%

Female artist visibility

Male artist visibility

Figure 17  Female visibility in global contemporary art auctions.

WAVE: I can’t see you! The Women’s Artists Visibility Event (WAVE), also known as ‘Let MOMA Know’, was a demonstration held on 14 June 1984 to protest against the lack of women artists represented in New York’s MoMA’s reopening exhibition An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture.24 The exhibition, which included 165 artists, had 14 women among them, less than 8.5 per cent of the total. In 2013, every artist in the Top 100 auction sales was a man.25 In 2014, there were no women in the Top 40.26 In 2015, only five of thirty-four art galleries surveyed by the feminist art collective Pussy Galore boasted rosters in which women constituted more than 50 per cent.27 The list goes on, yet we continue to be delivered the bewildering headlines referred to earlier, in that we have reached a golden era for our women artists. The chart in Figure 17 illustrates the reality of the position that no headlines can brush over so easily, a disproportionately low visibility of women artists on the market:

Gender value gaps in the artworld Gender value gaps in contemporary British painting have been calculated using industry standards and those used by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for their calculations of gender pay gaps.28 Here, the mean value for women’s art is subtracted from the mean value for men’s art, the result is divided by the mean value rate for men’s art and the result is multiplied by 100 to present the mean gender value gap as a percentage of men’s artwork value. Any value in which work by a woman is deemed to be worth greater than that of a man would be expressed as a negative (−) value. Mean (calculated by adding

Women Can’t Paint

60 79.4% 49.9% 25.4% 65.6%

USA

78.9%

UK

80.8%

Middle East Europe

Gender pay gap for sales (£)

2.1% 40.7% Gender pay gap for £/cm2

Figure 18  Global gender value gaps for contemporary painting.

everyone’s earnings together and dividing by the total number of workers) rather than median data (the midway point in the list of pay levels reported) has been used, further to caution highlighted by Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds in ManMade: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power.29 Tutchell and Edmonds are critical of the governments’ usage of median wages in calculating pay gaps as they believe this inflates women’s average earnings in order to present a more optimistic picture or propaganda to the public. The chart in Figure 18 demonstrates the global gender value gaps for contemporary painting in both actual sale value and sale value per cm². Sales value is attributed on the left-hand side, and value per cm² is attributed on the right-hand side in order to take into account any anomalies caused by scale differences. When women’s income is higher than men’s, it is usually expressed as a negative percentage – although it has not been necessary to use any negatives within this book because of the consistent greater values in men’s work. Here it can be seen that men’s value ranges from 2.1 per cent to a substantial 80.8 per cent value greater than that of women. The higher the percentage, the greater the inequality between the genders. For example, 0 per cent would suggest gender equality, whereas 100 per cent would represent a total inequality. To the right it can be seen that when scale differences (cm²) are accounted for, UK painters are significantly worse off, whereas artists in Europe appear to be significantly better off. Moreover, when scale differences are accounted for, artists in the Middle East are very close to the apparition of equality. The gender value gap for the Middle East appears to be most favourable when compared alongside other geographies in the sample. This phenomenon is at odds with a plethora of reports including ‘Towards Gender Equality in the Arab/Middle East Region’ by Valentine Moghadam which states:



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‘Social indicators and gender statistics reveal that women in the Arab region are on average more disadvantaged economically, politically, and socially than are women in other regions, and certainly more so than in regions with similar income levels or at similar stages of economic development.’30 Nevertheless it is of course acknowledged that the Middle East comprises many different countries, languages and cultures, and that any data represents an average of findings from the case studies. It is also useful to compare this value gap alongside mainstream gender pay gaps for each region in the sample. The United States’ gender pay gap is 20 per cent, the UK’s is 18.1 per cent, Europe’s ranges from 6 per cent (Italy and Luxembourg) to 27 per cent (Estonia) and the Middle East’s (overall) apparently at only 1 per cent.31 In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), women expect to earn nearly as much as men, but only 42 per cent of females participate in the labour force, compared with 92 per cent of males. The women who work in the UAE and Morocco tend to have higher education levels, a factor that partly drives their higher relative income.32 The film and television industry has recently received a significant amount of press coverage relating to their own gender pay gaps.33 The same frenzied interest has not been accorded to the visual arts, perhaps because people often assume the visual arts to be an inclusive and equal arena of practice – as noted by chief curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Helen Molesworth, although it is perhaps not the ‘progressive and liberal community’ many perceive it to be.34 Unlike the film and TV industries, and with the exception of performative art, it is of course usually the artist’s work, rather than the artist which is on show and therefore alleged to be of prime importance. This issue will be discussed further in Chapter 6 (Ageism and Gender in Visual Art Values: ‘But Men Are Allowed to Be Old or Ugly!’) where we will read about the surprising relevance of a female artist’s personal appearance. Helen Molesworth offered a valid point in respect of the arts not being as forward-thinking and avant-garde as people would expect. When it was suggested by the Art Newspaper that the artworld should be more progressive than other institutions in respect of gender equality, Molesworth responded the artworld was not ‘set … apart from the larger cultural forces at play’.35 Such cultural forces are highlighted in Figure 19, which demonstrates that although gender pay gaps from the UK sample appear to be narrowing, there are still substantial differences in the prices realized by artists compared to the average pay gap for the EHRC’s general workers. This finding suggests contemporary British female painters (in this case) earn less

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than a quarter of the income of their male counterparts, and thus presents an even bleaker scenario than that suggested by the Guerrilla Girls on the American market in their 1985 poster campaign which states, ‘Women in America earn only 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do.’ It is necessary to note that the danger with presenting statistics is that they can sometimes appear to display a positive image of progression towards equality and result in predictions that such a gender pay gap will soon begin to disappear. Such an issue was broached by a well-known European artist, who did not perceive too much of a problem with the gender division in that he believed the situation was slowly improving. One can, however, clearly see the ‘painting’ price value gap in the UK has decreased from 85 per cent to 59 per cent between 1994 and 2012 (Figure 19), and the UK government’s own data, for example, which shows overall pay gaps decreasing from 21 per cent to 10 per cent gap. In Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power, Tutchell and Edmonds sensibly note the dangers of seeing such statistics in an optimistic light:

10%

21%

59%

85%

The optimists, of whom there are many, still seem to believe that we are on a path of sustained progress. And, to maintain that convenient fiction, many in Government and in the higher echelons of industry have adopted the cynical practice of applauding each small improvement and consistently ignoring the bigger picture – with its stark evidence of failure.36

1992-94 Painting sales prices

2012-14 EHRC data (average/estimated incomes)

Figure 19  Gender value gaps in the UK: Painting prices compared to EHRC income data (1992–4 and 2012–14).



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How femininities and masculinities can increase or decrease value in art This chapter will now examine to what extent an artist’s gender affects the prices of paintings in relation to the artworks’ specific qualities. The use of painting style, subject matter, support, medium, orientation and the presence of a signature or annotation will be explored (Figure 20). A full copy of the economic values for each variable can be found at the rear of this book, in Appendix 13 (the brand of femininity) and Appendix 14 (the brand of masculinity), and converted to the various currencies of dollars, dirhams, pounds and euros for ease of reference. Throughout the text that follows, the data is expressed as a tornado – but the reader may also wish to peruse the actual data relating to this at the rear of the text (see Appendices 13 and 14). Metal Oil Portrait Canvas Abstr. Signed People Places Figuration Landscape Unsigned Wood Square Objects Acrylic Symbols Paper Househld Mix media Waterclr

Figure 20  The impact of an artist’s gender upon painting price through aesthetics and painterly qualities.

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It can be seen from this tornado chart that the majority of men’s work achieves considerably higher prices than those achieved by women, irrespective of painting aesthetics or pictorial qualities. Nevertheless, there are some anomalies, which we shall examine now. When used by women artists, the mediums of mixed media, household paint and acrylic leads to the resulting works achieving higher prices at auction than works by male artists. The use of the subject matter of painted objects is one that enables women to outperform men in auctions, as is the selection of paper as a painting ground or support. Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon’s 2016 book Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing highlights the fact that women artists have been held back within the use and appropriation of media traditionally occupied by men, such as oil paint for example.37 Economist Tyler Cowen also argues that women have been more successful in new mediums, or ones that are not specifically perceived as masculine.38 Cindy Sherman has observed that many women of her generation worked in photography ‘precisely because it didn’t compete with painting’.39 Meskimmon and Sawdon have argued similarly in relation to the emergence of new contemporary drawing practise alongside the birth of the feminist art movement, and thus a gender neutral space of ‘otherness’ has allowed for women to flourish.40 In terms of the relative success of painted objects – or still life – by women, this could be partly explained through the legacy of our histories and herstories in that during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries women were very often confined to the home, or at least, ‘public life and work was confined to men, while women were expected to stay at home’.41 As commented upon in Chapter 1, the association of ‘lightness’ in artwork as being feminine is one referred to by Juliet Kinchin within The Gendered Object, and explains the feminine connotation with ‘lightness’ as a masculine attempt to control matter out of place, thus reinforcing threatened boundaries.42 The original coding of women’s painting being small in scale or light in tone has resonances with Kinchin’s debate, and can largely be explained by Gilenstam et al.’s comparison with Victorian athletics observed in Chapter 1. This offers an insight into an historic culture where medical experts strongly advised women against any kind of strenuous or physical activity. In the visual arts, artist Gavin perceived paint not to ‘weigh very much’, and he stated that ‘it’s not a big effort to really shove it around if you really wanted to’. However, if Gilenstam et al.’s research can be applied to the visual arts, it is likely that Victorian medical experts would consider the stretching, manoeuvre and execution of paint upon large canvasses as being too strenuous and therefore unsuitable for women.



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How the use of a signature can devalue a woman’s artwork

£83,640

£108,219

£170,953

£188,507

Examination of the tornado chart in Figure 20 highlights a particularly resonating finding. When one examines the variables of signed work versus unsigned work, the tornado clearly demonstrates that when work by men is signed, it goes up in value; conversely when work by women is signed, it goes down in value. If indeed unsigned paintings made by female artists are shown to be more valuable than those which are signed, this prompts one to question if the revelation of a feminine or female signature could in fact devalue the work to the extent that women artists are more likely to leave their work unsigned. These findings indicate that if a painting has been made by a male artist, the apparent asset of masculinity could add to the painting’s value. If a painting has been made by a female artist, the apparent liability of femininity could detract from the painting’s value, a detraction that would have a greater impact if the painting contains a legible signature which indicates it has been made by a woman. The use of the signature and its impact upon work by women and men is shown in detail in Figure 21. This aligns with findings presented in Chapter 1 where it was shown that since the 1990s male artists have significantly increased their use of a signature or annotation compared to women artists (Figure 8).

Signed/annotated

Unsigned Females

Males

Figure 21  How price fluctuates through the use of a signature/annotation in the work of female and male artists in the UK market: A detailed study.

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First, the data presented in Figure 21 suggests that work made by male artists is more expensive than work made by female artists irrespective or not of whether the paintings have been signed or annotated. While signed work made by men achieves higher prices than unsigned work made by men, the chart shows that unsigned paintings made by women achieve higher prices than signed paintings made by women. Therefore, the gender value gap is narrower for unsigned works (37 per cent) than it is for signed works (56 per cent). It is of course necessary to consider the suggestion that a legible signature on a painting indicates to the viewer whether or not it has been painted by a woman or a man. In recent correspondence with a well-known British (American-based) painter, she lamented ‘there are people who love my paintings at first sight, but when they realise they are by a woman, they do not want them anymore’.43 Judy Chicago also notes her observations that some women artists signed ‘their first name only with a de-gendering [first] initial’.44 There are notable parallels with this in literature: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; Marty Anne Evans as George Eliot and Nelle Harper Lee as Harper Lee. Even J. K. Rowling was advised by her publishers to disguise her gender through the use of initials only, and in 2015, writer Catherine Nichols received ‘drastically different responses’ from publishers when she sent her novel out under both male and female names:45 ‘George’ had 5 responses – 3 manuscript requests and two warm rejections praising his exciting project. For contrast, under my own name, the same letter and pages sent 50 times had netted me a total of 2 manuscript requests. … Total data: George sent out 50 queries, and had his manuscript requested 17 times. He is eight and a half times better than me at writing the same book.46

If we relate the issue of a legible annotation to this, the findings stand in opposition to research conducted by arts economist Elisabetto Lazzaro who stated: ‘Whether a work of art is signed/authenticated or not, it does not seem to affect the price.’ This did not, however, relate to a gendered study because as previously argued very often gender is (wrongly) assumed to be a neutral category.47 This study suggests that the issue of the brand (of which the signature represents) has increased in desirability. Therefore, it is stressed that the findings strongly indicate the category of gender should not be taken for granted as a neutral category.



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A descending glass ceiling The term ‘glass ceiling’ was first used by Gay Bryant in the 1985 Working Woman Report to define an inevitable career obstruction. Bryant noted: ‘Women have reached a certain point. … I call it the glass ceiling. They’re in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck.’ The term ‘descending glass ceiling’ therefore could be described as a worsening position, in this case, upon the values attributed to the work of women artists. In order to demonstrate that a descending glass ceiling exists in contemporary painting, this hypothesis was tested upon the data of British auctions in 1992–4 and 2012–14 in order to provide large datasets for each point in time that could then be compared and contrasted. Much literature, particularly within the mainstream press, focuses on the lack of visibility of women artists in the ‘Top 100’ auction figures.48 In The Guardian, Kira Cochrane states, ‘An audit of the artworld shows that every artist in the Top 100 auction sales last year was a man.’49 However, such ‘Top 100s’ are created from all forms of art sold at all art auctions, including art from historical periods, encompassing all media and all geographical locations. Such ‘Top 100s’ typically form a very general overview and a male bias that is probably to be expected, given the representative lack of female artists, or lack of recognized female artists throughout art history.50 In breaking down the visibility of women artists into those who are contemporary or currently practising, those who hail from or reside in the UK and those who have appeared at London auctions, this chapter provides a localized and medium-specific overview of the gendered place of contemporary painting, and revised ‘Top 100s’ that are more relevant to understanding the position for artists operating in today’s climate. Appendix 1 illustrates the gendered visibility of artists in London auctions for the sample years 1992–4. In the 1992–4 auctions the 100 bestselling paintings were painted by 41 different artists, only 8 of whom are female: Elizabeth Blackadder, Prunella Clough, Beryl Cook, Elizabeth Frink, Maggie Hambling, Therese Oulton, Paula Rego and Bridget Riley. The most successful male artists include Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Ronald Kitaj and Leon Kossoff. Only 14 per cent of the paintings were made by women, and 86 per cent of the Top 100 bestselling paintings in 1992–4 were created by men. The highest selling painting made by a woman was Bridget Riley’s Sheng Tung (1974) at £56,190. This compares to the

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highest selling painting made by a man, Lucien Freud’s The Painter’s Room at £789,606, representing a gender value gap of 93 per cent. In the 2012–14 auctions (Appendix 2), the 100 bestselling paintings were painted by fewer artists than the 1990 data set – 16 artists, of whom 3 are female: Cecily Brown, Bridget Riley and Jenny Saville. The most successful male artists include Glenn Brown, Peter Doig and David Hockney. Again, in the latter timescale only 14 per cent of the paintings have been made by women, and therefore 86 per cent of the Top 100 bestselling paintings in 2012–14 were created by men. The highest selling painting made by a woman was Bridget Riley’s Chant 2 (1967) at £2.5 million. This compares to the highest selling painting made by a man, Peter Doig’s Gasthof at £8.8 million, representing a gender value gap of 72 per cent. With a price range from £5,244 to £798,606 in 1992–4 and £240,000 to £8.8 million in 2012–14, it is readily apparent that the average economic value of ‘Top 100’ contemporary British painting has risen significantly between the two timescales. In addition, the data suggests there is still a ‘glass ceiling’ effect on the pricing and visibility of contemporary British female painters. In examining the charts in Appendices 1–4, while the gender income gap appears to have narrowed and become more favourable for women painters, the overall visibility of women artists has decreased by 1 per cent over the timescales, while men’s visibility has increased by 1 per cent. Although this represents only a small percentage, it should be noted that an exact number of paintings (14) was represented in each timescale’s ‘Top 100’ of paintings created by women. While Bryant’s Working Woman Report defines women as ‘getting stuck’, the position for British female artists shows that women’s representation or popularity appears to have declined (by 1 per cent) rather than reaching a stasis, and it is clear fewer women artists appear to be achieving success. In this scenario, the glass ceiling could therefore be described as a descending glass ceiling. In order to account for any scale differences, the data was also examined in terms of price per cm² (Appendices 3 and 4). This ensures any size anomalies that may have been hidden in overall pricing are taken into account. In the 1992–4 auctions (Appendix 3), the 100 bestselling paintings (per cm²) were painted by 38 different artists, 9 of who are female: Diana Armfield, Elizabeth Blackadder, Beryl Cook, Mary Fedden, Elizabeth Frink, Mary Newcomb, Therese Oulton, Paula Rego and Bridget Riley. The most successful male artists include Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Lucien Freud, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Leon Kossoff, Victor Pasmore and Kyffin Williams. Again, a glass



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ceiling effect identifies that only 14 per cent of the bestselling paintings were made by women, and 86 per cent of the Top 100 bestselling paintings per cm² in 1992–4 were made by men. The highest selling painting made by a woman was Elizabeth Blackadder’s Sophie with Flowers (1979) at £5.40 per cm². This compares to the highest selling painting made by a man: Lucien Freud’s SelfPortrait at £1,480.63 per cm². In the 2012–14 auctions (Appendix 4) the 100 bestselling paintings per cm² were painted by fewer artists than the 1992–4 data set – 15 artists, of who 3 are female: Cecily Brown, Bridget Riley and Jenny Saville. The most successful male artists (per cm²) include Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and David Hockney. Only 9 per cent of the paintings have been made by women, and 91 per cent of the Top 100 bestselling paintings per cm² in 2012–14 have been created by men. The highest selling painting made by a woman (per cm²) was Bridget Riley’s Stretch (1964) at £170.82 per cm². This compares to the highest selling painting made by a man: Peter Blake’s Eglentyne (1982) at £702.24 per cm². With a price ranging from £1.05 per cm² to £1,480.63 per cm² in 1992–4 and £33.44 to £702.24 in 2012–14, it is noted that one anomaly (Lucien Freud’s SelfPortrait) shows a significant decrease in price per cm² between the timescales. When examining the data per cm² there still appears to be a descending glass ceiling effect on the pricing and visibility of contemporary British female painters. Visibility of women artists in the ‘Top 100’ (per cm²) has decreased by 4 per cent, and visibility of painting (per cm²) by women has decreased by 5 per cent. In examining the charts in Appendices 1–4, it is clear that in taking into account scale differences, female artist visibility appears to be decreasing, while work made by men and male artist visibility is on the increase. The highest selling female painter in 1992–4 was Elizabeth Blackadder (Sophie with Flowers) at £5.40 per cm², and in 2012–14 the highest selling female painter was Bridget Riley (Stretch) at £170.82 per cm². It can be seen that in taking into account scale differences in Appendices 2 and 4, female artist visibility through economic success still appears to be decreasing, while male artist visibility through economic validation is on the increase. While Bryant’s Working Woman Report defines women as ‘getting stuck’, the position for British female artists shows that women’s representation or popularity appears to have declined since the 1990s (by 4 per cent to 5 per cent) rather than reaching a stasis, and it is clear fewer women artists appear to be achieving success. Thus, a descending glass ceiling upon the average values of our female artists is witnessed to be in operation in today’s art market. The price

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of being a woman artist therefore is substantially different to that of being born male and therefore one’s gender as an artist can be said to significantly impact upon the valuations ascribed to art. During the course of some (but not all) of the artist interviews, I sensed a surge of irritability when I broached the subject of value. Artists variously described the discussion of price as ‘irrelevant’, or stated, ‘I find that topic really dull’, ‘the market doesn’t matter to me’.51 Nevertheless we should talk about economic value in the artworld and acknowledge that a serious problem exists, evidenced by the startling gender value gaps presented in Women Can’t Paint. We need to explore why women’s work is so undervalued.

The femininity of abstraction in contemporary paintings As noted in Chapter 1 and according to the sample of paintings analysed, female artists are now more likely to paint in an abstract manner, whereas male artists are more likely to paint figuratively. Using the Tate definitions, abstract art is ‘art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect’.52 The term ‘figurative’ has been particularly used since the arrival of abstract art to refer to artists that retain aspects of the real world or reality as their subject matter.53 In a further transnational survey of contemporary paint, in France and the United States, the majority of paintings made by women are also abstract.54 The chart in Figure 22 presents the anomaly that the price of female abstract paintings is higher than those of men, and in particular, significantly higher than female figurative paintings. Figure 22 illustrates noteworthy differences in overall price between abstract and figurative work by female and male artists, and shows that on average female abstract works have achieved higher prices than those created by males. Meanwhile, figurative work by men achieves far higher prices than that of their abstract painting; however, there is a substantial and statistically significant difference between the higher priced figurative works made by male artists compared to their lower selling female colleagues. It is clear that paintings by women are significantly more likely to fetch higher prices if they are abstract. Conversely, it was found that paintings by male artists were more likely to fetch higher prices if the works were figurative. Statistical significance was also

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Abstraction Paintings by female artists

£57,947

£94,548

£124,059

£285,723



Figuration Paintings by male artists

Figure 22  How price fluctuates for abstract/figurative work created by female and male artists.

detected during the analysis of paintings made by men, price and the use of abstraction or figuration. In Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophy and Feminist Understandings, Rosemary Betterton refers to a short essay by Rebecca Fortnum and Gillian Houghton entitled ‘Women and Contemporary Painting: Re-presenting Representation’.55 Betterton states, ‘[The essay] first raised questions of the relationship between women’s politics and non-figurative painting, it is evident that there has been precious little further discussion of this subject within feminist critical writing.’ The thrust of Fortnum and Houghton’s paper is that abstract female painters have been ‘acknowledged by the mainstream art histories in unprecedented numbers’ by comparison to figurative female painters. If this is the case, it is possible that female painters may have swayed towards abstraction if it was perceived there were greater role models operating in this arena, forecasting more chances of possible success to aspiring female painters. Indeed, Fortnum and Houghton argued that ‘there is now a strong and established canon [of female abstract painting] in operation for students of art’.56 Therese Oulton observed the resistance of definition in her abstract painting: [It is] less figurative rather than more abstract not as a deliberate obscuring device, but in order to prevent the naming or fixing of things. It is an intention which is based on the view that recognition of an object implies the colonisation and possession of it.57

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Fortnum and Houghton argue that the use of abstraction in paintings made by women is a refusal to present a recognizable image to the male viewer and thus a refusal to become a passive viewed subject.58 The refusal to present a recognizable image is at odds with the statement made by American critic Marjorie Kramer, that feminist painting is always ‘figurative’, and in a recent catalogue for the allwomen Real Lives Painted Pictures exhibition, artist Barbara Howey observes, ‘In this age of mass global image access – through digital technology, figurative painting has seen a resurgence, especially among women painters.’59 The use of abstraction described above is arguably a reaction against such feminist painting rather than an objective of feminist painting itself. Indeed in The Obstacle Race Germaine Greer argues that through the use of abstraction, ‘women painters feel freer to express their real selves’.60 Such observations may help to understand the apparent paradigm shift in the employment of abstraction by contemporary women painters because according to many observers, abstraction appears to have become a more favoured mode of painting for female artists.61 If female auction (secondary market) visibility reflects the primary market, the economic diagnosis above could explain why more female artists are now painting abstractly. If artists are not supported by parents or partners and need to earn a living income from their painting, it is not unreasonable to suggest that they may create more ‘sellable’ paintings in order to survive. Such a concept was broached upon by two of the female artists interviewed for this book, who had both sold specifically created market-orientated work because they needed the money. The artists who did not work in such a way appeared to have another source of income, whether this was parental or partner support, Arts Council (or similar) funding, museum acquisitions or through the means of another job such as teaching alongside the artist’s studio work. However, the higher financial stake in female abstract paintings does not help to explain the higher financial stake in male figurative paintings – unless of course, such a valuation is prescribed as a reaction to an encroaching female presence, upon a maledominated market. Nevertheless, the price of being a female artist – whether she is renumerated in dollars, dirhams, pounds or euros – is of huge significance, as this chapter has evidenced.

3

The museum exposed: Gendered visibilities and essentialist aesthetics through equality

Hiding behind headlines One may think, at first glance, that our museums are doing a great deal to balance the gender ratios of the visibility of work by female and male artists. One could also be deceived into thinking that perhaps work by female artists is even more visible and exposed than that created by their male contemporaries. As the Tate recently hosted a week-long 2016 residency by art equality activists the Guerrilla Girls, one might reasonably assume that the Tate actively support and practise art equality in their collections.1 Similarly, the Guerrilla Girls’ work is collected by high-profile museums worldwide, including the Tate, New York’s MoMA, the Pompidou and many others, while the respective museum collections remain largely masculine. This could be related to our museums’ public relations ‘spin’, as defined by William Safire in the New York Times: In public relations and politics, ‘spin’ is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to persuade public opinion in favour or against some organisation or public figure. While traditional public relations and advertising may also rely on altering the presentation of the facts, ‘spin’ often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and highly manipulative tactics.2

Courtesy of art museum public relations teams releasing hard-hitting press releases to newspapers and publications in every corner of the globe, we hear about the exposure and visibility of the women in our artworlds. In the UK’s press, we read ‘Female Artists are Stars of the Show in a bid to inspire girls’, ‘Women rule the roost in Tate’s modern approach’, ‘The world goes Pop, finally gives female artists their due’ and ‘Tate Modern’s new Director on celebrating women artists!’3 In the Middle East: ‘Celebrating Contemporary Female Artists!’,

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‘Arab women artists and their long road to expression’, ‘100 most powerful women in art’, ‘A 30 year old Qatari [woman] is the most powerful person in art’ and ‘The women of the Arab artworld’.4 In the United States, ‘Women artists are (finally) getting their turn’, ‘There at the creation, Profiles of seven 20th century artists, all women’, ‘The most powerful woman in the New York art world!’ and ‘The XX Factor: women and abstract art’.5 The list goes on. There are no similarly worded articles or propaganda relating to the work of men or male artists. In Germany, the 2017 all-female winners of a major prize hosted by Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen and Freunde der Nationalgalerie complained that the prize organizers had emphasized their gender over the content of their artwork, accusing the museums of ‘a self-congratulatory use of diversity as a public-relations tool’, stating they had focussed on gender and diversity in public talks and in press releases, despite the museum collections containing mainly male work.6 The issue of museum and artworld public relations (PR) – or Safire’s ‘spin’7 – is clearly an important point to consider, and one which is very often overlooked in studies of gender and the arts. Our governments may also be culpable here in presenting conflicting information, such as the Scottish Parliament who state ‘no one should be denied rights or opportunities because of their gender’, yet their art collection remains 90 per cent masculine.8 While the exposure and support of the Guerrilla Girls by our unequal institutions is indeed a clever tactic to mask the illusion of equality, our museums’ politically correct press articles promoting female artists could actually be doing female artists more harm than good. It is arguable that museums inadvertently raise the question as to whether women artists are worthy of collection at all, because no similar press releases or articles discuss the worthiness of male artists, or highlight museums’ quest to support male artists and collect work by men. The repetitive headlines displaying such tokenism could therefore send a negative message to collectors, aligned with the views of those who argue against gendered quotas. This is possibly one explanation why symbolic (museum) worth in female artists is valued so much lower than it is in work by men, as this chapter will shortly explain. If collectors also perceive that there has been a politically correct movement in museum collection policies, it is possible this could have influenced the opposite effect on the market. For example, one artist (a YBA) I spoke to had possibly been influenced by the press impact: Museum collections have become contaminated. I think the market is reacting against it and this is where it has obsessed over its politically correct credentials.



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The curators have become very involved in ethnicity, gender and so on. Since the 1990s, one trend I have observed is the reaction in museums into a politically correct sphere of female and other minority work.

The notion that high-profile museums such as the Tate are ‘obsessing’ over work by minority groups could be this particular artist’s reaction to the Tate PR team’s propaganda which appears to pay lip service to the reality behind the museum’s actual commitment to minority groups such as their collection of work by female artists. If we examine any of the press articles relating to the Tate, ought we to consider that if the Tate perceived their collections were equal in terms of gender, would they have needed to issue such a press release? It would be standard practice for a visitor to walk into the museum and look at an equal or similar number of works by female and male artists. The Tate’s media coverage has also highlighted an additional area of concern, that the artworld is perceived, or promoted, as being implicitly male. By drawing attention to their female shows, the Tate emphasizes the artist’s gender or biology over their creativity. By highlighting a small amount of female artists in the hope of avoiding the bigger picture, our respected museums may be guilty of tokenism. Tokenism is defined as ‘the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly’.9

The impact of museum inclusion on the economic value of painting Here, a short museum case study (the Tate) illustrates one of the potential issues relating to the consequences of perceived tokenism in collections. In this study, the details were analysed of all contemporary British paintings appearing at London auctions between 1992–4 and 2012–14 (inclusive) in relation to painting values and museum inclusion. Figure 23 illustrates that work by artists who are collected by the museum yields considerably more at auction than artists who do not possess a similar symbolic value, representing a significant value gap compared to those who are not included in the collection. Therefore, the symbolic capital value of an artist’s inclusion within the museum collection can be said to significantly impact upon the economic value of an artist’s work. As less work by women is collected by the Tate (as we shall see), it is arguable that female artists

Women Can’t Paint

76 £28,687

Female artists Male artists

£6,478 £3,669

1992-94 Tate artists

£2,972

1992-94 non-Tate artists

Figure 23  The impact of an artist’s inclusion within the Tate upon their painting’s prices at London auctions 1992–4

are thus placed at an economic disadvantage to their male counterparts. This represents a ‘symbolic’ value gap of 88 per cent during 1992–4, and 36 per cent during the timescale 2012–14. While 36 per cent still represents a substantial difference, the figures indicate that during the 2012–14 period, museums such as the Tate may now have less influence or control over collectors at auction than they did during the 1992–4 period. Indeed, this finding aligns with research entitled ‘The Contemporary Art Market Between Stasis and Flux’ in which Olav Velthuis notes, ‘The influence of public museums and other institutions whose stake in the art world seems to be untainted by monetary interests has declined.’10 When scale differences are taken into account, this presents an even larger symbolic pay (value) gap of 97 per cent in 1992–4 which has narrowed statistically significantly to 70 per cent in 2012–14. An interesting comparison is presented when work by female artists who are collected by the Tate is analysed alongside women whose work is not collected by the Tate. As Figure 23 demonstrates, in 1992–4 work by female artists who were collected by the Tate averaged £6,478 at auction, compared to £3,669 for women whose work was not collected by the Tate. However, in 2012–14, Figure 24 shows that work by female artists who are collected by the Tate is now likely to be worth slightly less than work by female artists who are not collected by the Tate: £110,798 compared to £112,130. These are statistically significant



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£269,249 Female artists Male artists

£160,028

£110,798

2012-14 Tate artists

£112,130

2012-14 non-Tate artists

Figure 24  The impact of an artist’s inclusion within the Tate upon their painting’s prices at London auctions 2012–14.

findings and suggest that a shift appears to have occurred with the periods studied. Figure 23 also illustrates that in 1992–4 work by male artists who were collected by the Tate averaged £28,687 at auction, compared to £2,972 for those who were not collected by the Tate. In 2012–14, Figure 24 shows that in 2012–14 work by male artists who are collected by the Tate averages £269,249 at auction, compared to £160,028 for work by men who are not collected by the Tate. To put this more simply, according to the sample data, when work by a male artist is collected by the museum, the economic value of his work increases; when work by a female artist is collected by the museum, the economic value of her work decreases. Of course, these values are based on averages ascribed to the whole data set but nevertheless are startling. The results presented at Figure 23 may suggest that some of the economically successful female artists in the sample are not generally collected by the Tate, and thus one is pressed to consider that it is likely that symbolic value in paintings made by women is judged differently to that in paintings made by men. In

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Conditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame, the (then) Tate Director Alan Bowness observes that ‘it is only the museum artists whose work begins to rise to exceptional prices’.11 As Bowness was an ambassador and leader of the Tate, one must assume that the Tate were (and still are) well aware that ‘the work of museum artists rises to exceptional prices’. Therefore by collecting mainly male artists, it is arguable the Tate may have some awareness, or at least one is pressed to consider that the museum is not ignorant of the issue that they may be creating a gendered inequality of wealth. In Olav Velthuis’s ‘Exchanging Meaning’ in Talking Prices, he observes that a dealer commented: ‘Selling to an institution is the best sale you can possibly make.’12 However, this research – taken from a complete sample – has presented statistically significant results that suggest selling to an institution may only be economically advantageous if one is a male artist, and it is therefore arguable, again, that it is necessary to take the category of gender into account during such investigations.

The gendered visibility of artists in our museum collections A major study was instigated between 2009 and 2017 relating to opinions on gender, and was responded to by more than 25,000 men and 16,000 women, aged 18 to 59, in over 20 countries.13 According to this research conducted by the International Men and Gender Equality Survey, it was reported that the majority of men in the Middle East believe a woman’s place is in the home: Nearly 10,000 people, aged between 18 and 59 were questioned, with a majority of the men supporting a range of traditional and inequitable attitudes toward women, including a belief that they are not fit to be leaders, should not work outside the home, and that it is more important to educate boys than girls.14

With this in mind, perhaps it is not too surprising that there is a significant gendered disparity in the Middle East’s representation of only 15 per cent of the work collected by female artists in their national museums, if we use Qatar’s MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art as a case study.15 A recent YouGov survey also revealed ‘where the genders are considered most and least equal’, with Middle Eastern countries falling towards the bottom of the scale.16 Conversely, as one might well expect the United States and many European countries including the UK are found at the top of this list in that they are perceived to be equalizing or quasi-equal.17 Nevertheless, these supposedly gender-equal nations are also



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found to have a significant disparity in their public art collections. The Guerrilla Girls famously attended their inaugural 1984 protest outside MoMA in New York, where there was a survey exhibition of 169 artists, less than 8 per cent of them female. More recently the Financial Times reported that ‘in 2013 New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz found that women had produced just 29 out of the 367 works’ in the MoMA permanent gallery collections, ‘just 8 per cent’.18 Women Can’t Paint’s survey of the latest MoMA acquisitions reveals that still only 33 per cent of MoMA’s new painting and sculpture acquisitions are of work by female artists.19 Is It Even Worse in Europe? was the rhetoric title of the Guerrilla Girls’ more recent expose exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 2016, revising their similar previous 1986 campaign ‘It’s even worse in Europe’. In a statement issued by the gallery, the activist artists collectively declared: With this project, we wanted to pose the question ‘Are museums today presenting a diverse history of contemporary art or the history of money and power?’ We focus on the understory, the subtext, the overlooked and the downright unfair. Art can’t be reduced to the small number of artists who have won a popularity contest among bigtime dealers, curators and collectors. Unless museums and Kunsthallen show art as diverse as the cultures they claim to represent, they’re not showing the history of art, they’re just preserving the history of wealth and power.20

Perhaps with this in mind, in 2009 the Centre Pompidou in Paris took the initiative to bring work by female artists out of their storage depot and into public visibility through the nearly two-year exhibition Elles@CentrePompidou. Here, curator Camille Morineau reinstalled the museum’s exhibition with the work of only female artists. Former founding curator of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art Maura Reilly observed: ‘Elles’ was a radical gesture of affirmative action – but one that was not longlasting. In the subsequent post-‘elles’ re-hang of the permanent collection, only 10 per cent of the works on view are by women – exactly the same as it was pre-elles. Moreover, the acquisition funds for women artists almost immediately dried up.21

According to Re-envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World, ‘Elles’ was ‘merely a temporary experiment and did not reflect a permanent change [and] the museum [has] reasserted its commitment to the Eurocentric tradition [of collecting white male artists]’.22 Over in Germany, a 2017

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exhibition Collecting for Hamburg shows off new acquisitions and donations for the Department of Prints and Drawings (2001–16) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle.23 However, this is 100 per cent male with not a single female representative among the artists, and according to their 2016 Annual Report, the Kroller Muller Museum in the Netherlands only acquired work by male artists.24 One could spend many weeks, months and even years documenting the annual acquisitions data pertaining to gender ratios in our national museum collections, but the statistics thus far suggest significance in the very lack of females represented in our important collections. In a Freedom of Information request submitted during the writing of this book, the Tate stated there is no available gendered breakdown of their latest acquisitions of artist’s work,25 and the statistics were therefore calculated manually from the available information presented in the Tate’s Annual Report.26 Of artists whose work was acquired by the Tate in 2014/15, only 35 per cent were female. In taking into account the funding that appeared to be allocated to work by women, only 13 per cent of the total was spent on females’ artwork. These are not unusual statistics: in a 2014 Royal Academy Magazine, Eileen Cooper and Helena Morrissey noted the works collected in the Tate’s previous financial year and found that of works collected by living artists, only 21 per cent were made by women.27 In 2010, activists UK Feminista published their survey results on gender equality at the Tate, where it was found that only 17 per cent of the artists in Tate Modern were female.28 According to the Tate’s acquisitions section of their later accounts (2015/16), the gender ratio seems to have increased, but when the entire accounts (covering works by both female and male artists) were analysed, two works by female artists stood out as having unusually high valuations ascribed to them: these were Pink Tons (Roni Horns, 2009) for £1,067,854 and an unnamed work of art made by Fahrelnissa Zeid which was valued at $1,000,000. As it is widely known that museums make valuations of artworks according to recent auction data, previous work by the artists at auction was examined to gauge any correlation. Roni Horn’s work had only achieved £233,045 at auction previously, and there were no previous market value prices of work by Zeid at auction with which to form a comparison. A further request was therefore made under the Freedom of Information Act to the Tate, to ascertain how they had arrived at the requisite valuations and to ask for any helpful information relating to how the museum places valuations on artworks. The Tate’s response is set out below: Valuations for potential acquisitions are determined according to a range of factors. These include a number of variable elements including auction records



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and sales price histories for comparative or similar works in both the primary and secondary markets; the significance of the piece and its importance in terms of its representation of the artist’s wider work; the cultural value of the work forming part of a national museum collection; market demand; rarity; provenance; where the work sits within the context of Tate’s wider collection and the condition of the object itself. We do not hold further specific data in relation to determining the valuation either specifically of the above works or, given the variety in question, the valuation process in general. The pieces by Roni Horn and Fahrelnissa Zeid are major and highly significant works by each respective artist and valuations were set according to the assessment above.29

As an aside, this does raise the question as to how such large valuations are arrived at, given that the museum is largely spending from the public purse, and in Horn’s case, valuing the work significantly higher than the apparent market value. This does additionally raise the question that if a museum wished to increase its gender targets, works could perhaps be over-valued if required, given that there seems to be no concrete method (according to the above information) by which museums are valuing their assets. Nevertheless we do have to keep counting. In Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, Judy Chicago outlined a feminist pedagogy, one which aims for equality, and she must therefore include counting and the use of basic statistics in order to clarify that ‘most university art and art history curricula continue to be male-dominated’.30 Thus, by not counting museum acquisitions we will not see the extent to which our female artists are rejected or ignored by our very often publicly funded art collections. In New York, MoMA’s acquisition policy does not appear to mention gender or equality at all.31 The European Union Gender in Culture document does not appear to give directions for public collections’ equality in their selection of artworks by women and men, despite stating, ‘The promotion of gender equality and the combat against gender discrimination are twin goals of the EU, including in the cultural field.’32 In addition, ‘Traditional and social media play a relevant role in shaping gender roles within societies. With regard to cultural policy specifically, this may contribute to gender inequalities and discrimination in the production of cultural content.’33 Perhaps this lack of guidance has led to the Tate, for example, failing to mention gender or equality in its collection policy: ‘[The Tate] seeks to collect works of art that are of outstanding quality as well as works that are of distinctive aesthetic character or importance.’34 Taking this policy and the Tate’s acquisition data into account, it can be reasonably assumed the museum perceives that the works of art of

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‘outstanding quality’ or of ‘distinctive aesthetic character or importance’ are mainly created by men. Neither does the Tate’s diversity policy address gender, focussing instead on three other important key areas of ‘disability’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘sexual orientation’.35 The Tate’s board is, however, clearly aware of the key debate in the arena of museum collections and gender equality, as they congratulate themselves twice in board meetings for their efforts to equalize collections: ‘Trustees noted the focus on wider internationalism, representing a gender balance in displays and showing different sorts of practices’ and Trustees ‘congratulated the Artistic Director on … the focus given to representing less familiar art, gender and geographical diversity in the programme’.36 It is of course all very well to applaud and publicize equality during recorded meetings, but annual acquisitions continue to remain significantly disparate in their gender diversity. It is surprising that in their collection policy the Tate (and other museums) do not mention gender equality today because museums have arguably been responsible both for defining and for subverting gender roles and identities throughout art history.37 In the UK, for example the Sex Discrimination Act was originally launched over forty years ago in 1975,38 and the Tate’s responsibility to gender equality apparently depends on their applicability to Section 19 of the Public Sector Equality Duty.39 The Tate is ‘an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and an exempt charity defined by Schedule 3 to the Charities Act 2011’.40 According to the Museums Association, public galleries such as the Tate are also responsible for ‘reducing the inequalities between rich and poor’.41 The Museums Association does not mention gender in its acquisition policy; however, it does acknowledge museums’ responsibility to future generations: Museums are public-facing, collections-based institutions that preserve and transmit knowledge, culture and history for past, present and future generations. This places museums in an important position of trust in relation to their audiences. … Museums must make sound ethical judgements in all areas of work in order to maintain this trust.42

If an organization is within the UK and is within the scope of the schedule then public service equality duty would apply. It was understood during communication with the UK’s Equality Advice and Support Service (EASS) that if it can be proved that a disproportionate gender ratio exists, and that this is disproportionate not just to society as a whole but to the gender of artists



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operating in the UK today, that there may be a case for the EHRC to deal with.43 This has unfortunately not been taken up as yet. The EHRC appeared to assume that museum representation was proportionate to the gender of artists operating in the UK today, although Women Can’t Paint has evidenced that it is not. The Tate’s economic gendered allocation is in direct contrast to a recent press article in The Telegraph entitled ‘Female Artists Are Stars of the Show at Tate in order to Inspire Girls’.44 In the article, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota stated: ‘The galleries … worked hard to highlight works by women.’ Francis Morris, the director of collection at the Tate, added, ‘Tate Modern is working to “redress the balance” between male and female artists. … Women’s achievements in the arts for many years have not been recognised.’ It is clear from the data presented in this chapter that women’s achievements in the arts will still not be recognized for many years unless leading and influential international institutions such as the Tate ‘should put its money where its mouth is’. This was the title of a letter sent by the author and her colleague published in The Telegraph after reading the article.45 Indeed, it is clear from the quantitative data created for the purposes of writing this book that women’s achievements in the arts will still not be recognized for many years unless leading and influential institutions such as the Tate ‘should put their money where their mouth is’ and begin to collect equal quantities and equal financial values of work by both female and male artists. Public response published on The Telegraph website included the following extract, which perhaps highlights the message on gender – advertent or otherwise – that the Tate communicates to the public: ‘On balance there are simply fewer first class female artists than there are male ones, and their total output is much smaller. Any disparity in the sex of those artists whose works are displayed in galleries merely reflects this.’46 As we have seen from the higher education figures relating to the gender of those studying visual arts subjects, it is incorrect that there are less female artists than male artists if their training is anything to go by – and it is impossible to calculate every artist’s output accurately. If an equal number of female and male artists were collected by museums, it is not unfeasible to consider that the public’s perception of the abilities of female artists may well improve. The Tate’s media coverage has also highlighted an additional area of concern, that the artworld is perceived, or promoted, as being implicitly male. By drawing attention to their female shows, the Tate emphasizes the artist’s gender or biology over their creativity. By highlighting a small amount of female artists in the hope of avoiding the bigger picture, it is arguable that our great museums could be guilty of tokenism. It is noted that such

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a problem may be rooted far deeper than the museum structures themselves. ArtFund is the UK’s national fundraising charity for art, and they state, ‘For over a hundred years, we’ve helped more than 700 museums and galleries buy great works of art of all ages and types’ with around £11 million raised each year partly for charitable distribution to museum acquisitions.47 However, in helpful communication from ArtFund, it was found that the charity had recently only proportioned 36 per cent of their funding for the acquisition of works by female artists, while 64 per cent was directed towards the acquisition of work by men.48 It is not unlikely that ArtFund’s overall gendered distribution of wealth displays a significant imbalance. Indeed, if this is the case, it could be assumed that those donating to ArtFund (and indeed ArtFund themselves) may not be aware they could potentially be indirectly contributing to an ongoing inequality in our artworld. Eileen Cooper is a prominent British painter who became a Royal Academician in 2000. From 2010 to 2017 she served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, in fact the first woman to be elected to this role since the academy began in 1768.49 In 2015, Eileen told me: ‘Museums should be collecting 50:50, after all, half the audience is female, and in this collecting, reflecting the diversity of the population.’ Similarly, in British Theatre, The Guardian commented: ‘Why keep going to the theatre if you fail to see yourself represented there? Given that women make up just over half the population and buy more theatre tickets, the industry is shooting itself in the foot if it fails to commit to real change.’50 And if as Eileen Cooper suggests our art museums should be collecting proportionate quantities of work by women to reflect the world we live in, it is necessary to question the point or purpose of art, as it is of theatre. In a documentary, the art critic Robert Hughes states, ‘There’s no point in art that can’t tell us about the world we’re living in.’51 Taking Hughes’s perspective into consideration alongside Eileen Cooper’s comment above, it is arguable that if we are to present ‘the world we’re living in’ accurately to museum and gallery visitors, then an equal number of female and male artists (or even 51 per cent female artists to reflect the ratio of women living in our society, according to the Office for National Statistics) ought to be represented and displayed.52 It is thus arguable that a contemporary museum comprised of an 87 per cent investment in masculinity cannot reflect the world we occupy, particularly bearing in mind the large female majority in art schools today. The irony of this statement is that unequal gendered museum collections perhaps do ‘tell us about the world we’re living in’, and perhaps accurately reflect a wider gendered inequality. Such a misogyny or notion of male



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superiority is presented by Rebecca Machin in ‘Gender Representation in the Natural History Galleries at the Manchester Museum’ who found that museum’s natural history sections were also masculine-dominated, with only 31 per cent of exhibits feminine.53 If, as Machin argues, the masculine is positioned as the more powerful and superior sex with females weaker and subordinate, such exhibits serve to support Jack Holland’s thesis of Misogyny and elucidation of a centurieslong ongoing inequality in Western society.54 This debate also contributes to a wider body of museum studies such as that conducted by Machin, and Lara Perry and Angela Dimitrakaki in Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions.55

Segregation versus integration in feminist curatorial practice The well-intended Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art (EASCFA) is a privately funded specialist department within a major US museum. Founded in 2008 with the acquisition of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party and the group inaugural exhibition Global Feminisms, the museum has also created a digitally curated ‘Artabase’ comprising ‘some of the most prominent and promising contributors to feminist art from the 1960s to the present’.56 There is, however, some opacity around the term ‘feminist art’, and that which constitutes work made by women. The EASCFA are not willing to provide a single, constructive definition of ‘Feminism’ or ‘Feminist Art’ as they believe it would be fatal to their separatist feminist art project.57 Often, organizations avoid this subject altogether for the very fear that the ‘F’ word – feminist – can engender the Brooklyn Museum’s funding policy describing women’s, rather than feminist art in order not to get rejected by funders at the first hurdle.58 What is the difference between art by women and feminist art anyway? Analysis of all 280 artists within Sackler’s digital archive is inconclusive. Some are female artists who claim they are not feminists.59 Some are female artists who are feminists but claim they do not make feminist art.60 Some have made the assumption that to be feminist you must be female, yet the archive does include three male artists.61 Many are artists who will only work with traditional feminine media such as lace-making to emphasize their femininity, whereas many are artists who will only work with paint, in order to re-appropriate a traditional masculine skill. This is an issue which has been dealt with by both Rebecca Fortnum and Pam Skelton in Unframed: Practices and Politics of

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Women’s Contemporary Painting, discussing painting in terms of a feminist reaction to masculine-occupied territory.62 What is clear, however, is that many women find the feminist label too restrictive, threatening to overshadow other elements in their work, and risking their exclusion from mainstream art. In Art and Feminism, Helena Reckitt and Peggy Phelan discuss how prominent female artists such as Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois have at times denied being feminist: ‘This should not mean, however, that their work is necessarily “not-feminist,” that it has not influenced feminist artists, or cannot be interpreted within a feminist perspective.’63 While this definition regards the work of art retrospectively, Griselda Pollock’s view is that the term ‘Feminist Art’ originates at the source of fabrication of the art object, bound up within the conceptual framework and identity of the artist.64 Some of the artists interviewed for this book perceived themselves to be feminist simply because they wanted to be represented equally. To be tied by such a loaded statement does not seem entirely fair, if all one is seeking is merely equality. One would not hear of a male artist, for example, seeking to be termed a ‘masculinist artist’ because he sought to be represented equally in the traditionally female environment of embroidery. According to recent research, the term ‘feminist’ as a branding issue is currently not very popular or fashionable. In the latest Sex Equality report conducted by the Fawcett Society, they found that while 67 per cent of people supported equality only 7 per cent actually described themselves as feminists.65 In British tabloid The Sun, Karren Brady discussed a new campaign titled ‘Women Against Feminism’ and stated that the word ‘feminist’ has come to be associated with ‘raging, men-hating, bra-burning women – no doubt with hairy armpits’.66 In the United States, Scott London reports that over the last decade or two, many women in the United States have distanced themselves from the feminist movement. It appears that a growing number of them associate feminism with anger and hostile rhetoric and have therefore concluded that they are not really feminists. This was reflected in a recent Time/ CNN poll which showed that although 57 percent of the women responding felt there was a need for a strong women’s movement, a full 63 percent said they didn’t consider themselves feminists.67

Nevertheless, attitudes may be changing as a result of pop stars such as Taylor Swift revising and voicing their support for equality. During an interview with Maxim magazine, Swift suggested that she might have once seen feminism as a ‘man-



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hating, gender-dividing club for radicals’. She stated: ‘Misogyny is ingrained in people from the time they are born. … So to me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality.’68 However, in Hatreds, Radicalised and Sexualised Conflicts in the 21st Century, Zillah Eisenstein argues that pop feminism has a limited impact on equality: ‘[It] distorts feminism by depoliticizing it and burying its complexities, and in so diminished a state it has no power to vanquish the male privilege that women experience in their everyday lives.’69 Whether or not such household names as Swift and Beyoncé et al. embrace ‘pop feminism’ as a branding device to signify ‘female independence and “girl power”’, it is clear that this could be impacting upon the millennial generation:70 A national survey by the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation finds 6 in 10 women and one-third of men call themselves a feminist or strong feminist, with roughly 7 in 10 of each saying the movement is empowering. Yet over 4 in 10 Americans see the movement as angry, and a similar portion say it unfairly blames men for women’s challenges. Younger women are more optimistic about movement across a variety of measures, and more than 4 in 10 say they’ve expressed their views about women’s rights on social media.71

It quickly becomes clear that the very definition of feminism and Feminist Art itself is contentious: Brooklyn Museum curator Maura Reilly attempted to highlight this by naming the EASCFA’s inaugural exhibition Global Feminisms in the plural, highlighting that there is of course more than one way to be both feminist and artist, with feminist goals and issues being different in different places. Although there are ideological meanings in descriptive terms such as ‘Neo-Realist’ or ‘Abstract Expressionist’, the effect of the term ‘Feminist Artist’ is quite different: Feminist Art, in particular, is even less well received than works by female artists generally, since it is often designed to provoke and undermine the prevailing power structures. While it appears to have been necessary to segregate women’s art in the 1970s, the EASCFA risks exclusion from ‘mainstream art’ in the very act of attempting to assert its feminist artists into art history. There is Art – and there is Feminist Art. Similarly there are Artists (male artists) and there are Women Artists (female artists). If there are women who happen to be artists, is there a need for a feminist art archive such as the Brooklyn’s EASCFA? While one may respond that men have never needed to resort to a male artist’s archive, segregation of female artists in this way arguably becomes exclusive and prejudiced, perhaps the very antithesis

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of the equality it seeks to achieve. In Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference, Richard Sandell discusses how ‘Museum exhibitions present audiences with authoritative, credible and permissive ways of thinking and talking about difference,’72 yet how can this be achieved if artists are segregated by gender? While ‘Matron’ Elizabeth Sackler has created a model institution that she hopes will be duplicated by all major museums, if this were to succeed, could work made by women merely become an ‘add on’ to what is considered to be the privileged arena? The Feminist Art Movement in New York in the early 1970s was based on the belief that the total gender parity in the museums’ economy of exhibitions, coupled with a feminized aesthetic criteria, should be achieved by means of an oppositional women’s practice. Its founders contended that this would revolutionize the existing ‘masculinist’ hegemonic museum structures.73 This gave rise to the Feminist Art Program (FAP), co-founded by Judy Chicago who wished to create a Fine Art degree and artists’ space for feminists and women only, the programme remaining completely segregated from patriarchal and masculinist practice. Curator Maura Reilly describes this as ‘coming together as a force of nature to make a difference’.74 One can, however, understand the necessity for segregation, when studying the broader debates concerning the social roles and responsibilities of cultural organizations. For example in the UK, an exhibition team within the Science Museum recently refused to seek ways in which they could show females to be more involved in computing, in response to government and industry initiatives to address gender imbalance – ‘This is asking us to do social engineering and that’s not what we should be in the business of doing. That might be the government’s job, but it’s not the Science Museum’s.’75 Former FAP students and artists Laura Meyer and Faith Wilding argue that Chicago’s separatist methods remain ‘central to the collaborative basis of feminist pedagogy and activism’; however, Chicago’s FAP was highly criticized for defining feminism entirely in the name of gender, her students being trained to make the assumption that all women were their friends and all men their enemies.76 Some students felt the FAP had failed to prepare them for the shock of the world of men in which they would have to compete, and are now bitter over what they see as the programme’s hostility to men including Chicago’s encouragement of students to repudiate their boyfriends/husbands.77 FAP’s collaborative inaugural exhibition Womanhouse has more recently been criticized for its empirical emphasis on women’s known experience, as opposed



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to other contemporaneous work such as Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document which takes up the unconscious drives that made both men and women complicit with patriarchal structures of representation.78 Therefore, if a more integrative and inclusive gendered approach is sought, then the notion of artwork created by women, for women, should be urgently revised. However, it is arguable that the vast majority of the work at the EASCFA is not art-by-women, for-women. While a large proportion of the curated selection constitutes a commentary on gender issues, the challenging of stereotypes and critically addressed issues of gendered power; there are only a handful of (largely older generation) artists who risk stepping into the category of art-by-women, for-women.79 One danger of segregation of female/feminist artists is the dependency upon and the power exerted by the privately funding Patron/Matron, not commonly found within integrated institutions as these are more usually the recipients of public funding: curator Maura Reilly describes her struggles with having to keep her billionaire funder Elizabeth Sackler ‘happy at all times, or she would just pull the plug [on her £10 million donation] and all the jobs would go’.80 Having resigned from the EASCFA, Reilly retrospectively believes that MoMA’s women’s project of integration has more potential in the long run to make change – a systemic part of the museum’s core mission incorporating a collection strategy and a feminist approach to its museological practice.81 In Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces, Alexandra Schwartz notes that in respect of the EASCFA, ‘one persistent question concerned whether it was “ghettoising” to base a project exclusively on women artists, and whether singling out women was contrary to the idea of equality’.82 While the Brooklyn Museum undoubtedly has a feminist approach to its museological practice, a further danger to its segregation policy is that curators elsewhere have used Brooklyn’s segregation of feminist and female artists as an excuse for their own total exclusion of female artists. Apparently, the Pompidou’s curator Christine Macel daringly described the EASCFA’s ‘Global Feminisms’ as an ‘excuse’ and possible ‘corrective’ to her own blasé omission of female artists in her 2005 blockbuster Paris exhibition Dionysac.83 Furthermore, the singlethemed museum can also seem unnecessarily reductive or restrictive: ‘Part of the argument against such shows … is that they reduce our possible interpretations of a given artwork by forcing us to examine it through a specific (and limited) thematic filter.’84 In other words themed shows such as ‘Global Feminisms’ tend to make the theme itself more important than our consideration of the art they include.

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In seeking a feminist perspective on museumology, Gaby Porter applied poststructuralist and feminist theory, examining the relations between men and women, masculine and feminine as they are constituted in museums, tracing a series of gendered, hierarchical oppositions.85 Porter refers to Jacqueline Rose’s Sexuality in the Field of Vision: ‘Our previous history is not the petrified block of a singular visual space, since, looked at obliquely, it can always be seen to contain its moments of unease’ – the solid, hardened traces of histories of which their collections are formed.86 Seeking to improve the representation of women in museum displays and collections, Porter initially thought this could be achieved simply by adding material that reflected women’s experience to the collections and displays. As she studied further Porter began to understand that the differences between the histories of men and women as represented in the museum lay at much deeper levels: ‘I recognised that the whole structure of museums – abstract knowledge and organization as well as concrete manifestations of buildings, exhibitions and collections – was built upon categories and boundaries which embodied assumptions about men and women, masculine and feminine.’87 Taking Porter’s research into account, would it have been possible to make grassroots change to the Brooklyn Museum as a whole by gradually and discreetly integrating female artists into the main collections through Dr Sackler’s generous and well-intended philanthropy? If we are to avoid the replication of historical strategies for isolating women from the universal category of mainstream ‘Art’, inclusivity means understanding that art has been created by diverse men and women, side by side. In ‘The Missing Future’, Griselda Pollock argues that we have to deconstruct the resulting tendency to generalize artists such as those represented by the EASCFA’s collection, as merely exemplars of a gendered collective – ‘Women, as a category, lumped together and their singularity annulled.’88 It could be argued that to be seen through the well-meaning hospitality of Elizabeth Sackler risks artists being labelled as outsiders, a category whose gendered framing immediately unravels the term ‘artist’. Griselda Pollock’s concern is that methods of cultural enquiry between museum, curator and scholar are pursued, so that we are opened ‘up to the heterogeneity and creativity of the past, the present and the future we may otherwise miss’.89 Judy Chicago has now revised her methods of segregation and now teaches both men and women, no longer seeking a wholly womenonly space and applying pedagogical integration.90 She is not alone: many contemporary feminists and curators such as Helen Molesworth at the MOCA, Los Angeles, have also declined what she terms ‘a ghettoized room of feminist



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art’, and refused the simple insertion of women back into canons predicated upon their exclusion.91 It has already been noted how founding curator of the EASCFA Maura Reilly has retrospectively confessed to having concerns about the Brooklyn Museum’s separatist policy, forever incapable of transforming the master narrative, and the Brooklyn Museum may now view the Feminist Art Center as ‘a thorn in their side’: ‘I worry that by its very ghettoization and separatist space within the museum that it can’t quite have the transformative potential to rethink the whole museum from the ground up.’92 Will feminist art – and shows dedicated exclusively to women’s art – continue to be used to rectify sexist shows such as Macel’s Dionysac, and if so, for how many years, and at how many institutions? And are integration and segregation in Feminist Art curatorial practice mutually interdependent? Perhaps historically it has been necessary to have segregation for women and/or feminists artists such as that inaugurated by Judy Chicago’s FAP. One could also concur with Maura Reilly’s vision of the importance of female artists coming together as a force of nature to make a difference; however, while Elizabeth Sackler hopes her museum-within-a-museum will become a model that other institutions will follow, if changes could be made instead or in addition to the Brooklyn Museum’s traditional masculinist canon, the notion of feminist art and women’s art would no longer be an ‘add on’, a place for waifs and strays who cannot find their proper place within the Brooklyn Museum itself. While generously supported and well intended, it is arguable that the Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum risks women’s continued struggle to penetrate the actual structure of the museum organization and achieve equality in the artworld, risking that art history may never be rewritten to be more inclusive to its female artists.

Essentialist aesthetics in equal collections According to new research on the gender gap conducted by the World Economic Forum, the most equal countries in the world are Finland, Iceland and Norway.93 This chapter will now examine one major museum from an apparently genderequal country, and establish to what extent gender equality through visibility and collections can benefit the resident artist population. The country selected for this case study is Finland, the Northern European nation bordering Sweden, Norway and Russia, and builds upon Arto Haapala’s research into contemporary Finnish aesthetics which suggests there is a specific lacuna for more work in

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the present day on the notion of a Northern Nordic identity, and indeed all our identities.94 In addition, a recent call for papers by the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture invited contributions for a special edition entitled ‘The New Nordic? A Critical Examination’.95 The journal highlighted interest in the specific aesthetic themes arising in Nordic culture from both internal and external perspectives. The call suggests that there is a contemporary Nordic aesthetic, and the purpose of this case study was to test this hypothesis through the analysis of the contemporary paintings within the collections, specifically in relation to gender and aesthetic difference. The chart in Figure 25 demonstrates female Finnish artist visibility in comparison to other regions, including the United States, the Middle East, UK and Europe. In a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) questionnaire on gender equality and culture, Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture stated, ‘Women comprised 53 per cent of all employees in creative industries’, and noted that their ‘national cultural statistics are not Female Artist Visibility (%)

46%

22% 17% 14% 11%

UAE

Europe

USA

UK

Finland

Figure 25  Female artist visibility: A 2016 global survey of gender visibility in art collections.



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disaggregated by sex’.96 Finland ‘has been a leader when it comes to issues relating to gender equality over the past 100 years’ and as such in 2017 launched the International Gender Equality Prize to ‘create a platform for the promotion of gender equality across the world’.97 The Kiasma MOCA in Helsinki is one of the leading national galleries in the Nordic regions housing the Finnish national collection of contemporary art. One of the first things that may strike the viewer about this collection in making a transnational comparison with other collections is the more or less equal gender visibility of female artists in Finland. In a 2017 meeting with Anna Maria Von Bonsdorff the chief curator at the Finnish National Gallery, she explained that the museum had a long history of gender equality, as did Finnish society compared with what she felt was the case in the UK and elsewhere. Finland is indeed a pioneer of gender equality: ‘In 1906 Finland’s national assembly became the first parliament in the world to adopt full gender equality. It earned that distinction by granting equally to all men and women the right not only to vote but also to stand for election.’98 This compares to the UK and the Tate’s low and disproportionate collection of work by female artists despite 74 per cent of our art students being female. And again, the age at which an artist achieves visibility is exactly equal in Finland (Figure 25), whereas in other geographies it can be evidenced that women are not achieving the same success as men at an older age (this issue is explored further in Chapter 6, ‘Sexism and Ageism in Visual Art Values: “But Men Are Allowed to be Old or Ugly!”’). The collections are explored digitally, rather than in person. Unfortunately, it is still the case that many art historians are opposed to the digital in art history, or rather, the digitization of images for the furthering of research: Johanna Drucker, Professor at the University of California, acknowledges that ‘until someone produces a work of digital art history that has to be cited by art historians to advance their own work in the field, digital projects will not be taken seriously as art historical scholarship’.99 Nevertheless the use of digital images opens up the field of art history to a wide array of possibilities, not to mention the easy accessibility of the works. Most of the images discussed are available via the Google Cultural Institute, a ‘not-for-profit initiative that partners with cultural organizations to bring the world’s cultural heritage online’ who ‘build free tools and technologies for the cultural sector to showcase and share their gems, making them more widely accessible to a global audience’.100 While there is of course no substitute for seeing an artwork in person, as disposable incomes continue to fall, it is becoming the select few who are able to afford to travel to see particular collections and so the emergence of digital

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archives has effectively made museums available to everyone, enabling a wide audience to engage with artwork. Indeed, during my discussions with artists during the course of writing this book, I spoke to four who were internationally recognized but noted the expense of being able to afford to travel to and stay in capital cities where the majority of art events take place, as ‘holding them back’ in terms of their own development, research and inspiration through other artwork and our histories of art. For example, Kasey (not her real name) in the North of England commented that she had been literally priced out of visiting her national collections: To travel to London is not cheap, train fares are sky now. I looked online the other day and a basic hotel is wanting £200 a night, so if I go to London for a couple of days, say three days, I’m looking at around £1,000 all in. To make £1,000, I have to sell a painting for £5,000. Museums sometimes don’t pay, sometimes they ask for a donation if you’re not one of the big guys. Even if they pay, it isn’t every month or even every year you sell to a museum.

The Finnish National Gallery collection: Equality in collections, greater freedom of creativity through aesthetics? Through the Finnish National Gallery (FNG) digital collection of paintings in their Kiasma contemporary art museum, 9,000 artworks were viewed initially. A new database was then created comprising 200 artworks by 200 artists with around 3,000 datapoints: a complete sample of one painting for each of the contemporary painters in the collection. The specific aesthetics or pictorial qualities examined in each image were the painting’s scale, subject, medium, support, orientation, overall average lightness and whether the painting was abstract or figurative in appearance. Biographical details examined included each artist’s gender, place of birth, ethnicity and where they live/work. Artist’s age at execution of work and artist’s age at point of sale were also calculated. A huge database and jumble of numbers, at first glance, looks very similar to the previous databases created. However, as previously noted, in Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, the use of digital technology such as the Statistics Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) can also ‘detect patterns that a human cannot’,101 and in this case that has certainly occurred. In terms of the biographical details, the method detected that at over 46 per cent of the population (Figure 25), Finnish female



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artist visibility is more than double that of other geographies when making a global comparison. Finland perhaps not surprisingly has a low population of artists leaving to work elsewhere (2 per cent) and within this particular survey no evidence of an incoming diaspora. Within the sample of visible paintings, Finnish artists have the lowest average age at date of creation of artwork, and one of the lowest ages of visibility at the current time of sampling. Finland is the only country to demonstrate gender equality at the time of artwork execution or creation, suggesting that females are not discriminated against to the extent they are in other geographies. While the issue of age, gender and visibility is something that will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6 (Ageism and Gender in Visual Art Values – ‘But Men Are Allowed to be Old or Ugly!’), these findings indeed suggest that Finland’s pioneering gender equality measures have spread throughout its cultural industries and into the heart of its museums and selection of representative artists within its national collections. The use of digital technology has also enabled the discovery that out of all the countries examined globally, Finland has the largest scale of paintings in the sample; Finnish painters use more acrylic paint than artists in other geographies; like other countries, painters are more likely to use canvas (then paper, wood and metal); Finland has the highest proportion of paintings of people, with findings almost identical to those in Qatar’s MATHAF collection, and Finnish artists are more likely to paint figuratively than abstractly. The overall average lightness was also identical to that found in Qatar’s paintings (Figure 26), and Finland has more in common with Middle East and North African (MENA) paintings in the Qatari collection than with its European neighbours. This is a phenomenon, given the perceived gender discrimination found in the Middle East as noted earlier in this chapter. Further details and charts appertaining to this data can be seen in Appendices 15–21. Moreover, important and statistically significant findings suggest there is a strong Nordic or Finnish aesthetic in contemporary painting through the discovery of hugely significant differences found in the use of lightness in Finnish paintings between the genders; a 9 per cent difference with females painting much lighter paintings than men (other countries have much closer symmetry in gendered lightness contrasts). This suggests there is a distinct Nordic feminine and masculine aesthetic in the Finnish model, and stands in opposition to the new androgynous aesthetics in relation to lightness in contemporary British painting (illustrated in Figure 27 through a negative percentage which indicates an androgynization has occurred). It is therefore arguable that a stronger female

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54% 53%

50%

50%

48%

UK

USA

Middle East

Finland

Europe

Figure 26  Gender differences in overall average lightness within contemporary paintings: A global comparison.

11%

5% 4%

4%

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–2% Figure 27  A global assessment of overall average lightness in contemporary paintings.



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presence in Finnish painting has enabled a distinct gender identity to develop; that gender equality, perhaps, equates to a greater freedom of expression between the genders – or certainly in this case, has allowed for a distinct Nordic feminine and masculine aesthetic. This new discovery has tentatively been termed ‘essentialist aesthetics’. ‘Essentialism’ is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as ‘A belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.’ Is essentialism such a bad thing, as many of us have been doctrined to think through the education of our various feminisms? If it can be demonstrated that gender equality can lead to greater freedom of expression through creativity, can our references to our femininities and masculinities be so harshly criticized as they have been in our recent past? If gender equality (demonstrated through this case study) leads to essentialism in how artists express themselves, ought we really to deny the very existence of our gendered being? As previously noted, this is a contentious issue within the arena of gender studies, because Judith Butler argues that if men and women are seen as fundamentally different and separate, then equality apparently becomes impossible. In Differencing the Canon, Griselda Pollock notes, ‘If we use the term women of artists, we differentiate the history of art by proposing artists and “women artists.” We invite ourselves to assume a difference, which all too easily makes us presume that we know what it is.’102 This is an issue also highlighted in Nicole Ward Jouvre’s Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender (necessarily repeated here) in which she states: Without the much-denounced so-called binaries – male and female, masculine and feminine – there would be nothing … to throw out the binaries themselves as a discursive form that makes for suppression or oppression is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.103

As previously noted, Camille Paglia, who describes herself as a ‘dissident feminist’, ‘recently took feminists and women’s studies programs to task for failing to acknowledge biological gender differences’.104 Perhaps a backlash against persuasive and influential epistemological feminist influence is slowly descending upon us. Indeed, in Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, Judy Chicago has observed Griselda Pollock’s persuasive and influential epistemological influence on the academy, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.105 As an aside, in an era of supposed Western freedom in society, a British school recently banned girls from wearing skirts to school in a ‘gender-free move’ to ‘combat

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the issue of inequality’ – an anti-essentialist measure if ever there was one and one which has been hugely criticized by both girls and boys and their parents.106 This raises the very serious question as to whether we need a ‘gender-free move’. Similarly, boys exerted their right to wear short skirts to keep cool during the hot summer of 2017 when shorts were deemed inappropriate by the school.107 The contentious issue here is that it is arguable an essentialist standpoint aligns itself with a supposed masculinist approach to gender: that one is born either female or male, and gender does not have the fluidity claimed by such theorists as Butler. As noted earlier, this refusal to quantify gender also extends to such notable feminist theorists as Griselda Pollock, who is highly critical of ‘gender based readings’ of works of art, stating that ‘gender based readings means limiting the artist to what is projected onto her as her female gender on which derive circumscribed meanings to the artwork’.108 Perhaps we need to be more aware not only of our society’s achievements in equality but also of the difficulties and inequalities we are still faced with. If it takes an essentialist and supposed ‘masculinist’ approach to identify those difficulties and inequalities, then perhaps we need to re-adapt and redefine a feminist fluidity of gender to establish a ‘masculine’ research territory in order to make new ground and explore and generate new knowledge for the benefit of future generations. In addition, there can be no harm in introducing new methodologies to the field, as Pollock herself notes how her own interventions have conflicted with much feminist literature in art history.109 Pollock therefore had to take a similar calculated risk and break the established rules in order to attempt to affect a paradigm shift in the field. Moreover, and referring to Butler’s gender dictum, it is necessary to reassert that the fluidity of research methods is perhaps as relevant here as the proposed fluidity of gender itself. Contrary to the discovery of a new androgynous aesthetics (see Chapter 1), this new metatheory of ‘essentialist aesthetics’ has occurred alongside an antiessentialist feminist call towards non-binarification of gender, the fluidity of and the right to select one’s gender, and archaic shadows cast over the notion of the feminine ‘sub-category’ and devaluation of symbolic and economic values in art which is created ‘by women’. However, it is important to consider that if the construction of one of our most equal societies has led to very specific essentialist characteristics in the collection of its citizens’ artwork, then perhaps the notion of essentialism ought to be reconsidered. Perhaps we need more ‘dissident’ feminists such as Camille Paglia and Nicole Ward Jouvre, let us listen to reason and challenge the persuasive authoritarian influence of some of our big theorists, and move forward towards a freedom of expression, creativity – and equality.

4

Gender parity and arts prizes: ‘Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness’

Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Statement made by art critic Brian Sewell (2008).1 Research conducted by the Journal of Experimental Psychology demonstrates that if we want to convince someone of something entirely untrue, we have to just keep repeating it, over and over again. Reported widely in the press, according to Ellen Scott, this new study shows that ‘even if a person has prior knowledge disproving a lie they’re being told, they’ll still believe the lie if it’s repeated enough’:2 So for example, even when a student knew that ‘the short pleated skirt worn by Scots’ was called a kilt, they would rate the statement ‘a sari is the name of the short plaid skirt worn by Scots’ as more true after they had read it multiple times. This indicates that being told something enough – even when you KNOW it’s incorrect – can make you believe it to be true. This might also apply to the person repeating the lie. The more you say something, the more you, too, will believe it’s the truth.3

We read the apparent lie that women are incapable of greatness because they may be biologically less capable (synonymous with texts such as Males and Females

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by Corinne Hutt and The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain by Simon Baron Cohen). We have, after all, been doctrined for a very long time and for far too long: as previously noted Jack Holland’s systematic review of this matter can be read in Misogyny: A History of the World’s Greatest Prejudice, a welcome addition to the shelves of any reader interested in matters relating to gender and equality. As we have already observed, art history books recommended as standard texts in UK universities such as the original print of Ernst Gombrich’s Story of Art (first published 1950) contained no female artists at all, as did Horst Janson’s History of Art (1962), who stated that no women artists deserved inclusion in his work.4 Edward Lucie-Smith’s Movements in Art Since 1945 (1984) contains hardly any female artists except for chapter ten, which Gender and Genius author Christine Battersby notes ‘functions as a kind of appendix’, and ‘the world’s bestselling art book’, Gombrich’s latest edition of The Story of Art mentions only one woman artist.5 In Roger Clark et al.’s 2005 count of female artists contained within art books, the analysts found the ratio of 10:9 women for every 100 male artists.6 And early studies on art practice and creativity in academic research such as that conducted by Emanuel Hammer (1964) did not even mention female artists because historically, art practice was considered to be a male-dominated sphere of activity.7 This Victorian narrative has therefore prevailed into the twenty-first century, with our friend Baselitz also repeating the lie that ‘women don’t paint very well, it’s a fact’, an opinion he reasserted, and repeated to the press in 2015.8

Patriarchal climates In The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Capture American Innovation, Professor of Educational Foundations Kyung Hee Kim presents the evidence to suggest that ‘males and females are born with similar creative potential’ and that men are really not more creative than women are.9 Kyung Hee Kim notes, ‘Culture – a major part of creative climates – has a critical impact on parenting and education for creativity because parents raise their children according to the values and norms endorsed by their own culture.’10 Patriarchal culture, perhaps not surprisingly, is discussed as a key ‘cultural climate’ that may impact upon the perception of creativity and potential. Kim presents a section headed ‘Seven Ways to Kill Women’s Creativity in Patriarchal Cultural Climates’. The seven points are listed here:11



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(1) Patriarchal climates throughout the history of humankind have brainwashed women to be the inferior sex. (2) Patriarchal climates provide different resources and expectations for girls and boys. (3) Patriarchal climates push females to keep their focus inside the home and pressure them to be submissive and sensitive to others’ needs. (4) Patriarchal climates inhibit females’ nonconforming attitude. (5) Patriarchal climates force females to choose between pursuing a career and starting a family. (6) Patriarchal climates stifle cross-pollination for females. (7) Patriarchal climates ignore females’ professional accomplishments. During the course of researching widely for this book, I came across far more literature than I would have liked to see on the subordination of women, for example, as highlighted in Tama Starr’s The ‘Natural Inferiority’ of Women: Outrageous Pronouncements by Misguided Males, where she notes, ‘Great men throughout the ages, whatever their other persuasions, concur with startling unanimity on woman’s “national inferiority” to man.’12 There don’t appear to be many books relating to the ‘natural inferiority’ of men to women. Despite Kyung Hee Kim’s ‘patriarchal climates’ research presented above, when we hear Baselitz et al.’s multiple mantras of womankind’s creative inferiority, according to the psychology, if we are told something enough (even when we know it’s incorrect) this is enough to make us believe it to be true. Regardless of the fact that we have not thus far heard any evidence that might persuade us that women are incapable of aesthetic greatness, let us now examine the figures as they relate to our arts prizes throughout the world. As noted by James English in The Economy of Prestige, ‘The rise of prizes over the past century, and especially their feverish proliferation in recent decades, is widely seen as one of the more glaring symptoms of a consumer society run rampant, a society that can conceive of artistic achievement only in terms of stardom and success.’13 There is of course, more to the arena of prizes, a cultural currency that assists in propelling artists’ careers forward and ahead of their less culturally successful contemporaries. In conducting a concise case study of 1,200 contemporary British paintings appearing on the market and in prizes in the 6 years 1992–4 and 2012–14, there are some aesthetic and practical differences between artworks which reach the secondary market, and artworks which are shortlisted for, or have won symbolic recognition through the award of a prize. The first main difference is in

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size: at an average of 16,715 cm², paintings presented at auctions are only 72 per cent the size of paintings featuring in awards, which are larger at an average of 23,270 cm². In the John Moores Painting Prize, artist Paul Collinson commented that he perceived a difference in the size of paintings intended for commercial galleries as opposed to public exhibition spaces/museums. Paul hypothesized a conflict in that the supersize of his paintings perhaps limits the commercial venues that would be available to exhibit the art: ‘I have been informed by a number of commercial galleries that if the paintings were smaller they could go on the walls. I take this to mean that the gallery owner has to maximise their option for saleable objects on any given run of wall.’ Prizewinning paintings also tend to be lighter (an average of 3 per cent difference) than those featuring at auctions, and of a landscape format. Perhaps not surprisingly, most paintings appearing in prize exhibitions do not appear to be visibly signed or annotated (only one out of the entire sample) compared to the majority (72 per cent) of paintings in auctions. This chapter will examine a selection of some of the prizes which feature in Alice Losq’s ‘Guide to the World’s Biggest Art Prizes’, and others besides.14 More importantly, it will analyse to what extent arts prizes impact upon the glass ceiling for the gendered economic value of contemporary art. In The Economy of Prestige, James English states: Part of the standard wisdom about cultural prizes is that they have furthered the dilution of cultural or aesthetic value by commercial value; they have helped to bring about an ever closer alignment between the works recognised as ‘best’ or ‘most important’ and those which are simply the bestselling or most popular.15

When we know that there is no evidence women are incapable of aesthetic greatness, if the Journal of Experimental Psychology’s findings are correct, and if we repeat that ‘There’s never been a great women artist, only men are capable of aesthetic greatness’, we might rate this as more true after we have read it multiple times.16 This might also apply to the person repeating the lie – in this case the critic Brian Sewell (although there are plenty more where he came from). Are some of us indoctrinated into believing Sewell’s hypothesis of the male artistic superiority gene – including our gatekeepers and bastions of taste – the esteemed and well-respected judges of our arts prizes and awards? Are men really better artists than women? Do our world’s awards commemorating such creators tend to vote in favour of male artists? Let us find out. Throughout this survey, the results have been calculated and presented as percentages in order to



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Figure 28  Tornado chart demonstrating arts prize gender disparity.

present a consistent comparison. A simple tornado chart illustrates the gender imbalance in our artworld prizes and is presented at Figure 28. Here follows a list of prizes analysed, a short descriptor of their manifesto and the gender ratios of the prizewinners and shortlisted artists. The discussion will then continue, in The Impact of Arts Prizes on Economic Values and beyond.

The United States The Bucksbaum Award The Bucksbaum Award was established in 2000 … and is presented every two years in recognition of an artist, chosen from those included in the Whitney Biennial, whose work demonstrates a singular combination of talent and imagination. In addition to receiving a $100,000 grant, each Bucksbaum laureate is invited to present an exhibition at the Whitney sometime within the succeeding two years.17

A gendered disparity Since the inauguration of the prize in 2000, only 33 per cent of the Bucksbaum Award prizewinners have been female, while 67 per cent of the successful artists are male.18

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The Hugo Boss Prize Hugo Boss has been conferring the Hugo Boss Prize cooperation with the distinguished Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation in New York since 1996. Every two years the prize singles out artists whose oeuvre constitutes an outstanding contribution to contemporary art. ‘It honours outstanding achievements and champions remarkable artists who have long been at the forefront of their profession,’ says Dr Hjordis Kettenbach, Head of Cultural Affairs at Hugo Boss. ‘At times it also sheds light on those whose extraordinary contributions have not yet reaped the recognition they deserve – an aspect of the prize that makes us very proud.’ The winner, chosen by a panel of international critics and curators, can look forward to more than just $100,000 in prize money: his or her work will also be showcased in a solo exhibition at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York in the following year.19

A gendered disparity Since the inauguration of the prize in 2017, only 36 per cent of the Hugo Boss Prize winners have been female, and the majority of selected winners – forming 64 per cent of the population – have been male artists.20

The UK New Contemporaries New Contemporaries (supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies) is open to artists working in any medium to submit their entry, but in this case the applicants must be in the final year of an accredited UK art school education and as such are emergent practitioners. The judges are of a high calibre, usually former Turner Prize winners or nominees, or those well vested in similar cultural capital and exposure. The award describes itself as the leading and longest-running open submission, touring exhibition, which showcases some of the most dynamic and engaging work emerging from UK art schools. Since 1949 we have provided a professional platform, beyond the context of art school, for new artists’ work to become visible and be discussed, often for the first time.21



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Gender equality Of the shortlisted artists selected by the New Contemporaries panel of judges from 2012 to 2017, 51 per cent are female, and 49 per cent are male.

The John Moores Painting Prize The John Moores Painting Prize (JMPP) was established in 1957, and is known as ‘the UK’s best-known painting competition’.22 Anybody (amateur or professional) can enter the prize by paying a fee and submitting a digital image of a painting. An initial longlist is selected by a panel of judges, after which painters are invited to send original artworks to be seen ‘in the flesh’ by the judges. A shortlist is then drawn up of artwork which will appear in a group exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool: up until this point, the judging is anonymous. The winner is selected from a further shortlist of four artists at the exhibition. Winners who have been shortlisted for the final selection are described as prizewinners, when they may not have necessarily won the top prize.

A gendered disparity In an analysis of the gendered visibility of JMPP award winners 1957–2014, there were found to be only 26 per cent of females contained within the prize lists compared to 74 per cent of male artists. However, in analysing the latest data available (2016), there were found to be 50:50, three female artists and three male artists.

The Turner Prize The Turner Prize, inaugurated in 1984, is awarded to ‘a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding’, and engages with artists who the artworld call ‘mid-career’ with any mediums considered.23 The winner is selected by a panel of four independent judges who are selected by the Tate and chaired by the director of Tate Britain. The shortlist is selected as follows: Judges are notified of exhibitions of the work of eligible artists that fall within the competition period. Thereafter, and to forestall any omission, the judges may further alert one and other to shows they have become aware of that fall

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within the relevant time period. The judges then nominate six artists they wish to discuss at the shortlisting meeting, based on exhibitions or presentations of their work which the jury member has seen in the previous year. The public nominations are also circulated to the jury before the meeting. All of these lists, including the public nominations, are discussed at the meeting and narrowed down to four shortlisted artists.24

Inequality ranging from slight to severe The Turner Prize longlist is not usually made available to the public, but was provided by the Tate under the Freedom of Information Act.25 In a comparative assessment with the sample data of paintings used for this book between 2012 and 2014, 45 per cent of the artists were female and 55 per cent were male. Since the inauguration of the prize in 1984 to 2018, only 36 per cent of shortlisted artists have been female, with the majority of shortlisted artists (64 per cent) being male. Since the inauguration of the prize in 1984 up to 2018, only 26 per cent of prizewinning artists have been female, with the majority of prizewinning artists (74 per cent) being male.

Europe The Marcel Duchamp Prize The Marcel Duchamp prize – perhaps the French equivalent of the British Turner Prize – has been organized in association with Centre Pompidou since 2011, in order to honour a French artist or artist residing in France … in keeping with the essential artist after whom it is named, this prize wishes to bring together the most innovative artists of their generation on the French scene and encourage all of the new artistic forms, thereby stimulating creation.26

A gendered disparity The prize is worth €35,000. Of the winners of the Marcel Duchamp Prize, to date only 25 per cent have been female, with 75 per cent of the main prizes awarded to male artists.



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The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) The Venice Biennale has been for over 120 years one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Established in 1895, the Biennale has an attendance today of over 500,000 visitors at the Art Exhibition. The history of La Biennale di Venezia dates back from 1895, when the first International Art Exhibition was organized.27

A gendered disparity The gender imbalance at the Biennale has started to gain press exposure since the Guerrilla Girls released statistics of the gender representation at the 2005 Venice Biennale: ‘Of 1,238 artworks exhibited by the major Venice spaces, fewer than 40 are by women.’28 In 2013, the Australian group CoUNTess (‘Women Count in the Art World’) reported that in the 55th Venice Biennale only 24 per cent of the exhibits were by female artists, and of the solo pavilions only 26 per cent are occupied by women.29 In 2015, US campaign group Gender Bias in the Arts reports that ‘only 33 per cent of the artists featured in the Venice Biennale were women’; and Frieze note that at the 57th Venice Biennale held in 2017, the gender (im)balance ‘clocks in at only 35 per cent women’.30 In a report conducted for the Freelands Foundation, and titled ‘Are Female Artists Under Represented?’, it was found that ‘in major career highlights, such as representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, men substantially outnumber women’.31

The Middle East The MENA Art Prize The MENA Art Prize (Middle East and North Africa Art Prize) is administered by the Sovereign Art Foundation and ‘aims to benefit mid-career artists by increasing their international profile’.32 Artists are nominated for entry into the prize by art professionals, curators and critics. Thirty finalists are selected to exhibit in an exhibition of shortlisted works. The first prize winner receives US$30,000 as an award, and all artists receive a share of 40 per cent of funds raised from the auction of artworks to a wealthy audience.

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Roughly equal Since the 2013–14 prizewinner was announced, women have won two prizes, and men have won three. In 2017, the shortlist comprised of 42 per cent male artists and 58 per cent female artists. In 2018, the thirty shortlisted artists were divided exactly 50:50, female and male, and the overall winner was Halima Cassell, the fifth woman to win the prize. It is noted that the press release for the 2018 shortlist noted the gender ratios of selected artists, which is a promising and trailblazing step forward in recognizing the importance of shortlists and longlists in artworld gender equality.

The Abraaj Group Art Prize The Abraaj Group Art Prize ‘celebrates the potential of artists across MENASA (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia). … Unique in its format, the Prize awards an artist and a curator through a proposal, rather than a completed work.’33 The winner receives a $100,000 prize to support and realize a specific project.

Females in the majority Since its inauguration in 2009, 54 per cent of the prizewinners have been female, and 46 per cent of the prizewinners have been male.

The Jameel Prize The Jameel Prize is an international award for contemporary art and design; and according to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Art Jameel who administer the prize, it focuses on art ‘inspired by Islamic tradition. Its aim is to explore the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today.’34

A slight gender inequality The prize is worth £25,000, was first awarded in 2009 and is held every two years. Of award results available to press, two winners have been all-female, and two winners have been male, 45 per cent of the nominated artists have been female and 55 per cent of the nominated artists have been male.



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The magnitude of the tornado that represents gender (in)equality in art prizes The chart in Figure 28 illustrates the tornado that forms when all the above results are inputted into a simple Excel chart. The male results occupy the righthand side, and the female results occupy the left. It can be seen that the gender of an artist has a large impact on this particular output: the measure of magnitude if one is a female artist clearly dictates that one is less likely to be shortlisted for, or win a prize or award in the artworld. Conversely, if one is a male artist clearly one is more likely to be shortlisted for, or win a prize or award in the artworld. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the Middle East appears to have the greatest equality in arts prizes, with only slight gender inequality in two prizes, and females in the majority within one art award. These findings are commensurate with the Middle East having the lowest ‘gender value gaps’ detected during the course of writing this book (see Chapter 2); however, they are clearly at odds with their apparent gender inequality and the fact that certain countries in the Middle East have only just given women the vote, allowed them to drive a car and enter a football stadium.

The impact of arts prizes on economic values As noted in November 2017, the Berlin-based all-female winners of the German art prize Preis der Nationalgalerie were highly critical of the fact that their prestigious arts award does not have a monetary value, with the assumption that ‘artists are rewarded … with the promise of exposure’. The winners additionally commented in a press statement: ‘There is an unspoken assumption that the participants are likely to be remunerated by the market as a result of being nominated for or winning the prize. As artists, we know this is not always the case.’35 All the prizewinning artists interviewed for this book firmly believed their nomination for, or award of, a prize had impacted on their careers in one way or another, and as such had led to greater visibility and exposure. American artist Moira (not her real name) defined this as ‘keeping her work out there’, while Fran and Mike (not their real names) perceived prizes to be validators, each reiterating that an award was one form of symbolic capital which had

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strengthened their positions as artists. Further to acquisition of symbolic success in a major UK prize, Mike recounted how he was approached by a curator and a fellow established painter, thus increasing the artist’s social capital, whereby he was subsequently invited to submit work for a group exhibition at the Royal Academy. Emma (not her real name) stated that after winning her major award, she had a ‘low increased visibility and more confidence’, also presenting a solo show in London and publishing a book. However, Emma argued the winning of the prize presented limited opportunities in that she did not get taken on by a major gallery or have a big increase in sales, and therefore did not get remunerated by the market accordingly. David (not his real name) and Moira felt the prizewinning had given them other opportunities which were not necessarily financial, but which had led to the opportunity to earn a living through other sources, as Moira outlines here: I was also an artist in residence after the prize, competition for this was really tough, and one of the things they were persuaded by was that I’d just won this award, it was massive, and the world seemed to change substantially in that doors were now opening rather than me having to apply for a hundred things and never hear anything back, and it was an absolute validation of something. It’s really fascinating to see what winning a prize means and its impact on your life as an artist, so as much as you think those things don’t matter, they totally do.

Artist Emily (not her real name) stated the award of a prize had led to further symbolic validation in the form of exhibitions, a fellowship and a grant. She also noted how her sales had increased soon after the award along with subsequent publicity. Several of those interviewed noted the conversion of such symbolic value into an economic value, with Emily commenting that a friend who had recently been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Prize had received two years’ worth of commissions as a result which had significantly improved her financial position. In Margaret Harrison’s case, the award of the prestigious Northern Art Prize led to her being awarded another prize, a substantial financial award in this case: Well, since I won the prize I’m invited all the time to show my work so my visibility has gone up, the other thing that happened was that there was another prize followed on, a national prize, worth more than the Tate prizes – I think it was double.

Some of the prizewinners who also taught in institutions mentioned their students regularly submitted work as a route to visibility and hopefully to future commercial success. Annie Kevans perceived that arts prizes were directly linked



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to the commercial markets by providing gallerists and collectors with a validator to an artist’s symbolic as well as economic worth: The galleries know that if somebody’s won an award it will help to sell an artist’s work, it will also help to get that artist into an art fair, so a lot of these galleries are on a cycle where they’re applying for art fairs and they have to put the artist forward. They recently did one for me and my dealer asked me to send a proof of validation, press clippings and anything that would help to validate me as someone of success. Prizes do help.

While the award of an arts prize may – or may not – improve an artist’s financial position, the award of a prize does seem to assist in propelling an artist’s career forward. What is clear, however, is that if female artists are not given the same chances as male artists to be shortlisted for or win a prize, then they will not be given the same opportunities to see their careers progress. The following British case study of the valuation of prizewinning artists’ work, versus the valuation of non-prizewinning artists’ work demonstrates in the case of the JMPP, the Turner Prize (shortlist only) and New Contemporaries, that the symbolic value attributed to the nomination or award of a prize has converted into, or supported the increase of an artist’s economic capital. The anomaly here is that there is little difference in the auction prices of those who have won – or not won – the Turner Prize. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference when one analyses the price of works made by artists who have been shortlisted for the prize. Thus the Turner ‘prize’ may not be the ultimate validator, but rather the validator appears to be inclusion within the shortlist itself. These findings are statistically significant, and align with those of Pierre Penet and Kangsan Lee in their research paper ‘Prize and Price: The Turner Prize as a Valuation Device in the Contemporary Art Market’. Penet and Lee state, ‘The winner of the Turner Prize yields no significant effect [on the price of their artwork], a confirmation that the exposure provided by the Turner Prize’s public deliberation mechanism matters more than the actual result of the competition.’36 Figure 29 therefore presents the evidence to suggest that if an artist is shortlisted for the Turner Prize, this enables a considerably higher yield upon the auction price of their work than if the artist wins the Turner Prize itself. The results and data shown in Figures 29 and 30 were extracted from a case study of a complete sample of over a thousand contemporary British paintings that appeared at London auctions from 1992 to 1994 and 2012 to 2014. Biographical details from each artist were analysed to determine whether or not they had been shortlisted for, and/or awarded a major British arts prize.

Women Can’t Paint

JMPP SHORTLIST JMPP WINNER

£477,725

TP SHORTLIST

Prize-winning artists

£92,062

£163,245

£171,713

£91,848

£103,434

£103,922

£358,115

£373,691

£617,052

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TP WINNER

BNC SELECTED

Non prize-winning artists

0%

10%

21%

25%

37%

39%

Figure 29  The impact of arts prizes on economic values: A British case study.

JMPP shortlisted

JMPP winners Female artists

BNC selected Male artists

Figure 30  The impact of arts prizes on museum inclusion: A British case study.

The findings of this case study suggest that if both female and male artists are not given equal chances of being placed on longlists or shortlists for arts prizes because of their gender, that this can significantly impact not only upon their opportunities for visibility and exposure but also upon their chances of commercial success or viability.



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The impact of arts prizes on museum inclusion The same sample of paintings and artists was used to examine and predict to what extent prize selection or award impacts upon museum inclusion, in other words, whether one force of symbolic capital (the prize) impacts upon another (museum inclusion). The results within the sample tested were statistically significant, and can be seen in Figure 30. The findings are that 21 per cent of men within the sample who have been shortlisted for one of the JMPP are also featured in the Tate collection, compared to only 10 per cent of shortlisted women. Thirty-seven per cent of men within the sample who have won one of the JMPP are also featured in the Tate collection, compared to only 25 per cent of award-winning female artists in the sample. Thirty-nine per cent of male New Contemporary selected artists within the sample have work in the Tate collection compared to 0 women in the sample. While it is likely that this is not intentional, museums could reinforce the view that male symbolic value is of a higher worth than female symbolic value. This in turn is a value that may be passed, by example, onto collectors and other stakeholders and thus positively impacts upon the value of work made by male artists, and conversely has a negative impact upon the value of work made by female artists. Again, the findings of this case study suggest that if both female and male artists are not given equal chances of being placed on longlists or shortlists for arts prizes because of their gender, this can significantly impact not only upon their opportunities for visibility and exposure but also upon their chances of being selected for museum inclusion and thus on having their careers propelled forward through the prestige of such symbolic capital being attributed to their work. It has also been demonstrated that the award or nomination for a prize leads to the addition of symbolic value upon an artist’s work.

The masculinity of prize success The results presented in this chapter strongly suggest that men are indeed more likely to win arts prizes than women. In Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Marsha Meskimmon has noted the consensus that ‘it is still a surprise, or possibly a “fix,” if the nominees for a major art prize are all women, but not even noted when they are all men’.37 There has in fact only been one all-female

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Turner Prize shortlist (1997) but four all-male shortlists (1984, 1986, 1996 and 2001) since the inauguration of the Turner Prize in 1984 to the date this book went to press in 2018. This phenomenon of masculinity and prize success extends beyond the visual arts, and is also apparent in the world of literature. Analysis of the last fifteen years of winners of six major literary awards by the critically acclaimed author Nicola Griffith has found that a novel is more likely to land a prize if the focus of the literature is male: It’s hard to escape the conclusion that, when it comes to literary prizes, the more prestigious, influential and financially remunerative the award, the less likely the winner is to write about grown women. Either this means that women writers are self-censoring, or those who judge literary worthiness find women frightening, distasteful, or boring. Certainly the results argue for women’s perspectives being considered uninteresting or unworthy. Women seem to have literary cooties. … The literary establishment doesn’t like books about women. … Women’s voices are not being heard. Women are more than half our culture. If half the adults in our culture have no voice, half the world’s experience is not being attended to, learnt from or built upon. Humanity is only half what we could be.38

Griffith’s comments resonate alarmingly with some of the findings of this book. She also asks, Why does this shocking disparity exist, even though there are many women judges? Well, in my opinion it’s not primarily anything to with who is judging. It’s about the culture we’re embedded in and that’s embedded in us all of us, women and men. This is the culture that still calls male writers Writers, and female writers Women Writers. The male perspective is still the real one, the standard. Women’s voices are just details.39

While Brian Sewell states that ‘only men are capable of aesthetic greatness’, and Kyung Hee Kim argues that ‘patriarchal climates throughout the history of humankind have brainwashed women to be the inferior sex’, we still live in a culture that still calls male artists Artists, and female artists Women Artists. As stated earlier by artist Eileen Cooper and the first female Keeper of the Royal Academy, ‘Museums should be collecting 50:50, after all, half the audience is female, and in this collecting, reflecting the diversity of the population.’ Even in the artworld’s current system of awarding prizes and symbolic recognition, perhaps the voices of our female artists are also seen, by some, as ‘just details’.



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Perhaps other artwork prizes could follow the precedent set by the MENA Art Prize administered by the Sovereign Art Foundation, and clearly state the gender ratios of selected shortlisted or longlisted artists. Through making a conscious decision to be mindful of gender during the selection process, this does not mean that inferior artists will be selected, but rather that presupposed masculine superiority may not necessarily override the gatekeepers’ judging decisions.

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5

The importance of wearing the Right Old (Art) School Tie: Networking, gender and painting values

Cultural and social capital in contemporary painting Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was a French sociologist and theorist with an interest in alternative forms of capital and how these converted back into economic capital in order to maintain inequality. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital comes in three forms – ‘embodied, objectified, and institutionalized’: One’s accent or dialect is an example of embodied cultural capital, while a luxury car or record collection are examples of cultural capital in its objectified state. In its institutionalized form, cultural capital refers to credentials and qualifications such as degrees or titles that symbolize cultural competence and authority.1

The section will focus on two Bourdieuian forms of cultural capital: ‘embodied’ (artist’s place of birth and place of residence) and ‘institutionalised’ (place, location and level of artist’s education). The study addresses the extent to which an artist’s inherited or adopted cultural and social capital influences auction price of artwork, and symbolic success through museum acquisition and inclusion. In Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, David Swartz describes how social capital and cultural capital are more closely related to each other than economic capital: ‘Bourdieu acknowledges that some goods and services can be obtained directly and immediately through economic capital. But other goods and services are accessible only through social capital and cultural capital.’2 Here, the importance of artists’ networks is noted, and how high acquisitions of such capitals can enable an artist to gain greater visibility. This chapter shall argue that for an artist to receive full recognition, the process of boosting their cultural and social capitals is vital to artworld validation. The relationship between gender

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and cultural/social capitals will also be analysed in further detail. This is an important discussion in the arena of gender studies because of the ascribed roles to parenting (motherhood and fatherhood) in our societies. While ‘Wearing the Right Old (Art) School Tie’ refers to art schools attended, it is also a metaphor for the discreet passport afforded by ‘the old boys’ network’ in a wider context.

Gender, cultural/social capital and artist’s inclusion in the Tate collection In Brokerage and Closure, social capital is defined by Ronald Burt as: The advantage created by location in social structure, a critical element in business strategy. Who has it, how it works, and how to develop it have become key questions as markets, organizations, and careers become more and more dependent on informal, discretionary relationships. The formal organization deals with accountability; everything else flows through the informal: advice, coordination, cooperation, friendship, gossip, knowledge, trust.3

It is key here that Burt uses the word ‘location’ to define how an advantage may be created through the acquisition of social capital. Having analysed the symbolic and economic relationship between museum collections and arts prizes in Chapter 4, we will now address the relationship between an artist’s place of birth/place where the artists lives and or works, and determine if there is any significance attached to artist’s geographical location and museum inclusion. The museum used as a case study here is the Tate, although other museums will be referred to throughout the chapter as a comparative transnational study. The chapter will therefore draw links with the benefits of living within a society’s capital city or region, and the chances of obtaining artistic and creative economic success. This particular case study is formed of 1,200 contemporary paintings, a complete sample of all paintings created by a living British artist (or an artist living and working in the UK) which appeared at major London auctions or which was selected or shortlisted for a key arts prize during 1992–4 and 2012–14. Each artwork’s overall size, format, media, painting support, average lightness and subject matter were analysed, and it was noted whether the artist had painted with an abstract or figurative approach, and if the painting contained a signature or artist annotation.4 Each of these categories were given a numeric



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value or coding, which was input into the new database, and compared along artist biographical details, including artist’s age at creation of painting, age at sale (if appropriate), place of birth, place where the artist lives and works, which art school was attended, prices attained at auction, symbolic recognition such as the award of an arts prize and of course the gender of each artist. Figure 31 illustrates the relationship between artists in the sample with museum (Tate) inclusion, and place where the artist was born. Here, it can be seen that an artist has a statistically greater chance of achieving Tate inclusion if they happened to have been born in London. This intimates that one’s cultural and social background is important to one’s chance of symbolic success through museum inclusion in the UK. In analysing the genders separately, the results also show that 25 per cent of female artists within the sample were born in London, compared to 17 per cent of male artists. It has already been established in Chapter 3 that the statistics on Tate inclusion suggest that the collection of male artists appears to be a priority. The case study suggests there are more female artists than male artists who were born in, and/or live/work in London. This in turn suggests that female social capital is viewed as less valuable than that of their male colleagues because a male artist who was born in London is far more likely to have museum (Tate) inclusion than a female artist born in London.

Ireland 5%

Midlands 6%

Wales 2%

Other 4% London 25%

Scotland 14% Abroad 10%

North of England 18%

South England 16%

Figure 31  The impact of location of an artist’s place of birth and their inclusion in the Tate collection.

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Wales 1%

Unknown 5%

Multiple residences 11% Scotland 5%

London 53%

South of England 15%

Abroad 10%

Figure 32  The impact of where an artist lives/works and their inclusion within the Tate collection.

Figure 32 illustrates the relationship between artists in the sample with museum (Tate) inclusion, and where the artist now lives or works. Here, it can be seen that an artist has a statistically greater chance of national (Tate) inclusion if they have chosen (or are able) to live or work in the capital city London. This again suggests that one’s social background and foreground is important to an artist’s chance of symbolic success through museum inclusion in the UK. As a link can be shown to draw together the importance of an artist’s place of residence and accumulation of social capital, this would again suggest that female social capital is not as valuable as their male colleagues’ social capital. A male artist who lives in London is more likely to have Tate inclusion than a female artist, while the case study suggests there are less male artists living and working in London than female artists. Thus a contemporary male artist’s symbolic capital could be said to exchange for a higher rate than similar currency acquired by a contemporary female artist.

Gender, economic value of paintings and art school location Figure 33 demonstrates that both female and male painters are more likely to sell their work for a higher price if they have obtained a London-based undergraduate art education, than one sited in other parts of the UK or abroad.

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London

Other UK Female artists

£11,871

£20,078

£63,912

£122,958

£166,360

£203,085



Abroad Male artists

Figure 33  The impact of where an artist studied (undergraduate art education) upon painting’s auction price.

The data presented at Figure 33 suggests that such cultural and ensuing social capital contributes to the maintenance of inequality as people from poorer backgrounds may be increasingly unable to afford the high costs of a Londonbased education without a student’s essential supplementary part-time work eating significantly into their study time. Again, the research shows that women’s social capital may not be as valuable as that of their male colleague painters. While male artists are said to be in the minority, they are still more likely to achieve higher prices at auction through a more valuable gendered social or cultural capital accumulation. One anomaly relates to female artists who are British-born and who choose to study abroad, in that work by such artists is more likely to achieve higher prices at auction than British male artists who have studied abroad. Female artists from other cultures who have chosen to live and work in the UK are also more likely to achieve higher prices for their work than men of a similar background or education. A male YBA previously raised a related issue during his interview, linking this to his perception of political correctness influencing the market, and this could be one possible explanation for the resulting female and ethnic minority slight rise in the market: ‘You’re seeing a proliferation of aesthetics, there has been a new layer of feminine textures and ethnic surfaces appearing in abstraction, that is the main thing I’ve observed, as the new movement.’ It was argued in Chapter 3 that the YBA’s perception could be related to museum PR

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London

Other UK Females

£34,569

£10,500

£15,069

£68,841

£93,115

£275,445

and subsequent press articles which may influence our views of the collections. What also has to be considered here, however, is the influence of fashion and consumer demand, rather than simply a perceived ‘political correctness’ on the market. A number of galleries across London have recently opened to specialize in selling art from specific cultures: for example, the Jack Bell Gallery opened adjacent to the White Cube Gallery in 2010 and focusses on work by emerging black African artists; and the Ayyam Gallery and Janet Rady Fine Art both showcase Islamic art and art by artists who were born in or live in the Middle East. The fact that such galleries are able to open in such prestigious and expensive locations suggests that there is sufficient demand in London for buyers wishing to purchase work of this origin, particularly because there are more than 300,000 Arabs who live in the city (some of whom are extremely wealthy).5 Figure 34 indicates the possible consequence of where an artist studied their postgraduate art education (where relevant) upon their painting’s auction price. The results for both female and male artists at postgraduate level show that work made by men is still more likely to achieve a higher price at auction irrespective of whether artists have had a London postgraduate education, studied elsewhere in the UK or abroad. However, it is clear that a London postgraduate education is

Abroad Males

Figure 34  The impact of where an artist studied (postgraduate art education, if any) upon auction price.



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likely to yield the highest cultural and social capital thus converting to economic capital on the market, by comparison to a postgraduate education in other parts of the UK and abroad. This research again suggests that within the UK London is the optimum place to acquire cultural and social capitals, which are consequently converted into economic wealth through higher incomes achieved as a result of selling contemporary British painting on the secondary market at auction. As only 30 per cent of postgraduate qualifiers in the fine arts are male, it is arguable that women are significantly disadvantaged and that cultural and social capitals are also gendered and valued accordingly, thus converting to economic capitals and maintaining a gendered inequality.6 Taking the auction prices as evidence, it is not unreasonable to assume that female currencies acquired through postgraduate art education may be viewed as less valuable that those of male colleagues. In ‘Anticipating Artistic Success: Lessons from History’ David Galenson states: The importance of MFA programs in training advanced artists has not yet been the subject of large scale quantitative investigation, but it is nonetheless apparent that a few schools have played a leading role. So for example five of the Whitney Biennial participants in 2000 who were born since 1960 had attended Yale, four had attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, three each held degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California at San Diego, and two had attended UCLA.7

Such institutions are based in various parts of the United States: New Haven, Chicago, Valencia, San Diego and Los Angeles. Following Galenson’s research, in ‘Artistic Success in America Means Wearing the Right Old School Tie’,8 it is observed that ‘despite paying lip service to diversity, New York’s major museums, galleries and University programmes are bound tightly together in a system that favours the privileged’. While this was conducted as an observation rather than an empirical quantitative study, William Powhida has established that Colombia and Yale are the two MFA programmes most likely to culminate in symbolic and economic success in the United States. In a similar study on artist’s postgraduate education in the UK carried out as an empirical quantitative study for this book, it can clearly be seen that the five MFA programmes most likely to culminate in economic success in the UK are based in London. This case study was based on the economic value of paintings on the secondary market, a complete sample of all contemporary British paintings sold at major UK auctions in the three years (2012–14).

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Place of MFA study

Chelsea College of Arts (UAL) Goldsmiths (UoL) Royal College of Art Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) The Royal Academy

Average price of works reaching auction £852,872 £436,064 £196,454 £43,437 £36,591

Figure 35  Average MFA graduate auction price based on sales of all contemporary British paintings reaching London auctions 2012–14.

Let us break these figures down somewhat to the top five art schools, relating to secondary economic value of postgraduate artwork (Figure 35). Of course, it is necessary to state that it is likely only a small proportion of MFA graduates from the above institutions will become economically successful; nevertheless, the findings relating to this study are statistically significant. As a firm statement, it is also necessary to note a sense of regret in presenting this information, because of its possible unintentional contribution to wealth inequality in the UK. This book has observed that London is seen as the optimum place for a UK-based artist to acquire cultural, social, symbolic and therefore economic capital, both if an artist is born in London, or consequently lives and works in London, and if an artist chooses to gain an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification in London. London is regarded as second only to New York in our artworld’s capital cities, according to data analysed through media mentions, and figures on fairs, museums and galleries.9 While these issues also affect wealth divides in other countries, it has been argued that the structure and organization of economic, symbolic, cultural and social currencies have forced a general wealth inequality in terms of the geography of the UK (and indeed other countries’ capital cities), thus disadvantaging particularly those artists working, living and studying in geographically poorer areas of the country, in poorer areas of our world. In April 2015, The Guardian reported that the world’s ‘super-rich’ are flocking to London, thus adding to the wealth of the city.10 In terms of the arts, the House of Commons recently announced that there was a clear funding imbalance in the UK – in favour of the capital city – with a disproportionate share in arts funding.11 For example, The Guardian recently noted that London was to construct another ‘unnecessary’ footbridge across the Thames at a cost of £175



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million, at the same time as five Lancashire museums were closed due to arts funding cuts in the north of England.12 If artists need to train, live and work in London in order to have a better chance of success in the contemporary British artworld, this not only creates a talent drain to the city but also reinforces the city’s wealth by constructing a demand that acts to the detriment of poorer areas of the UK. This thought does of course contradict the fact that poorer artists, or artists from poorer families, may be unable to afford to relocate to an increasingly expensive London, but could contribute towards creating a demand which will only benefit those who are able to afford a London existence. Such a conundrum has been raised by many high-profile figures in the arts, as young musicians and artists are increasingly forced out of the capital.13 This predicament will ultimately impact upon London’s future as one of the artworld capitals of the world, because one cannot expect that only those with parents who live in our capital cities can lead culture into the future, or who can afford to relocate to our capital cities – as Grayson Perry argues – ‘rich people don’t create culture!’.14 Similarly, in the United States, New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) released the findings of a public engagement survey, and said that over 40 per cent of artists were unable to afford basic materials due to the rising costs in accommodation.15 This ultimately impacts upon creating a greater gender inequality as our undervalued female artists are struggling to survive. This is not of course to suggest that male artists are not struggling – an artist’s life is not easy no matter whether one happens to have been born male or female – but despite our age of apparent gender fluidity, the figures presented in this book controversially suggest that it is easier to succeed as a male artist, than it is as a female.

Returning to the issue of gender: ‘The pram in the hall’ We have seen the evidence that female cultural and social capital has been viewed by some respondents as less valuable than the same capitals considered in the work of their male colleagues, and when the cultural and social capitals are converted into economic currency, the evidence presented in Women Can’t Paint suggests that female artists may be discriminated against. Therefore, the structure and organization of cultural and social currencies enable not only a general wealth inequality but also a gendered inequality that is very specific to female artists. Several artists raised the issue of the importance of art city

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networking in order to meet and know all the ‘right people’. However, it ought to be questioned to what extent social capital is a gendered issue. In the radical 1970 feminist text The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone argued that the biological division of labour in reproduction and childrearing was the root cause of sexual inequality. Artist Denise (not her real name) also perceived that a woman’s responsibility during pregnancy and round-the-clock care for the first three or four years of a child’s life severely impacted on women’s careers and their opportunities for getting out there and networking: To just have the confidence to go back in watching everyone overtake you and then you’ve got four years of work to try and match up to what everyone else is doing, it takes a lot of confidence really so I think there is sort of a gap, one where you lose out on those vital networking opportunities, as much as we all dislike them.

Firestone envisioned gender-equal pregnancy – a compulsory and radical ‘exogenesis’ – where all pregnancies would be created and sustained outside the womb in order to create independent foetuses and relieve inequality. While exogenesis never materialized in order to bring about Firestone’s desired equal division of labour, some of the artists complained that their entry into motherhood had held them back, and indeed those who remained childless were certain that they had made the right decision. In his autobiography Enemies of Promise, originally published in 1938, the critic and writer Cyril Connolly asserted that ‘there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’. Written at a time when artistic creation was largely viewed as a male pursuit, Connolly’s text described all the pitfalls that might await a male creator, and ways in which supposed difficulties such as those caused by a ‘pram in the hall’ or parenthood could be avoided. In the more recent 2015 BBC response to Connolly’s statement appropriately entitled The Pram in the Hall, the pregnant actor Lily Cole discusses her fear of a sudden creative death as she feels her ‘ambition and energy wane’. Judy Chicago argued that ‘as unfair as it might be’ it is not possible to ‘have a career, marriage and a family’.16 Chicago’s own research suggested that if female artists had children, ‘they ended up juggling their domestic responsibilities with finding enough time to work in their studios, usually to the detriment of both their children and their work’.17 Tracey Emin has also claimed that it is not possible to be both a mother and an artist. In ‘The Superwoman Syndrome’ Sue Newell argues that after childbirth working ‘women are … left to occupy two roles, which to some extent are incompatible,



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unless the woman compromises by taking part-time employment’.18 As a parttime artist, it is easy to see how one could very quickly fall behind colleagues who do not have the same domestic responsibilities. In ‘There Are Good Artists That Have Children. They Are Called Men’, Emin relates to her perception of the need to compartmentalize oneself into two, as though each compartment motherhood/art had to share the whole mother/artist.19 Theorists have argued that there are similarities in procreativity and creativity. Psychotherapists have used such words as ‘birth’ and ‘pregnancy’ to describe other forms of creative process: the forthcoming book or painting becomes a ‘baby’. The painter or writer is ‘pregnant’ with their work and procreation is thus seen as the ultimate creation.20 Lucy Lippard has described Mary Kelly’s PostPartum Document, a six-year collaborative project with her infant son, as ‘the displacement of the fetishization of the child onto the work of art itself … an aesthetic compensation for the loss of the child’.21 Thus the experience of raising a child and the loss associated with each new stage of the child’s development inspired Kelly to create work in a direction she could not have done if she had not become a mother. However, it has to be noted that according to a Swedish study on the prevalence of parenthood among professionally practising artists ‘female artists are more frequently childless compared to their male counterparts and women in the overall population’. Such statistics suggest women in that country may be aware of the price of motherhood on their sense of creativity and time. According to the artists I interviewed during the course of writing Women Can’t Paint, the main impact arising as a result of being a mother was the reduced ability for the artist to attend exhibition previews and networking events. The artist-mothers perceived that such previews and networking events are crucial to developing and maintaining one’s career as a painter. None of the men I interviewed noted this as being a hindrance to their career and perceived that their networking had carried on regardless of new responsibilities. While all respondents spoke about the importance of networking, artists Jane and Sarah discussed their own personal experiences of bringing up a family and not being able to attend previews as a result of motherhood. Martha also noted the importance of this social currency, and said that due to her family commitments and lack of childcare it was not always possible to attend previews and networking events. She said she does not particularly enjoy going, but does try to go out of necessity. Eileen Cooper told me: ‘I found it difficult to travel abroad when my children were little, I turned down some important opportunities.’ However, Eileen noted that this was not an issue which was restricted to women and that

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she knew of men who had also been forced to abandon or postpone their careers as a result of the ‘pram in the hall’. Perhaps an alignment to Connolly’s warning to men on the distractions of fatherhood, irrespective of the presence of the child’s mother-carer. Eileen stated: ‘If they aren’t the primary care giver, maybe men carry the financial burden. It’s a struggle for men too.’ According to the Advanced Institute of Management Research, the findings of many academic surveys give weight to the importance of networking.22 In 2014, Colette Phillips, president of a major US company, observed that ‘research shows that the best jobs are never advertised and 85 per cent of all jobs are secured through networking’.23 This suggests that if as an artist-parent one is unable to attend important networking events such as exhibition previews, this could indeed impact on one’s career progression in the arts because the artists who do attend events may be more likely to achieve visibility, for example through greater exhibition inclusion and exposure. Research also suggests that women in particular experience barriers to networking because of time constraints and family responsibilities (see for example Monica Forret and Thomas Dougherty writing in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour; and Margaret Lineham and James Walsh writing in the British Journal of Management).24 This is an issue currently under debate at the House of Commons: at the Speakers Conference on 10 November 2015 under discussion was the ‘inflexible and unwelcoming attitude of the House towards families’.25 Dr Rupa Huq, Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, had recently visited a local school and had been asked by a pupil, ‘Why are there so few women MPs?’ In Huq’s response she ‘cited the family-unfriendly house’, noting that a Monday 8.00 pm finish was considered very early, with early morning finishes being more likely. During the same debate, MP for Glasgow Central Alison Thewliss noted that Parliament did not have a crèche facility for working mothers during the holidays, and there was an assumption that as the mother of the children she, rather than her male partner, was responsible for organizing out of school childcare.26 Other issues arose during the interviews which also suggest that gender plays a large part in an artist’s acquisition of social or cultural capital. While she was still a student at the Royal Academy, the award-winning British artist Margaret Harrison noticed ‘a little male committee had formed itself ’ for the organization of their year group’s final exhibition. Margaret believed that men’s networking naturally formed itself very early on in her male colleague’s careers, and felt at the time that this all-male group would ensure they got all the best spaces to the



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detriment of the female artists. Margaret and her female colleagues therefore set up an unofficial woman’s networking group: We would find out things by going into the ladies’ loos at the Royal Academy – there were these coat hangers and these seats; we used to go in and gossip and that’s how we’d learn about this and that, how do you do this and where did you get that and da di da di da and I didn’t hear this myself but a fellow student from London who’s name I forget came from a very rich family but she said for a recording in the British Library that she didn’t bother with any of those RA women who gossiped in the changing rooms – she was above that – and well where is she now you know!

Margaret Harrison raises an important point here: all-male groups and allfemale groups meeting individually to discuss the same issues are perceived in different ways. The men may be seen to be negotiating, organizing, strategizing and achieving, whereas the women may be judged as gossiping and wasting time. Artist and Professor Denise also commented upon the experience of her own art education and the gendered acquisition of social currency. She noted how as an educator herself she had seen a shift in the way female students were attempting to create equally successful networks to their male colleagues: From the outset the men had much more sophisticated support networks in place than the women, so they put one and other in shows, they set up galleries and showed one and other’s work, they understood, they instinctively understood the power of the network and the power of the consolidating force, the women worked as individuals, were hopeless as to actually rallying to support one and other and then other things in their life became more important. I think something that I am seeing within education now is that women are facilitating understanding, collaborating, being much more contained and forceful, and learning to support one and other beyond education.

Denise proposes that female artists are perhaps now much more aware of the benefits of social capital acquisition and that this did not come as naturally as it did to the male students. In addition, Denise comments upon the fact that other issues could become more important to women that may cause them to ‘drop out’. Perhaps if men have been indoctrinated to become the main wage earners and women indoctrinated to become family carers, then both may naturally gravitate towards the role each is expected to adopt. This theory was a popular subject in the 1990s and is supported by gender studies research in the Journal of Social Psychology and Sex Roles such as that presented by Lei Chang and

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Catherine McBride-Chang in ‘Self and Peer Ratings of Female and Male Roles and Attributes’, and Janet Morgan Riggs in ‘Mandates for Mothers and Fathers: Perceptions of Breadwinners and Care Givers’. Canadian artist Monica and New Yorker Hilke (not their real names) felt very strongly that the culture of exhibition previews – a strong force of social currency – was very much a drinking culture and formed a ‘competitive, laddish, macho’ environment. While Monica and Hilke had participated when they were younger, they perceived they were now more aware of the gender differences, and their opinion was that exhibition previews were more of a male, than a female space. This raises the question as to women’s perception of these events being masculine, or rather collectively masculine events. Marieke van Den Brink and Yvonne Benschop’s 2013 research summarizes the collective masculinity threat: ‘When an individual man does masculinity, women are not bothered by it. But when men act in concert to do masculinities together, then it is this collective practice women experience as harmful [and intimidating] due to its exclusionary or devaluing effects.’27 Hilke also perceived that the opportunities for networking were very much geared towards male artists, and the groups of men who hung around to drink together: ‘My art dealer told me he’d got a group show coming up. I asked who he was showing, and he literally said, oh it’ll be all my usual drinking mates, the guys, that’s what he said.’ Hilke’s views on the masculinity of networking are very much supported by research carried out within the business studies arena. There have been several studies on the importance of networking published in the British Journal of Management (see for example those conducted by Lynn Morgan and Marilyn Davidson, and Savita Kumra and Sue Vinnicombe).28 However, some work has focussed on the masculinity of networking. Maria Socratous’s 2016 study found that some men were uncomfortable attending networking events alongside women.29 This has led to the subsequent formation of maleonly and male-orientated events such as groups attending football matches or drinking at the pub after work. Some of the men in Socratous’s study noted that they found women ‘cold’ or difficult to talk to, and that it made for a socially awkward situation where men were restricted in what they felt able to discuss. Socratous’s study focussed on qualitative research carried out on bluechip Cypriot companies, and the employee perception was that ‘elsewhere’ or ‘abroad’ the situation would be much better. However, it appears this may not be the case if other academic research is taken into account; for example in Marieke van Den Brink and Yvonne Benschop’s 2014 Dutch study ‘Gender in



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Academic Networking: The Role of Gatekeepers in Professional Recruitment’, male gatekeepers appeared to prefer the company of other men rather than women because of their ‘perceived similarity and identification’. Van Den Brink and Benschop argue that networks can provide inequalities that negatively impact upon women, or exclude women – for example, socializing late at night or even a ‘walking club for men professors’, clearly an exclusive male-only group. In ‘Getting Together to Get Ahead: The Impact of Social Structure on Women’s Networking’, Mette Hersby et al. argue that women-only networks can work as a collective strategy or vehicle to improve female mobility.30 Indeed, two of the female artists interviewed for this book argued that women-only networking events had been a success for them. Mave (not her real name) stated that an unofficial network at her institution began in response to women being actively excluded from male-only networks and had helped to provide women with vital information. Cilla (not her real name) noted how a famous private members club in London had asked her to organize an event for key women figures in the artworld. Cilla felt the event was a great accomplishment, but that it had not happened on the regular basis she had hoped because of female artists being ‘too busy’. While this could be blamed on women’s work and domestic commitments, it could also suggest that women do not recognize the importance of networking. The private member club’s male events are regularly attended, and therefore the male artists must enjoy the events or realize their business potential and opportunity for the acquisition of social capital which is ultimately anticipated to convert into economic capital. It is also pertinent that according to texts such as The Second Shift, men tend to have less domestic commitments than women, and therefore greater leisure time outside of the work place.31 If women are not acquiring such social capital, this research suggests the lack of social capital may invariably impact upon their artworks’ lower conversion into economic currency, thus contributing to a lower visibility and gendered inequality in the economic and symbolic values in contemporary painting.

A rather bleak outlook Consistent with Bourdieu’s theory, this chapter has considered examples of how social, symbolic and cultural capital can convert back into economic capital, and therefore maintain class – and in the case of this book’s focus of research –

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gender inequality. This chapter has therefore led to some important, significant (and perhaps alarming) findings. Wearing the right old (art) school tie has been shown to positively influence museum acquisitions and economic values, particularly if the artist wearing the tie happens to be male. Cultural and social capitals are perceived as gendered, both by stakeholders and external parties. In line with the findings of the symbolic capital analysis, female cultural and social capital is seen as less valuable than the same capitals in male colleagues, and when cultural and social capitals are converted back into economic currency, female artists appear to be judged differently to male artists. In fact, all forms of female Bourdieuian currency are viewed as being less valuable than those acquired or accumulated by male artists. Therefore, the structure and organization of economic, symbolic, cultural and social currencies enable not only a general wealth inequality but also an inequality that is very specific to female stakeholders within the artworld. Nevertheless, it should be noted that not all female stakeholders will have the same experiences – and there is no single woman’s experience that has a clear, consistent meaning for all women. In ‘Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House’ Trina Grillo cautions, It is extremely crucial to understand that women have very different experiences. We should take into account the many factors that contribute to our being and then use that to proliferate the women’s movement further. Find the commonality amongst our differences, instead of focusing on how we are all different. Learn to focus on the bigger picture.32

It is hoped that Women Can’t Paint will provide the bigger picture of which Grillo speaks. Rather than focussing on our differences, this book has sought out the commonalities that bind women creators together.

6

Sexism and ageism in visual art values: ‘But men are allowed to be old or ugly!’

Older artists are ignored and dismissed when they are no longer considered hot and hip. The Guardian1 In the 2014 novel The Blazing World, author and cultural critic Siri Hustvedt tackles the long-debated issue of artworld misogyny. The book – a work of fiction – concerns a repressed older female painter living in New York. Artist Harriet Burden has become so frustrated with her lack of artworld recognition that she persuades three male friends to show her work under their own names. Until that point Burden is invisible: wife and middle-aged mother foremost, her occupation as artist viewed as trivial and inconsequential. She is in fact an ageing woman attempting to encroach the peripheries of a man’s world, and it is apparent she will never make it past the boundaries of acceptance and validation. Burden has passed the fruitful promises of childbearing age and decorative youth that her artworld’s men allow to encroach upon them. She is fading away and disintegrating into her husband’s shadow and a world of obscurity. Why do some female artists feel – like Hustvedt’s Harriet Burden – that as far as the artworld is concerned they are inconsequential and invisible? Very often living in the shadows of better known spouses, as did Rose Hilton whose husband Roger perceived there was not enough room for two artists in a relationship: [Roger said] if we’re going to be together and get married I’m the painter in this set-up. … I know it’s terribly un-feminist, but I just said, ‘Well, that’s fine.’ [Rose] was so in love with him, she says, and so taken with motherhood, that his not approving of her painting didn’t seem to be a problem at first.2

While Siri Hustvedt’s words form a work of fiction (Rose Hilton’s do not), the book is slick in its weaving in and out of the factual artworld as we know it. Why

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do female artists appear to become invisible as they age? Why do our unwritten artworld laws appear to drift away from the mainstream? Why do some younger female artists appear to explicitly assert their brand of youth and sexuality above the art they produce? These questions and more will be explored and discussed in this chapter, along with the issue of discrimination – both male: female and female: female – the eponymous Queen Bee phenomenon, rife, it may appear within the apparently liberal and all-inclusive world of the arts.

Bye Bye Totty, Hello Invisible Woman None of the older male artists interviewed for this book perceived that their increasing age negatively impacted upon their art careers. But before it is possible to discuss age, we must first of all examine the notion of feminine invisibility. While some of the artists I interviewed felt that their femininity was tolerated and even admired when they were younger, this was no longer the case as they passed through middle age and into what some of the women described as their ‘invisible years’. Indeed, scores of tabloid women’s sections regularly explore why women become invisible after the age of fifty, for example, in the Daily Mail’s somewhat disconcerting: article titled ‘Bye Bye Totty, Hello Invisible Woman!’3 Age UK defines ‘ageism’ as ‘discrimination or unfair treatment based on a person’s age’.4 Regarding ageism in job adverts, Age UK states, ‘When advertising a job role, employers can’t include age limits, and should avoid using words which could suggest they are looking for applicants from a particular age group’ – for example, by using terms such as ‘enthusiastic young people’ or ‘recent graduates’.5 It is of course necessary to note here that ‘recent graduates’ can be of any age and many are older than twenty-one. The European Union states, ‘Age discrimination is contrary to EU law, as stipulated by Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000, which establishes a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation. Both direct and indirect discrimination are unlawful’;6 and Finland’s legislation affirms, ‘No one shall be treated differently from other persons on the grounds of age.’7 In the United States, age discrimination in the Employment Act of 1967 is the federal law that prohibits age discrimination against employees forty years of age or older: ‘The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) makes it unlawful for an employer to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms,



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conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age.’8 In the Middle East, however, there appears to be no age discrimination legislation, with the exception of the newly introduced Abu Dhabi Global Market.9 According to the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, although many countries have reformed their nationality laws to ensure equality between women and men, gender discrimination in nationality laws persists in many regions: The Middle East-North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa regions have the highest concentration of nationality laws that discriminate on the basis of gender, followed by the Asia Pacific. Roughly half of the countries that deny mothers the equal right to pass citizenship to their children are in the MENA region. SubSaharan Africa has the highest number of countries with gender discrimination in nationality laws, and roughly a third of these laws found in the region. While gender discrimination in nationality law has largely been eradicated from the Americas, The Bahamas and Barbados have yet to enact needed reforms.10

In our artworld, time and time again (whether female or male) we see calls for proposals for those under a certain age: galleries, fellowships, residencies, awards, group shows – the list is endless. The Swiss organization Widewalls reports on arts ageism, noting, ‘One online submission policy for a gallery reads “The gallery is looking for young emerging artists only. Fresh, innovative, interesting works and new ideas. Artists between ages 24 to 34.”’11 In the UK, at the Mall Galleries the Federation of British Artists administers the Alfred Teddy Smith Zsuzsi Roboz Award for artists under the age of thirty-five, there are the Winsor and Newton Young Artists Awards for artists aged thirty-five and under, The Phyllis Roberts Award – again to support ‘young’ artists thirty-five or under.12 The artworld age of ‘youth’ therefore would appear to cease at thirtyfive, suggesting that any artist over the age of thirty-five (male or female) could be classed as no longer young and therefore established or ‘old’. Age UK advises that ‘age discrimination can be legal under certain circumstances. The law allows for age discrimination when it can be “objectively justified’’.’13 That means the employer or service provider must show that they have a good reason for discriminating on the basis of age. For example, an employer could put an upper age limit on a job where very high levels of physical fitness are required and could not be fulfilled by someone older. It is arguable that a gatekeeper would not be able to provide objective reasons for justifying why emerging artists have to be young, given that many graduates are now over the age of thirty-five – education not having a barrier to age.

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The question is, in any other realm of society, would such a limit on age be tolerated? We have our global laws governing us and our fellow citizens, and it appears we have our global art laws (read: the unofficial artworld exemption). It seems the Turner Prize has finally seen sense: in a press release about the prize on 29 March 2017, Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner Prize jury, stated: I am delighted to announce … the modified terms of the award. We have always kept these terms under review and we feel that now is the right moment to make this change. The Turner Prize has always championed emerging artists – it has never been a prize for long service but for a memorable presentation of work in that year. Now that its reputation is so firmly established, we want to acknowledge the fact that artists can experience a breakthrough in their work at any age.14

Does ageism apply equally to women and to men in our artworld? Let us briefly examine some context before looking at the current state of play for artists. A barrage of headlines and academic research indicates that ageism could indeed be worse for women. In 2013, researchers from Milan’s Bocconi University carried out an intensive analysis of Basel Art Fair data from 2005 to 2012, and reported that ‘celebrated male artists … are not young’.15 In analysing the worldwide market for painting, research from Rotterdam’s Erasmus School of Economics speculated that there was statistically significant evidence of a discrimination against our artworld’s women, and the United States’ National Endowment for the Arts (2008) concluded that in general analysis of all art forms, ‘women are discriminated against’.16

The art is yet young In the 1980s the YBA generation promoted art as being young and part of popular culture. Former British prime minister Tony Blair also promoted such a culture which fell under the legacy of ‘Cool Britannia’: ‘A term evoking a national renaissance in arts and culture pioneered by Britpop bands, Young British Artists, [young] filmmakers and fashion designers.’17 It is arguable that this focus on youth, coolness, sexuality and fame may have cast a shadow over older practitioners, which particularly affected women during the 1990s and beyond. It may be relevant that preceding the ‘Cool Britannia’ era, women



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with shoulder pads and high ambitions were doing exceedingly well in other industries, evidenced by an apparent narrowing of the gender pay gap.18 Tracey Emin is a YBA who slid easily into the role of young artist-as-celebrity, surrounded by an enticing aura of youth, sexuality and glamour. It is arguable this connection between youth, sexuality and success has been recognized by younger emerging female artists, along with the birth and boom of social media and endless beautified selfies. Talented painters and artists such as thirty-threeyear-old Sarah Maple have been said to play on their relative youth as a method of self-promotion, and Maple’s practice has arguably been reliant upon her being young and glamorous (the issue of young female and feminist artists using their bodies in art has long been criticized so this is not of course a new argument). According to Karina Jakubowicz in her analysis of Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference, In light of platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, the issue of selfrepresentation becomes increasingly important. Women are choosing to present themselves in certain ways, and it is important to understand the visual language that they use and why they are drawn to it.19

While Maple has no affiliation with the original YBAs, her self and publicist promotion defined her as ‘The Young British Artist’ and ‘The Young Contemporary Artist’ thus helping to reaffirm the polarity between the old and the young, and the possible juxtaposition of gendered age-related success or failure appertaining to artists in the UK.20 British artist Julie Roberts (b.1963) suggested that the artworld has gradually become contaminated by artists’ thirst for stardom and celebrity, endless self-publicity through social media and focus on beauty and youth. Indeed, she perceived that her lack of desire for fame, attention and social media/celebrity status could justify why she felt her own practice has suffered. In ‘The Medium Is the Market’, Julian Stallabrass argues that the artworld has become contaminated by corporate mass media culture: An emphasis on the image of youth, the prevalence of work that reproduces well on magazine pages, and the rise of the celebrity artist; work that cosies up to commodity culture and the fashion industry, and serves as accessible honey pots to sponsors.21

Indeed work presented at the London Art Fair 2018 shows an emphasis on youth and such work that could present well on a magazine page – the rise of the social media influencers – as artists such as Claire Luxton whose supersized glossy beautified selfies may not have the same appeal to followers and prospective

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sponsors if she were photographing herself semi-clad or ‘unbeautified’ in her fifties or sixties.22 In common with most selfies, Karina Jakubowicz argues that ‘instead of a paintbrush, the artist now uses make-up, lighting, and digital enhancement in order to achieve a certain level of perfection that is far removed from the reality’.23 There is no suggestion that a middle-aged or older artist could contribute to, or appeal to, the culture described above in this way. Indeed during an interview with Artnet News, Margaret Harrison complained that when she was awarded a major arts prize, ‘nearly all the press, including the BBC, responded with the phrase “Pensioner Wins Big Prize!”’24 Margaret claimed that when older male artists had won this prize, their age had not even been discussed in the press. She perceived that the press ‘intimated that it wasn’t about the quality of the artwork but more about the age and appearance of the woman artist’. During a discussion with Margaret Harrison on art, age and beauty, it was clear she held very strong feelings: ‘But men are allowed to be old or ugly!’ she exclaimed. How Maple and her talented cohort will define themselves once they pass the age of thirty-five and the Mall Galleries definition of ‘young artist’ remains to be seen, as another era of more youthful and desirable female artists take centre stage. In ‘Sex Plus Age Discrimination: Protecting Older Women Workers’, Nicole Porter argues that older women face ‘a unique type of discrimination based on the intersection of their sex and age’. Older women TV presenters Arlene Phillips, Miriam O’Reilly, Moira Stuart and Selina Scott have all lost their jobs and been replaced by younger female models. Older male presenters such as Bruce Forsyth were still presenting Strictly Come Dancing in his late eighties, and many other ageing male news anchors are revered on screen, often alongside very young and attractive women. As the artist Mave stated, men are allowed to be visible and old but women are not. In ‘Newsreaders as Eye Candy: The Hidden Agenda of Public Service Broadcasting’, Claire Wolfe and Barbara Mitra argue that women in the public eye ‘still face much greater pressure than men regarding their physical appearance and body image’. While Wolfe and Mitra’s research examines the importance of a youthful physical appearance within the TV industries, the impact of physical attractiveness on women’s social status and interactional power could equally be applied to the careers of well-known female artists within the visual world of art. A lot of social media is about women looking really oversexed. That doesn’t feel like feminism to me. Like, this whole thing of ‘I’m liberated enough to bare my backside’ doesn’t remotely cut it with me. Billie Piper, actor25



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It may be useful to compare the music industry’s branding of young women in the context of women painters and their physical visibility. With the merging of the boundaries between popular culture and contemporary art, it is arguable that the boundaries have also been blurred between the public’s perception of, and galleries’ marketability of artists. In Gender, Branding and the Modern Music Industry, Kristin Lieb notes how the birth of the music channel MTV allowed audiences to ‘see [recording] artists as they heard their music, forever linking the artist’s image with her sound’.26 As a result, MTV became a commercial channel, streaming music advertisements – or music videos – featuring popular music stars. According to Lieb, artists rely increasingly on sex appeal; however, it is not only singing artists who use sex appeal in their branding and promotion, and it could be argued that female visual artists have adopted a similar approach to personal branding.27 The thirty-year-old painter Scarlett Raven recently posed semi-naked for a painting advertisement in Modern Painters, Tatler and German Vogue.28 Raven was stripped to the waist, baring her breasts and covered in Winsor and Newton paint. The sexualized image blurred the lines between the attraction of a Page 3 girl, the contemporary woman artist today and the cultural object. There are few – if any – attractive young male artists similarly greasing themselves up to appeal to the brand-alert women in our art markets unless this is presented as a tongue-in-cheek parody or critique of female self-obsession such as that performed by the British artist Paul Kindersley.29 Likewise, Sarah Maple’s hybrid self-publicity and artwork has often shown her photographed in bra and panties, sexualizing the artist as both cultural and sex object – although the artist does have a serious conceptual framework underlying her practice. In applying Griselda Pollock’s research to contemporary female artists’ decisions to expose their bodies as sexualized, Karina Jakubowicz argues ‘the predominant idea that Pollock proposed in Vision and Difference is that artistic representations of women are products of the artist’s social and political environment’: In sexist societies, women are typically depicted in a way that indicates their oppression. Even if an artist is not particularly sexist, they will portray the ideologies around them by virtue of representing the world around them. By looking closely at the images that these artists create, it is possible to see complex and fascinating ideological concepts at work. The way the female body is presented, how it is dressed, the characters that the models depict, and the way the figure is presented in relation to the space around them, are all indications of a wider context.30

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During Kristin Lieb’s investigation into the differences between female and male branding in the pop business, there were several key findings: Women … must meet some universal but sometimes ineffable quality of transcendent attractiveness to have a fighting chance of success, they must be willing to show and tell all to their demanding audiences, they must play a vastly different career game than their male counterparts …, they must leverage their bodies and perceived sexual availability into as many [arenas] eg. Fashion, publishing.31

Although this statement refers to the music industry, it is possible to argue that there are parallels with the way female visual artists have exploited the media’s socially constructed reality and expectations of a woman’s appearance. Such a constructed reality encourages those in the music industry to guise themselves as sexually available, a term defined by Kristin Lieb as ‘fauxmosexuality’.32 It is arguable the notions of such performative statements have been adopted by female artists, perhaps seen as a requirement for media attention and subsequent artworld success and desirability. As the following chart shows, women are indeed creating symbolically recognized work (prizewinning artwork) at a younger age than men (Figure 36). Another way of looking at this is that women are failing to achieve symbolic recognition once they reach a certain age. There is a significant difference in the ages of female and male artists achieving validation through prizes: successful women have created their work at an average of thirty-nine, while successful men are an average age of fifty-one.

Female artists

Male artists 39

Figure 36  Average age at validation through prizes.

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This suggests that work created by older female artists is not achieving the same visibility or validation, and therefore may be subject to discrimination – or perhaps our female artists are simply dropping out. Perhaps it is intended that work created by sexually desirable younger women is seen as more desirable itself, as are the women themselves. Perhaps, the wheels of The Pram in the Hall referred to in Chapter 5 are also starting to spin out of control. In Pierre Penet and Kangsan Lee’s paper ‘Prize and Price: The Turner Prize as a Valuation Device in the Contemporary Art Market’ (referred to in Chapter 4), the researchers note that the average age of prize nominees has increased since the 1990s when many nominees were in their twenties, whereas in 2011 the average age had increased to artists in their forties.33 Much of David Galenson’s work examines the age at which an artist is most successful, arguing that artists are ‘young geniuses’ or ‘old masters’; however, to the author’s knowledge Galenson’s work does not (yet) analyse gendered age differences in arts success.34 This would be particularly useful area to explore further as it is becoming very clear that it cannot be assumed that gender is a neutral category. While this data shows that the average age of symbolic achievement for women is twelve years younger than that of men, there are of course examples of successful high-profile women creating and exhibiting symbolically recognized work at a more mature stage in their life. Lubaina Himid won the Turner Prize in 2017 at the age of sixty-three, becoming ‘the oldest winner of the Turner Prize, and the first black woman to pick up the award’; and Rose Wylie won the JMPP at the age of eighty in 2014.35 Phyllida Barlow represented Britain at the 2017 Venice Biennale, at the age of seventy-one.36 Marina Abramovic had a major retrospective at MoMA in 2010 at the age of sixty-four; and seventy-eight-yearold Carolee Schneeman’s MoMA exhibition followed in 2017.37 Mona Hatoum held a major monographic exhibition at the Pomidou when she was sixty-three, and a year later opened a retrospective at Tate Modern.38 The question is do such examples indicate that there has been a shift in attitude towards our female artists? While it is undoubtedly a respectable leap to see the first black woman win the Turner Prize, the danger is that such triumphs could be seen by some as tokenist. It is important that we carry on gathering statistics and counting (in) equality to ensure that gatekeepers do not simply say (according to one highprofile American curator I spoke to): ‘Oh we’ve done the women now so we can forget about them for a bit – let’s go back to the big guys!’ The statistics, however, speak for themselves. On average, women artists are simply not achieving the same validation as men.

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Sales have dried up There are of course gendered issues that affect women artists of all ages. An American artist I spoke to, Margie (not her real name), was angry that her sales appeared to dry up after she had given birth to her second child. She related this to an online dig at her role as mother, where someone had posted an image of her pushing a buggy, laden down with groceries and looking tired, the caption rather cruelly described her as a ‘has-been’. Previous social media posts had shown the glamorous side to Margie’s lifestyle – photographs in glossy magazines at previews and ceremonies. ‘Motherhood just doesn’t seem to be fashionable in the New York arts scene’ she said: Either that or it’s me! Overnight I suddenly seemed to become boring and invisible, and it was other artists the columns were looking at, not me. It occurred to me that my dealer was avoiding me in photo opportunities, though I thought I was being paranoid at first. He made jokes about botox and fillers, I laughed along. My work stopped selling so much, and I began painting different types of paintings, ones that might appeal to a different generation perhaps. It wasn’t what I wanted to paint but my sales had dried up and I felt I had no choice.

The British artist Annie Kevans spoke about her experience of discrimination by a New York gallerist, who presumably aligned his views with those of Connolly’s autobiographical guide to creative success. The gallerist believed that it would not be possible for Annie to continue to be a good artist when she was also a mother: ‘The male gallerist never spoke to me again after finding out I was pregnant, never spoke to me again, never emailed me again, nothing, that was it!’ Annie felt that it is society’s perception of pregnancy that leads to negativity on the issue, perhaps that these attitudes are reinforced by such prominent artist role models as Judy Chicago and Tracey Emin, who are openly against the idea that one can be both a good mother and a good artist. Janine also discussed the issue of challenging artworld opacity, but questioned, ‘What artist is going to sue a gallery? You’d get such a bad reputation and nobody would ever work with you again.’ This suggests that the lack of governance of the art market is a contentious issue for working artist-mothers as it would be extremely difficult, or ‘career suicide’, to confront decisions and actions which would be termed illegal or unethical in more regulated industries. However, it should be noted that gender equality campaigners the Fawcett Society reported many mothers also faced discrimination from employers operating beyond the artworld ‘who



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assume [working mothers] will be unreliable or unable to cope with the demands of the job’.39 The report also infers that such discrimination extends to women without children who may be discriminated against simply for being around the childbearing age. This suggests that some employers may view men as being more dependable or less likely to spend time away from work because they are not subject to the biological conditions of pregnancy, maternity leave, the act of giving birth and ensuing childcare leave. A complete sample of auction data was analysed (Figures 37 and 38) in order to analyse the interrelated issues of age, gender and success.40 In order to examine the notion of femininity, masculinity and age, artworks have been presented at artist’s age of painting execution, and again at artist’s age at the point of auction sale. During the earlier period examined (1992–4), there is a significant difference between the average ages of execution and sale of paintings by female and male 69 59

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Figure 37  A global comparison of the average age of artwork creation and age of the artist in 2017.

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Figure 38  A global comparison of gender equality and the average age at creation of work by artists when it becomes visible.

artists. Figure 37 displays the results of approximately 100,000 data points from a sample of 2,500 paintings across the globe within national collections and appearing on the market. From a non-gendered perspective, the gap from creation to collection ranges from fifteen to twenty-nine years maturity. Figure 38 shows the gendered age differences within the collections, taken from the age at which the painting was created. This reveals very interesting findings, because in all cases (apart from Finland), the age at which female artists create visible or desirable artwork is at a very much younger age to that of male artists. Another glass ceiling presents itself here – not only upon the perceived values of women’s artwork but also perhaps upon the average age up to which a woman can achieve success. Finland presents itself exactly equal here, pertinent if we browse back to Chapter 3 where a new essentialist aesthetics was proposed to have emerged between the genders, as a result of a pioneering equality in the Nordic regions. It was noted that according to new research on the gender gap conducted by the World Economic Forum, Finland is among one of the



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top three most equal countries in the world alongside Iceland and Norway. In a UNESCO questionnaire on gender equality and culture, Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture stated: ‘Women comprised 53 per cent of all employees in creative industries’, and their ‘national cultural statistics are not disaggregated by sex’.41 As commented upon in Chapter 3, Finland ‘has been a leader when it comes to issues relating to issues relating to gender equality over the past 100 years’. As such in 2017 they launched the International Gender Equality Prize to ‘create a platform for the promotion of gender equality across the world’.42 The Kiasma MOCA in Helsinki is one of the leading national galleries in the Nordic regions housing the Finnish national collection of contemporary art. In Chapter 3 it was noted that one of the first things to strike the viewer about this collection compared to others was the more or less equal gender visibility of female artists in Finland. The data for age and gender equality certainly bears out in this case, demonstrated here in Figure 38.

Perceived discrimination against women by men Many of the artists interviewed for Women Can’t Paint offered instances of men within the artworld discriminating against female artists. Margaret Harrison suggested that discrimination had a historical or institutional basis, and spoke about her time as a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy. The artist noted how organized male groups would attempt to suppress their female colleagues by actively excluding them from the planning and directing of exhibitions. As Margaret felt this had been purposely done, it was her perception this was a direct form of discrimination: When it came to the diploma show, suddenly a little male committee had formed itself and we said but you’ve got no women on this! And they said do you think we’ll treat you unfairly? And my friend from Birmingham said of course you will – you’ll get all the best places and we’ll be left with the back corridors!

A younger artist Maria (not her real name) was warned by a male dealer from a London gallery that if she appeared to be too much of an ‘aggressive feminist’ (or ‘feminazi’ as he termed it) she would be ‘labelled’.43 According to Charlotte Proudman, the word ‘feminazi’ is ‘a direct assertion of misogyny’: Women do not need to be radical to be called a feminazi. They simply have to challenge sex inequality. Advocates of the word contend that the inequalities

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women face in society are acceptable, even inevitable, and cannot be changed by movements for justice and equality. They define harm inflicted on women as insignificant or fictitious.44

Maria’s experience could be interpreted as the male dealer cautioning against equality, if this is what feminism seeks to achieve. Perhaps the dealer felt the artist should conform to a more traditional view of women such as that represented or proposed by some of the words appearing in the word clouds in Figure 9 in Chapter 1 (‘tentative, passive, apologetic, quiet, polite and suppressed’). An alternative way of looking at this is to examine the artist as product and more specifically the branding of ‘feminist’ artist as product. During the course of this research it was perceived that the term ‘feminist’, or the feminist label is currently not very popular or fashionable. As previously noted in the UK’s Sex Equality report conducted by the Fawcett Society in 2016, it was found that while 67 per cent of the British population supported equality, only 7 per cent actually described themselves as feminists.45 The ultimate and original goal of feminism is supposed to be equality, but perhaps if women are seen to fight for more than equality or to be seen as too assertive, this can present a negative side to the term ‘feminist’. Perhaps an ‘aggression’ described by Maria may be taken as a sign of asking for too much or attempting to usurp the male population through ‘revenge feminism’, as can be read in feminists’ often angry or violent reactions and solutions to patriarchy and oppression, for example in the literature Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) Manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution and Intercourse, a book which argues that all sex is rape.46 While Maria is only forty, she related the influence of earlier feminist texts dating from the 1960s which were read and regularly discussed by her mother and aunt. Maria was raised in a single-parent feminist household, and still argued with her mother about the impact of earlier second-generation feminism. Maria’s mother believed her daughter’s generation were too ‘lax’ and were not fighting hard enough for equality or were ‘not grateful enough’ to the older generation, that the emerging gender fluidity was not the answer to equality. Maria felt uncomfortable around the aggression and anger she often saw in her mother and aunt, perceiving that they had not ‘moved with the times’, and that her gallerist’s description of a ‘really aggressive feminist’ was rooted in his experiences with the older generation and not hers. In her Telegraph article ‘How Much Does Gender Influence the Art World?’ Griselda Pollock notes Bridget Riley’s comments on the feminist movement:



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‘Women artists [need] feminism … like a hole in the head!’ Pollock also describes the American abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler’s verbal disdain for feminists and feminism. However, this could be partly attributable to statements made by influential art critics such as Marjorie Kramer, who ‘seeks to set parameters for painting’, and the same critic who stated that feminist painting is always ‘figurative’ and thus restricting it to a very specific category of art.47 Pollock perceives, ‘[The] older generation of women painters still had in the background the legacies of Victorian ideas that indeed women could be artists, but only in a specific, feminine, hence secondary way.’ However, it is not just the older generation of artists who disassociate themselves from the feminist movement or the feminist art movement. For example Tracey Emin refuses to be termed a feminist artist, despite openly working with gender issues while apparently agreeing to inclusion in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art’s ‘Artabase’ at the Brooklyn Museum.48 As discussed in Chapter 3, the notion that the Brooklyn Museum has created a separate and perhaps secondary museum annex to appease a wide age range of female artists who identify as feminists may lead to the younger generation of female artists having concerns about feminism, or about being seen or judged as a feminine or feminist artist sited outside the mainstream museum itself. Similarly, in the UK, the new extension to Tate Modern was indirectly suggested by the Art Newspaper to be an annex or add-on for the display of artwork made by minority groups: Steadily in the intervening years since [Serota stated that the museum’s challenge would be to collect a much more diverse range of art] the Tate has begun to introduce a wider 20th- and 21st century history of art: more work by women, by Black and Asian artists, by artists based in Latin America, Russia, China and Africa. And now, with the opening of Tate Modern’s extension, Serota will have a museum to house that collection properly.49

The new contemporary artworld hysteria A further more worrying form of suppression and discrimination is that of female artists being described and consequently artworld-labelled or branded as being ‘mad’ if they do not conform to their gallerists’ exact (and often unreasonable) requirements or instructions. This once long-forgotten malady of course has a historical basis: back in Victorian times ‘madness’ was also feminized in the

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form of hysteria.50 The word ‘hyster’ is Latin for ‘womb’51 and so the malady of the womb, ‘hysteria’ is a gender-specific disease that can only affect women. Well-known London artist Maria noted that she had rarely heard of male artists being controlled or having their sanity and mental health questioned and defined in a similar way so it was her acute perception that this is a form of direct or indirect discrimination, or it could be perceived as discriminatory harassment: ‘Unwanted behaviour linked to a protected characteristic that violates someone’s dignity or creates an offensive environment for them.’52 If you fall out with your dealers you’re screwed, and the gossip as well that they spread about you. Oh the best is – especially if you’re a woman – you are CRAZY! You hear that about women artists all the time, oh she’s CRAZY, she’s MAD! You hardly ever hear it about men. My dealer, the first time I met him he told me [a well-known female YBA] was mad, he told me [another well-known female British artist] was mad, and I should have been thinking alarm bells, alarm bells! First of all you’re difficult, you’re a difficult artist to work with, and then when they really don’t care then you’re mad. I’ve heard lots of female artists being referred to as mad, and it’s women I know and I know they’re not mad – so I know this is just cruel and unfair, fabricating someone’s madness just to make the women look bad so they can regain control of them!

The artworld Queen Bee Many of the female artists I talked to during the course of writing Women Can’t Paint complained about incidents of female to female discrimination within the artworld. This form of sexism is often referred to as the ‘Queen Bee’ syndrome. Queen Bees are ‘senior women in male-dominated organisations who have achieved success by emphasizing how they differ from other women’.53 While it is often assumed that women will help other women succeed in a traditionally male-dominated area, some of the artists talked about their experiences of either witnessing the actions of or being the recipients of ‘stings’ by an artworld Queen Bee. Maria perceived there was an assumption that now there are more women in positions of power within the artworld, these successful and influential women will help other women to succeed. At a recent art fair discussion of which Maria was a panellist, three of her fellow panellists stated the current upsurge in female gallerists meant that things were naturally getting better for female artists seeking representation. Nevertheless



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it is noted that the Tate art acquisition panels are mainly female, and yet the Tate still acquires or collects work made mainly by men. In their article ‘The Networks that Buy the Tate’s Art’, the Art Newspaper lists the members of the Tate’s collection committee as being chaired by a woman (Maja Hoffman) with female and male committee members. The chairs of the acquisition committees consist of eight women and seven men, while the collection group is formed of seven women and only two men. Other ‘key figures’ on the acquisition committees noted by Gareth Harris and Jonathan Forwood are four women, with no additional key male figures noted.54 Samantha, a prominent American artist and art historian, described her perception of being stung by a Queen Bee, who she had previously regarded as a trusted and respected work confidante. I instinctively felt I was being followed about by this niggling black cloud, and I couldn’t shake it off. Nothing made sense. I was working so hard and nothing was coming together. People were being told things that weren’t true, and I was getting a reputation for being a trouble causer – which I’m totally not. It turned out it was my friend and line manager at work – it was clear she didn’t want another woman around and I was a threat to her survival. We too were the only two women in the department – we were good friends and colleagues – and she told me she’d been much happier as the sole woman. I thought she was joking, but she made my job really hard and damaged my reputation, deliberately setting me up for failure.

As a result of her own experience, the British artist Annie Kevans strongly disagreed with the notion that more females in power would naturally improve the situation for our artworld women seeking visibility: If you look at all these well-known galleries – London, New York, Dubai – that are led by women, they’re still showing 25 per cent women and 75 per cent men so it doesn’t help at all, people just kind of assume, they make assumptions, they assume that there’s more women now so it must be getting better, and that annoys me a lot.

Annie aligns with the perception that the Queen Bee effect may be upheld in some galleries or institutions where women occupy positions formerly dominated by men, and according to the psychologists Belle Derks et al., female gatekeepers may have achieved success by ‘emphasising their difference [or senior status] from other women’, hence their alleged reluctance to represent other female artists. In more recent 2015 research, Derks et al. observe that

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‘Queen Bee’ members of minority groups often distance themselves from their peers and become negative about other members of the minority group as a ‘coping response’: Masculine organisational contexts induced some women to improve their individual opportunities by strategically presenting themselves as more masculine, evaluating the abilities of other women more negatively, and legitimizing gender inequality by denying that gender discrimination still exists. This form of self-group distancing, although possibly effective for individual women, is likely to damage the image of women more generally, and limits opportunities to achieve gender equality in the workplace.55

Derks at al argue that this coping response is a reactive rather than deliberate behaviour because the Queen Bee is afraid of losing her senior status or career mobility.56 Hence, within the contexts of this research, female gatekeepers and successful female artists may legitimize gender inequality by distancing themselves from such discussions, thereby presenting themselves as more masculine, or masculine focussed. This could also explain why despite their keen interest in reading Women Can’t Paint, several successful female artists declined to participate in this body of research as they may have seen an alignment as a threat to their own career mobility. This issue has also been observed in debates of the proceedings of the Fawcett Society conference ‘Women at the Top: Time for Quotas?’ held on 20 January 2016 at Westminster Central Hall in London. It was suggested the notion of the Queen Bee may explain why women who have already ‘made it’ often oppose the idea of a gendered quota in the workplace. However, another way of looking at this phenomenon is to disregard the Queen Bee effect altogether and instead focus on the fact that private galleries are not usually philanthropic organizations but generally operate on a commission basis of artist sales, and can only represent a limited number of artists. If, as Chapter 2 has argued, work by male artists is generally easier to sell, or if it reaps a higher economic income, then gallerists would naturally sway towards artists who are going to make them a greater profit and enable the gallery to operate a healthy balance sheet. This does not, however, explain why the Tate’s mainly female acquisition panels choose to collect far greater numbers of male artists, when as a symbolic and publicly funded institution they are not perceived to have an economic interest in the value of collected artworks, and nor does their 2016 Governance declare such an interest.57



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Maria stated that a senior male representative from a London gallery also agreed that in general, senior roles in galleries and museums were occupied by women who had not helped other women, or were not seeking to represent other female artists. This supports Carol’s assertion that there are strong women in our artworld today, but they do not appear to be doing very much to support female artists, and are not promoting their work through including them in exhibitions. Jean also noted that fellow women colleagues who were described as ‘very important artists’ failed to turn up to meetings at a prestigious institution which in turn would have helped other women in giving a ‘female’ voice to the events. ‘It’s like we’ve been given the vote as women, but then we don’t bother to turn up to vote. What does that say? What does that say to the men attending these meetings? Does that make us [women] tokenist?’ This also suggests that the female artists ‘who didn’t bother to turn up’ had no interest in helping other women achieve a similar success to their own, and that they choose to strategically operate and demonstrate their importance as lone females within a masculine field. A well-known British artist also reported what appeared to be an extreme case of ‘Queen Bee’ syndrome and discrimination harassment in the London artworld in which a senior female curator from a major public museum had appeared to deliberately attempt to sabotage the artist’s position in a group show, and tamper with her PR packs so that she did not receive any press coverage from the event: I was the only one she did this to. She did not want me in that show and made it quite clear. The curator really wanted to curry favour with White Cube and wanted one of their [male] artists to do the commission instead of me. The artist in question was also the partner of one of the gallery assistants. I personally think she should be ousted and exposed – she literally sabotaged me at every stage.

In Re Framing Art, Michael Carter and Adam Geczy state: ‘A career in art demands a high degree of social mobility and personal freedom but lacks many of the supporting and protective structures that may be available to women in other professions.’58 The lack of such supportive structures implies that female artists may be forced to comply with restrictions which in more transparent industries may be at variance with our governments’ guidelines. It is not only the visual arts which may be affected by this phenomenon. In Feminism and Pop Culture, Andi Zeisler notes,

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Some people used to think that having more women in positions of power at publishing houses, movie studios, record companies, and TV networks would make a difference. Yet even when women have held these positions of influence, their companies still produce plenty of material that demeans, objectifies, and insults women.59

In ‘Venus Envy 2: Sisterhood, Queen Bees and Female Misogyny in Management’, Sharon Mavin states, ‘Processes of female misogyny between women in management fragment notions of solidarity; highlight contradictory places women take in relation to other women and challenge women as natural allies.’ While this would appear to support some of the artist perceptions provided, Belle Derks et al. believe the problem lies in the fact that women are placed in positions of power without organizations ‘doing anything about [overall] gender bias’.60 However, it is noted that Maria cited the artist Eileen Cooper as being exemplar of the opposite of a Queen Bee: a highly respected woman artist and leader in charge of a major arts institution (Royal Academy) who was actively doing something to combat overall gender bias through exploration into positive discrimination in the artworld. British painter Kate Brinkworth presented the example of Margaret Thatcher, stating, ‘She actually had to act that way because she was in a man’s world, she wouldn’t have got anywhere if she acted like a woman so she had to put on a front to compete with men.’ The researchers Staines, Jayaratne and Tavris used the phrase ‘Queen Bee’ in 1973 to describe the social dynamic in female human behaviour.61 Several years later, Thatcher became the Leader of the Conservative Party and subsequently the first female UK prime minister in 1979. While Thatcher may be considered as an eponymous Queen Bee, Cathy (not her real name) agreed that women did not always help other women, or even went so far as to hinder other women’s progress. Nevertheless, at the Fawcett Society’s 2016 conference ‘Women at the Top: Time for Quotas?’ the barrister Charlotte Proudman offered an alternative perspective, that in her experience of criminal law, women tended not to help other women out – not because they were Queen Bees but because they simply did not have the time to help due to a woman’s additional family and domestic commitments. As an aside, Proudman was the young woman who notoriously ousted a male colleague and contact in our judicial world for using the career networking platform Linkedin to approach women for personal relations. Proudman suggested the women’s lack of helping one and other led to a self-perpetuating cycle where men were seen to help each other out, but it wasn’t the norm for women to help one and other.



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As a consequence, fewer women came forward to help other women out, and there has become a significant lack of female mentors and sponsors. Proudman, however, insisted that mentoring from three men had significantly assisted in pushing her profile forward.62 While Cathy’s comments also refer to women actively hindering other women’s progress, Proudman presents a pragmatic case which suggests that men may well be seen to help other men out through ‘the old boy’s network’, but men do also help women out and ought to be encouraged to do so. Thus alleged cases of the Queen Bee syndrome may be misleading due to females in powerful positions possibly having more domestic responsibilities than their male counterparts, and a lack of time to support and encourage others. Proudman’s observations are reflected in numerous recent publications, for example, Rebecca Asher’s Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality and the appropriately titled Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home by Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung.63 Here, Hochschild and Machung discuss a woman’s after-work domestic and family responsibilities in terms of the persistent presence of old-fashioned and traditional gender values. In their 2012 text, the authors interviewed fifty couples at the height of the women’s movement, and commented: Over a year [women] worked an extra month of 24 days. … Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a ‘leisure gap’ between them at home. Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a ‘second shift’ at home.64

If the experience and research of Proudman, Asher, and Hochschild and Machung accurately reflects our society and our artworld, it is clear that if women are finding less time to help themselves and one and other, an elimination of institutional gender discrimination would be required through other means.

Fact is stranger than fiction ‘Older artists are ignored and dismissed when they are no longer considered hot and hip,’ so the findings of this chapter suggest that The Guardian quote posted at the front of this chapter is arguably a gendered issue.65 While clearly more research should be undertaken into why female artists appear to drop out as they age, and why gatekeepers and collectors make the decisions they do –

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Siri Hustvedt’s Blazing world appears very much to blur fact and fiction. As a fictional novel, the book is fascinating. If this was viewed as a factual piece, the work is quite frightening. Harriet Burden has become so frustrated with her lack of artworld recognition that she has persuaded three male friends to show her work under their own names. As noted earlier, Burden is no longer seen as young and desirable; she is fading away and disintegrating into her husband’s shadow and a world of obscurity. The findings of this chapter indeed suggest that younger female artists may consciously or subconsciously assert their brand of youth and sexuality perhaps above the art they produce, while concurrently sealing the limits of their own shelf life on the market. Perhaps we can understand the reasons for some women disguising their artwork with initials only such that they are androgynous and unrecognizable as wo-man. It really is not quite so ludicrous to think that an older woman artist may have been so desperate to pretend to be a man in order to succeed. In the nineteenth century George Eliot managed to pull this off, and a host of others outlined in ‘The Curious History of Women Who “Passed” as Men in Pursuit of a Dream’.66 It is only ludicrous that this is still going on in the twenty-first century. While this chapter has also explored issues that affect younger women, some of the artists I spoke to firmly believed that the artworld was rife in discrimination and workplace bullying. I was dismayed to hear stories about the painful stings of Queen Bees and other species, which may not be seen as par for the course in other industries. Perhaps it is now time to examine what could be done to eliminate this in the next and final chapter to Women Can’t Paint.

7

Smashing the glass ceiling of women’s art: Manifestos for equality that could actually work

As noted by Nicola Griffiths in her 2015 gendered analysis of glittering literature prizes, ‘Data is the key. … Data will show us patterns. Patterns will lead to correlations. Correlations will lead to possible causes. Causes will help us find solutions.’1 In respect of gender, the glass ceiling and values in contemporary art, Women Can’t Paint has also seen data as the key, showing us patterns, correlations and suggesting possible causes. As Griffiths also notes, causes can help us to find solutions. In her contribution to Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer’s Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, Anita Silvers pragmatically states that ‘regardless of why it has been so unusual for women to rise to eminence in the arts, it might be argued that the feminist program could best succeed by looking to the future and creating conditions under which women’s art will flourish’.2 With this in mind, and building on work by writers such as Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own (1929) and again Linda Nochlin’s ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), this chapter outlines potential strategies and recommendations to improve gender equality for contemporary artists. The very beginnings of this follow on from Nicole Ward Jouvre’s Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender (I necessarily quote again for emphasis) in which she states, ‘To throw out the binaries as a discursive form that makes for suppression or oppression is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.’3 If the binaries were allowed to grow together, women – and men – side by side, perhaps inosculation might occur. In dendrology (the study of trees), inosculation occurs when the branches of two trees of the same species first grow separately to each other until they touch. ‘Once the cambium of two trees touches, they sometimes selfgraft and grow together as they expand in diameter’, providing support to one and other.4 They are thus two separate entities, each growing, and flourishing, side by side, in and among one and other. In reverting to nature, it is arguably healthier to accept differences, grow in and out of one another and provide mutual support, rather than denouncing the existence of either.

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In Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz declares, ‘Feminism began largely as a struggle for a greater share of the patriarchal pie.’5 It should be noted here that feminism, or the quest for gender equality, did not begin with any specific rules and regulations. If we return to Grosz’s own feminist beginnings, then feminism should not advocate that women cannot use this method or that method in order to attempt to attain a greater share (or equal share) of the professed patriarchal pie. Such rules and regulations create restrictions, and force one to question whether one would be better off in a patriarchal society than within a matriarchal society with similar restraints. This is particularly so when one examines what this book has termed as ‘revenge feminist’ literature. Here, ‘revenge feminism’ refers to feminists’ often angry or violent reactions and solutions to patriarchy and oppression, for example in the literature SCUM Manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution and Intercourse which argues that all sex is rape.6 In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler opposes such revenge feminism, and suggests, ‘The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.’7 As noted in the Introduction, Butler’s suggestion is to encompass a fluidity of gender, where perhaps man and woman merge or change places.8 When we examine the entwining branches of two or more inosculated trees, we cannot tell which branch belongs to which tree. We don’t have to be explicitly feminine or explicitly masculine. We can be both, or we can be neither.

We had better prepare our greatgranddaughters for disappointment In Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds’ Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power, they note, ‘Unless we find the energy to generate another of those rare periods of rapid reform, we had better prepare our greatgranddaughters for disappointment; the next three generations of British women will face the dispiriting prospect of continuing inequality.’9 Tutchell and Edmonds discuss an interview with the Norwegian business emperor Elin Hurvenes, who objected to the fact that if we allowed nature to take its course in its gradual repair of gender inequality, and a male associate’s statement, ‘in a hundred years there would be as many women as men on company boards’.



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Hurvenes’s response was ‘that would be too late for me, my daughter and for any possible granddaughters’.10 It is clear therefore that we cannot just sit back and wait for something to happen or for nature to take its course in the artworld. Rather, as Anita Silvers so eloquently states, let us now ‘create conditions under which women’s art will flourish’.11 Flourish, verb (of a living organism) grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment.12

It is necessary to create conditions in which women’s art will grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, and in a congenial environment which is mutually supportive. Returning to dendrology, there is no evidence that botanical inosculation causes one tree to grow slower than the other, but rather that each tree mutually supports the other. Anything other than that could be said to be parasitic, that is, ‘an organism which lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense’.13 The very notion of parasitic activity is destructive, or obliteration at another’s expense. It is of course arguable that much of this obliteration may not be carried out consciously in our artworld, but rather as part of a deep-rooted set of processes that constitute the study of wo/mankind throughout modern history. While female production is largely regarded as secondary (or other) in our artworld, it is of course vital to remove the parasites that feed from this. Many do not realize they are depending on another for support without reciprocating, thus producing – consciously or unconsciously – an ongoing inequality and as such a contribution to the fine line of survival and extinction. Surviving in the artworld is tough, whether one happens to have been born female, or male; however, to have to acknowledge that as a woman artist one will potentially have to work four times harder to earn two-thirds less than a male artist is a bleak scenario and a hard pill to swallow. This chapter therefore presents simple and entirely achievable strategies that could contribute to an artworld equality, presented as a seven-point manifesto for a gender-equal artworld. As with many manifestos, some ideas overlap, and some thoughts could evolve into manifestos of their own – indeed, it is hoped this short list of manifestos will develop as time goes on. At the very least the following strategies could assist in speeding up the gender income gaps and provide an equal footing for both female and male artists operating in the contemporary artworld, rather than allowing archaic values to prevail,

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with its inevitable and continued devaluation of female artists. Inclusivity is key: the incorporation of all minority groups of course could and should equally be applied to all manifestos. As noted in the Introduction, funding bodies have demonstrated a blatant lack of interest in supporting such an important and relevant study (see Manifesto #7).

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #1: An education for all through role models In order to establish the importance of early and lifelong education to achieve gender parity, let us examine the statements of Education For All  (EFA), a global movement led by UNESCO, which aimed to meet the learning needs of all children, youths and adults by 2015.14 The EFA goals also contribute to the global pursuit of the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), including MDG 3 on gender equality in education, by 2015. Goal 5 was to achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015.15 In their report Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality, UNESCO states, In no society do women yet enjoy the same opportunities as men. They work longer hours and they are paid less; their life chances and choices are more restricted than for men. Girls’ unequal access to, and performance in education is both a cause and a consequence of these disparities.16 The importance of female role models is widely accepted as a means of promoting greater gender equality. Yet the number of women teachers remains extremely low in many countries. … Closing the gender gap also means confronting the reality of sexual violence and harassment that is responsible for underachievement and high drop-out rates.17 Assessing the extent to which girls are held back at each stage of the rights agenda – in the home and society, by schooling costs and biases, lack of security, unfair treatment and lack of opportunity – leads to a set of challenges. Urgent action is required in countries where the gender gap is still large: addressing poverty constraints, making schools safe, revising discriminatory content and changing attitudes are all part of the equation.18

As previously noted, 74 per cent of the UK’s fine art graduates are female, and 60 per cent of the United States’ fine art graduates are female with similar ratios worldwide. Therefore, a paradoxical situation arises that begs the question,



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‘How can we understand the endurance of the male canon which operates within a female-dominated environment?’ As noted back in Chapter 1, one artist was particularly critical about the current lack of female role models in the fine art department of her institution, referring not only to art history lecturers but also to lecturers who are also practising artists. It was also noted earlier (in Chapter 1) that Margaret Harrison described how her husband, the artist Conrad Atkinson, also sought to redress the lack of promotion of female artists in education, by starting up a ‘women’s group’ with his postgraduate students at an American university. The students said they believed they knew of equal numbers of female and male artists, but when Conrad asked them to write down how many male artists they knew, and how many female artists they knew, the gap in knowledge was substantial. Dubaibased artist Sylvia also confessed to a lack of knowledge of female artists. In an online spoof Radio 4 Desert Island Discs with her peer group on Twitter, the friends decided to compile an art list, and she observed: So I worked out what would be my art list and there were only about 2 women on there, you know what you like, but then you sort of think to yourself how many women artists can I actually name, and there aren’t masses, you know, there’s just the few obvious ones.

When asked if it was possible this may be related to the lack of female artists being promoted through her own UAE art education and from museum inclusion – or exclusion – of female artists, Sylvia agreed this was probably the case and may not have previously occurred to her. A European education would not appear to be any different. Thirteen out of fifteen role models cited by Marco were male, and he also received a mainly male supervision during his art education. Back in the Introduction to Women Can’t Paint it was noted that many art history texts dating from the 1950s contain hardly any work by female artists. In Penelope Lockwood’s study on gender ‘Someone Like Me Can Be Successful: Do College Students Need Same-Gender Role Models?’ she argued that ‘because women face negative stereotypes regarding their competence in the workplace, they may derive particular benefit from the example of an outstanding woman who illustrates the possibility of overcoming gender barriers to achieve success’.19 In addition, Eva Tutchell and John Edmonds’s Man-Made argues that role models perform two useful functions: first, encouragement and the visual embodiment of success and or power and second, guidance to women on [feminine] management style and behaviour.20 Thus, women may not feel

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obliged to adopt so-called masculine traits in order to succeed. Much other research has reported on the positive benefits of female role models, including that of Griselda Pollock:21 Her experience of art history was so male-centric, that she felt the ‘impossibility, within the existing framework of art history, of imagining women as artists’. In other words, the principles that were used to identify and assess artists had been designed around men, and thus precluded or invalidated the work of women.22

However, some research also argues the case for a possible downside to the presence of female role models within female minority careers. In ‘Agenda Bender: The Case for the Abolition of Female Role Models’, Farshid Moussavi argues that women need to be considered as different, thus aligning with Pollock’s differencing of women in the visual arts.23 She proposes that a male-majority industry such as architecture should not seek to provide female role models because this could actually curb the practices of other women architects. Moussavi argues that women currently have greater freedom and imagination to create due to the lack of female role models and the lack of an established feminine style or practice. It is, however, difficult to envisage how more female role models in painting could restrict the practices of younger aspiring female artists, unless such women have been enculturated in the ‘differencing’ of women’s art practice. Crystal Hoyt and Stephanie Simon perceive that if women work in industries where individuals are possible targets of a negative stereotype, aspiring women could be actually discouraged by high-performing female role models: People may have a difficult time identifying with these extremely successful [women] whose success may seem unattainable. Indeed, these elite role models may serve to explicitly activate, but not disconfirm, the gender-leader stereotype. Thus, social comparison processes with these role models may result in a demoralizing, as opposed to inspiring, effect.24

It is also believed that the so-called ‘superwoman’ phenomenon is deterring women from success. According to Baronness Bertin, a UK government adviser and Tory peer, ‘the superwoman cliché – and the idea that you can have it all – does not speak to most women in the country’, and that unrealistic expectations on their time was putting women off career progression.25 It would not be unreasonable to suggest that in institutions with a gender imbalance of staff, more female role models are required in terms of the gender of artists discussed in art history and contextual studies lectures in order to create equal opportunities for success in the future. However, there are no



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gender-related guidelines set in place within fine art higher education in the UK.26 These Subject Benchmark Statements include a reference to the Disability Equality Duty (DED) which ‘requires public authorities, including HEIs, to act proactively on disability equality issues’.27 In addition: The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published guidance to help HEIs prepare for the implementation of the Duty and provided illustrative examples on how to take the Duty forward. HEIs are encouraged to read this guidance when considering their approach to engaging with components of the Academic Infrastructure of which subject benchmark statements are a part.28

It might therefore be useful for governing bodies such as the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to include gender as a category in these guidelines. This could be achieved in association with the EHRC and in line with the DED mentioned above, if it can be demonstrated that gender is not a neutral category (as Women Can’t Paint has evidenced). This manifesto therefore proposes that a more clearly defined structure such as a guideline in education and for educators to provide female role models would help to positively influence new fine art students graduating across the world each year disbanding the notion of the masculinity of the visual arts and painting. This idea has been activated in the paper ‘Disrupting the Masculine Canon in Fine Art Education’, which outlines how a new art and design course written for a highly ranked British (Scottish) university was hoping to introduce equal numbers of female and male role models for the wide variety of students the university welcomes.29 This paper was instigated by interviews with BA (Hons) Fine Art who stated they were taught about the work and practices of a disproportionately low number of female artists. Unfortunately, the equality model was discontinued by the university, and that particular art and design course is sadly once again dominated by white heteromasculinity despite the female-majority student cohort.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #2: Museum diversity policies to be fully inclusive and take account of gender As this book has argued that female artists appear to be discriminated against by museums (see Chapter 3), it is recommended that museum diversity policies ought to be updated to address gender. This is particularly pertinent to the larger

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and more prestigious museums as they undoubtedly set a precedent to other less visited and growing museums. In Chapter 4, it was noted how in November 2017, the Berlin-based all-female winners of the German art prize Preis der Nationalgalerie were highly critical of the museum’s award, stating, ‘We would like to stress that commitments to diversity in gender, race, and experience need to be built into the everyday operations of institutions and organisations rather than celebrated occasionally at high profile events [within the institutions].’30 In the UK, Tate’s diversity policy does not even address gender, focussing instead on three key areas of ‘disability’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘sexual orientation’.31 Unfortunately, the Tate’s Press Officer and Equalities Officer did not respond to several approaches to discuss the issue of gender and collections for Women Can’t Paint, and many other emails to major international museums worldwide have also disappeared into the ether.32 It is surprising that the Tate and other influential institutions do not mention gender equality today because museums have arguably been responsible both for defining and for subverting gender roles and identities throughout art history.33 As this book has argued, gender is perhaps assumed, incorrectly, to be a neutral category by gatekeepers as well as those researching or writing about the arts and working in areas of discrimination and equality. Gender (in)equality is also a hot potato; the proverbial elephant in the room, and those who deal with it tend to be viewed as ‘radical’ and unreasonable. In their guide ‘Tate for All: Diversity Action Plan’, Sir Nicholas Serota stated: Diversity is about respecting and celebrating difference. As an arts organisation, we believe that diversity and creativity go hand in hand. We are a stronger, bolder and more confident organisation when we embrace diversity …. This action plan sets out how we will improve equality and diversity throughout Tate. Everybody is responsible for diversity at Tate. The success of this action plan depends upon your support. I look forward to working together with you to ensure that Tate is open to everyone.34

Maria Balshaw succeeded Serota as Director in 2017. Balshaw received enormous criticism for her victim-shaming comments on sexual harassment, suggesting that women rather than male perpetrators are to blame.35 While she subsequently issued a clarification and apology, the Tate’s (female) artist in residence resigned over the issue in protest at how she believes it and other arts institutions are failing women when it comes to combating sexual harassment and fostering diversity. Liv



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Wynter, who chose to resign on the eve of International Women’s Day to maximise its impact and highlight the ‘invisible inequalities’ at the Tate, was also angered by recent harassment comments from the British art institution’s director, Maria Balshaw.36

The Tate’s quest for equality appears to be geared towards visitors and employees rather than those who are featured in the collections, and represented as role models to our future generations. The views of the vast majority of the artists interviewed for this book appeared to align with those of Linda Nochlin in that the equality of female artists lies in ‘the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the views of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them’.37 If museums were to set a precedent by updating policies to include gender within collections (rather than simply the gender equality of visitors and museum staff members), this would encourage or ensure equality in museum’s funding, acquisitions and solo and group show participation. This manifesto therefore addresses the issue that gender is not a neutral and equal category. It ‘[reduces] the inequalities between rich and poor by providing equal opportunities to both female and male artists’ as well as providing a healthy balance of role models for female and male visitors.38 As highlighted in Chapter 3, there is a clear link between economic and symbolic values, and as such this manifesto may help to break down such gendered inequality caused by this issue. While we live in a healthy era of gender fluidity, this may not necessarily have helped us transpose into an era of gender equality: our gender may be fluid, but equality is not.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #3: The introduction of gender quotas or caps This book has argued throughout, and particularly in Chapter 6, that female artists’ global visibility is significantly lower than that of male artists in the artworld. The majority of the artists interviewed felt that equal quotas – or gender caps on male artists – were a sensible way forward to ‘advance equality of opportunity’ in line with the various global equality acts.39 If institutions such as galleries, museums and universities applied gender quota targets to promote an equally gendered measure of artists, this may help to encourage a reflexive practice which is mindful of equality. A similar strategy was successfully instigated by a young British media company in their collaboration with the

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Climbing Lab,40 an indoor bouldering centre in Leeds UK. Matt Green Media (MGM)41 focuses on documenting mountaineering and climbing, activities which are traditionally predominantly masculine, and perceived that it was vital in a masculine-dominated environment to film an equal number of male and females so that role models are provided for everyone. The Climbing Lab co-founder Hannah Mason stated that she was keen to represent everyone who might want to climb, encouraging female participation via their social media, and that they have been approaching gender equality from a number of different directions since they opened in 2016. Hannah stated: ‘A lot of walls choose to only show strong men succeeding at hard climbs and I very much wanted to buck that trend.’ I salute this exemplary and vanguard approach to equality, in order to instigate change within a traditional masculine environment. National fundraising charities who support museums and galleries by helping them to purchase and display artwork should attempt to fund a quasi-equal number of purchases of works by both female and male artists. For example in the UK, the charity ArtFund raises around £11 million each year and directs £9.5  million of this to charitable activity.42 In an enquiry to ArtFund about more recent acquisitions and gender imbalance, the manager of the acquisitions programme provided helpful information relating to gender and acquisitions: Over the last three years Art Fund has received 126 applications from museums and galleries across the UK to fund commissions and acquire works of art by modern and contemporary artists and makers. Overall, 45 (36 per cent) of these acquisition applications were for works by female artists; of these, 37 applications from 30 different institutions were successfully awarded a grant (a success rate of 82 per cent). Of the 76 applications received for the acquisition of works by male artists, 64 (84 per cent) were awarded a grant.43

Thus, this particular well-meaning and respected charity only proportioned 36 per cent of their funding for the acquisition of works by female artists, while 64 per cent was directed towards the acquisition of work by men. Thus, it could be assumed that ArtFund and those donating to ArtFund may not be aware they could be indirectly contributing to an ongoing artworld inequality. Arts awards such as the Turner Prize ought to have an equal number of female and male artists placed on its longlist in order to provide an equal opportunity for both men and women to be shortlisted to the final four. If this longlist were publicly monitored, it may help to set a precedent of responsibility to other prizes which may not be publicly funded and open to such scrutiny.



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It is arguable that publicly funded museums have a curatorial responsibility to ensure solo and group shows contain more or less equal numbers of female and male artists to allow equal opportunity of visibility in order to represent the societies we live in. This ought not to be through the addition of ‘add-on’ visibility such as that demonstrated by the Brooklyn Museum’s well-intended Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, or even arguably the new extension to Tate Modern which has been considered as an annex for the display of artwork made by minority groups.44 Instead, this book has demonstrated the importance of artists from minority groups (such as female artists) having visibility through mainstream museum inclusion and thus penetrating into the masculine museum structures themselves. Again, this may help to set a precedent to galleries which are private and not publicly funded and could assist in raising the economic and symbolic values of work created by women. This is important because it has been demonstrated there is a clear link between art valuations and museum inclusion. Work by women no longer needs to be seen as tokenist and subsequently devalued, but as that created by an equal player deserving the chance to be similarly evaluated to that of men.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #4: Media and Museum PR responsibility to gender equality In Chapter 3 it was evidenced that gender equity leads to greater freedom of expression through the discovery of a new theory of contemporary essentialist aesthetics, and that museums often go to great efforts to draw media attention to the apparent lengths they are going to in order to promote and foster the success of female artists. However, when one looks closely at this, it could appear to be a case of museums paying lip service in order to create the illusion of gender equality, alongside the purchase of work that exposes artworld gender inequality such as that created by the Guerrilla Girls.45 Despite receiving significant media attention for their ‘generous’ exposure of ‘women artists’, the Tate was found to actually significantly discriminate against female artists in 2014–15 and earlier in terms of acquisitions and collections.46 In addition, Chapter 3 noted the segregation of female artists through press articles.47 Such articles serve to reinforce the idea that women artists are situated in a separate category which lies outside the masculinization of art. The feminine term ‘actress’ tends to be

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no longer used by the media having been superseded by the word ‘actor’ and one would no longer use the terms ‘woman solicitor’ or ‘woman accountant’, so the notion of a ‘woman artist’ ought to be discarded by the media, and by press releases issued by those publicly funded organizations who arguably have a responsibility for equality. If media and museum responsibility were to be heightened or monitored, this could help raise the confidence of the majority female undergraduate fine art graduates and the majority female MFA postgraduates whose careers are launched in what appears to still be a mainly masculine territory. It is arguable this could also assist in a knock-on effect upon the economic value of women’s artwork if equalizing collections and the possible resulting de-masculinization of art in contemporary painting were to occur.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #5: Call for artworld regulation In High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture Isabelle Graw notes, ‘The art market knows only unwritten laws and is rife with murky goings on.’48 As noted in Chapter 6, artists cited instances of discrimination occurring partly as a result of the opacity and secrecy of the UK artworld, unscrupulous practices that would be seen as illegal and contravening the UK’s Equality Act (and those of many countries) in other industries.49 The artworld has been described by collector Kenny Schachter as ‘a “hotbed” of corruption’.50 The artworld is also perceived by some as being akin to the criminal underworld in terms of its reported alleged capacity to allow insider trading and money laundering among other otherwise illegal tactics. In terms of gender equality, the creation of guidelines and government directives in the artworld may help to stop discrimination against those who are pregnant, or working mothers – the older woman artist and women who are punished for behaving contrary to stereotypical gendered expectations. Such regulation may also encourage government published Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) gender income gaps to include minority, less mainstream or segregated industries such as the arts, which Women Can’t Paint has argued are hidden and obscured within the wider picture. Indeed, the revelation of the huge gender value gaps of up to 80.8 per cent presented in Chapter 2 (Figure 18) are startling in comparison to the gender pay gaps recently exposed by UK companies, employing over 250 employers. Eleanor Lawrie’s report ‘Gender Pay Gaps Must Be Declared by



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UK Companies’ suggests that the UK gender pay gap is (only) ‘9.4 per cent for full-time staff ’, although overall it has been recorded at 18.1 per cent.51 Greater transparency in art market pay gaps across the world could help to highlight differences in the pay gap, and by drawing attention to this, we could surely start to initiate a shift in the right direction of equality.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #6: Feminist (and visual arts) methodologies to embrace a quantitative research Our mathematics is the symbolic counterpart of the universe we perceive, and its power has been continuously enhanced by human exploration. Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number Throughout the book, I have highlighted strands of feminist (and visual arts) methodologies that have opposed the use of numbers, for various reasons but often for what is perceived to be too much of a masculinist approach, the incorporation of binaries (the feminists) or an economics-encroach (the visual arts). I necessarily repeat Anita Silvers’s wise statement that ‘regardless of why it has been so unusual for women to rise to eminence in the arts, it might be argued that the feminist program could best succeed by looking to the future and creating conditions under which women’s art will flourish’.52 If we wish to give women’s art a chance, then we should also give numbers a chance. The use of mathematics within the visual arts does after all have a historical basis. Twentieth-century artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Dali, have used the golden ratio (or the golden triangle) and the Fibonacci number sequence of aesthetic harmony as the basis for the proportion of their work because they believed this to be aesthetically pleasing. In 1964, an article in a journal called the Fibonacci Quarterly demonstrated that The Art of Fugue has a mathematical perfection – that in this composition, Bach exploits, in a final reach for the complex harmony that fascinated him all his life, a sequence of numbers that recurs again and again in the natural world and which has come to possess an almost mystical fascination not just for maths professors but for musicians, artists and architects.53

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It does therefore seem slightly absurd that many art historians, curators and funding gatekeepers dismiss the use of numbers given that the very subjects of their research appeared to have also based entire bodies of work upon mathematics. As noted earlier by Nicola Griffiths, ‘Data is the key. … Data will show us patterns. Patterns will lead to correlations. Correlations will lead to possible causes. Causes will help us find solutions.’54 Indeed this book could not have been written without the use of numbers, data has been the key, showing us patterns, correlations, suggesting possible causes – and hopefully potential solutions to gender equality in the arts.

Manifesto for a gender-equal artworld #7: More funding to investigate and find solutions for art gender inequalities It is extremely unlikely that as an establishment we would fund any antiestablishment project. Verbal comment made by a funding representative to the author, in respect of gender arts equality projects in museums and universities, December 2017. Five of the artists and researchers interviewed during the course of writing this book were vocal about the lack of funding available to promote research in gender equality and the arts. Clara (not her real name), a British researcher, claimed she had put forward five strong applications to postdoctoral research which might lead to strategies to combat inequalities in this area, and that she had been ‘rejected at the first hurdle on each and every one’. She stated: ‘The master will never allow the use of his tools to dismantle the master’s house!’ Ben (not his real name), another researcher whose practice-led PhD had partially explored potential strategies of combating art inequality, claimed that when a major funder had asked for applications to a conference to combat art inequality, he was immediately rejected, ‘despite my doctoral work being the newest and the only one to my knowledge suggesting strategies and solutions’. In the United States Ben claimed when he had attended the conference as a delegate, there had been very carefully chosen papers by ‘very gentle sounding people begging for thirty per cent quotas’ that ‘carefully tip-toed around the issue’ of art gender inequality and he perceived that perhaps his ideas had been seen as ‘too anarchist’. Institutions do not appear to be comfortable around anarchy in academia such



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as anarcha-feminism, even when it is clearly researched and presented for the advancement of society.55 American scholar Sandy (not her real name) who had gained a British undergraduate and postgraduate education was also angry and disappointed that she had not been able to take her arts gender equality research further, nor to obtain a teaching post in the UK where she believed she was labelled as an ‘anarchist’ or ‘trouble-maker’ because of her research. She had now returned to the United States to teach: I have worked so hard to make change in the arts, but I have had to give up. Nobody wants to fund it. All the big guys, they say they want to change things, but it’s just lip speak. These guys need to put their money where their mouth is instead of funding endless meaningless projects such as the history of brown shoes between 1860 and 1865, or the design principles of Pompeiian egg cups, etc. It’s all very well recording tiny segments of our social and art history that a handful of people (usually the scholar and their former PhD supervisors) might be interested in, but how’s about funding projects that will actually make a real difference to people’s, to women’s lives in the arts today? Art history should not just be about selected single artist’s achievements to the detriment of others.

Of the 609 successful applications funded by the London-based Paul Mellon Foundation over the five year period 2013–17, a handful of these related to work by women artists. However, only three related to gender, but no projects were funded relating to the gender crisis in art today and nor to that of its past.56 Over the five year period 2013–17, of around 10,000 applications for postdoctoral fellowships, the Leverhulme Trust selected 500, and a scant handful of these related to gender and equality, with only 2 focussing on gender and the arts, albeit not relating to the gender crisis in art today and nor to that of its past.57 Indeed two other artists (their names have been changed) Melanie (from the UAE) and Jenna (Germany) perceived that gender equality in the arts was a ‘touchy subject’ that organizations and particularly funders ‘tiptoed around’: People are still afraid to be associated with equality and feminisms, there’s this huge thing around angry feminists and the young women today, they’re backing off. The funders and our Universities don’t want to know, they’re only interested in ticking the boxes of their feeble gender equality efforts, they’re not interested in making changes that could genuinely have a massive impact.

If more philanthropic and funding organizations with an interest in the arts were to dedicate a small proportion of their funding to gender equality, this could

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instigate change through research, as well as bringing well-needed publicity. Unfortunately, as one professor noted, ‘The panels of decision-makers are made up of highly educated, usually very highly privileged people, very often trustees of other organisations such as museums.’ As the issue of gender equality and values is less likely to have a direct influence on the affluent, it perhaps is not going to be a subject high up on the agenda of selection process. Perhaps, as American artist and researcher Sandy noted, fascinating but highly niche ‘safe’ and ‘quiet’ subjects may continue to take the majority of funding relating to postdoctoral study in the arts. Projects which are seen as (even slightly) anarchous or contentious because they challenge the current status quo will continue to be immediately dismissed. Museums are unlikely to fund projects that expose flaws in the system, universities are unlikely to fund projects that poke sticks at valuable external contacts and institutions are too keen to tow the line. This is despite new departments springing up across the world oozing with the language of ‘disruption’ and promising to ‘untangle the world’s knottiest problems’. Gender equality in the arts is perhaps one of the knottiest gender issues existing today, yet it is very often ignored and accepted by many players, including our great institutions who are part of the establishment themselves – and perhaps in fact have no desire to unravel this particularly knotty issue – yet the institutions’ publicity would tell us otherwise. Today’s establishment is made up – as it has always been – of powerful groups that need to protect their position in a democracy in which almost the entire adult population has the right to vote. The establishment represents an attempt on behalf of these groups to ‘manage’ democracy, to make sure that it does not threaten their own interests. In this respect, it might be seen as a firewall that insulates them from the wider population.58

Such a failure of our philanthropic and institutional funders to support measures for equality could well be preventing the shaking of obstacles and the subsequent generation of new perspectives and possibilities. It is arguable that our great institutions have erected their own defensive firewalls against this much-needed change. Firewalls are traditionally set in place as a barrier to protect a system from unauthorized access. We need to find a way to break through the firewalls and instigate change through means that would attract socially motivated philanthropy. We need to encourage funding organizations who seek to fund a more gentle, unobtrusive and often inconsequential subject matter, that there is so much more at stake within the wider context of women’s art practice.

Conclusion: Baselitz’s folly: Women can paint

In Women Can’t Paint, I wished to approach the problematic of gender in response to the paradigm proposed by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble.1 Butler argues that gender should not be fixed but fluid, that is, a variable that shifts and changes within different contexts, and in this case I wished to consider such gender performativity or androgyny within the wider global sphere of contemporary art. In the preface to the second edition of her widely read Gender Trouble, Judith Butler noted that contemporaneously she ‘understood [herself] to be in an embattled and oppositional relation to certain forms of feminism, even as [she] understood the text to be part of feminism itself ’. Butler was concerned to find presumptions in feminist theory that prescribed limits upon the meaning of gender, assuming that feminine and masculine genders would automatically be constructed upon female and male bodies with no room for difference or choice. She concluded that ‘Gender Trouble sought to uncover the ways in which the very thinking of what is possible in gendered life is foreclosed by certain habitual and violent presumptions’, and hoped this might lead to opening up the field of possibilities for gender.2 The refusal to quantify gender also extends to such notable feminist theorists as Griselda Pollock, who is highly critical of ‘gender based readings’ of works of art. Pollock stated that ‘gender based readings means limiting the artist to what is projected onto her as her female gender on which derive circumscribed meanings to the artwork’.3 Camille Paglia, who describes herself as a ‘dissident feminist’, ‘recently took feminists and women’s studies programs to task for failing to acknowledge biological gender differences’.4 Paglia’s doctrine is important to consider here, for it is arguable that Butler’s non-genderization does not allow for inequality to become irrefutably visible. In ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’, Anita Silvers rightly cautioned that ‘a feminism which divorces gender from biological difference threatens also eventually to divorce itself from women’.5 A fluidity in research methodology was therefore embraced which is controversial in allowing the genders to be binarized and analysed accordingly. As previously noted, the issue of the non-binarization of gender is also highlighted in Nicole Ward Jouvre’s book Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender. Indeed, much

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contestation between our various arenas has become apparent during the creation of Women Can’t Paint: feminists who disagree with so-called masculine techniques and of essentializing our basic differences; those in the visual arts who discount the use of numbers in research, and some of our art historians who are disdainful of the use of the digital image in history of art projects. The list goes on, and on the surface it does look as though we have been pulling apart in many different directions. Perhaps, in embracing our differences (e.g. in the categorization of female, male) we can move forward in positive and constructive ways to the benefit of all. If we want to give equality a chance, we have to give new methods and ideas a space to succeed. Certainly one thing has become apparent from writing Women Can’t Paint is that we can no longer assume the neutrality of the word ‘gender’! This book was stimulated by the prominent German painter Georg Baselitz’s widely publicized doctrine. His claim that women lack the basic character to become painters led to the beginnings of this research and the reconsideration of Linda Nochlin’s widely contemplated question and exploration of a worldwide art historical issue stemming from 1971: ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’6 Perhaps specifically as the book has sought to determine – women’s creative output is consistently undervalued, and as their work is therefore valued lower than that of men, then what exactly is it that has caused the lower economic and symbolic values in contemporary painting? The paradoxical battle between Griselda Pollock’s feminism and the quantitative emerged clearly in Chapter 1 ‘Masculinities and Femininities in Painting: The New Androgynous Aesthetics in Contemporary Art’. A lack of female role models was highlighted as a concern, along with the femininity inherent within the textile areas and the traditional masculinity of paint. In order to carry out a feminist intervention into the gendered differences between paintings made by female and male artists, and to establish if there were any significant exclusive ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ qualities in contemporary painting, it was necessary for the book to adopt a quasi-quantitative methodology which depends upon categorization. I argued that in polarizing the quantitative and qualitative as binary gendered positions, anti-essentialist feminists may fall into their own trap of binarification, which other feminists oppose and fight against in their research propaganda. Without categorizing female and male artists into polarized genders, it would not have been possible to analyse and thus intervene in discrimination of contemporary female artists. I aligned with Judith Butler, who argues that we must adopt our own gender performance (in this case

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through a new hybrid methodology) and by choosing to think differently about it we might work to change gender norms and the binary understandings of femininity and masculinity in new methodologies and theories. As a result of carrying out this research and writing this book, new theories have emerged: first, the discovery of an androgynous aesthetics has been discovered in contemporary painting. Here, women and men have been found to make very similar paintings; likewise, aesthetics and painterly qualities overlapping and merging with one and other. Griselda Pollock et al.’s ‘differential’ seeks to claim there is a different kind of greatness for women artists, but Chapter 1 contested such theories, or at least it appeared to do so within the realm of the sample of contemporary painting. Arguably, there is therefore no different kind of greatness for women artists – the aesthetics of women’s painting is not very different to that of men and therefore perhaps we should not be treating female and male artwork as separate categories of art beyond the mainstream. Similarities have also been detected in patterns of creativity such as in the use of overall average lightness, support and the use of a signature. I discussed Erich Fromm’s ‘bisexuality’ of behaviour, which he perceived to be necessary for creativity (along with Carl Jung et al.), noting that while femininity was seen as being vital to creativity, there is no reason why a great artist cannot also be a masculine female: both feminine males and masculine females should be equals in androgynous terms. The notion of an androgynous aesthetics is also an issue speculated upon by Linda Nochlin in her updated essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists: Thirty Years After’ in which she states, ‘Although I can only hint at it, I would like to indicate the impact, conscious or unconscious, of the new women’s production on the work of male artists.’7 Neither Georg Baselitz nor Brian Sewell explained what was meant by their gender-specific term ‘aesthetic greatness’, or deliver a list of female aesthetics which they find to be inferior to those of men. As no great or ‘weak’ gendered aesthetic qualities have been detected in Chapter 1 (‘Masculinities and Femininities in Painting: The New Androgynous Aesthetics in Contemporary Art’) and in fact a new androgynous aesthetics has emerged, then one can only assume Baselitz and Sewell refer to the biological characteristics of the painting’s creator in their judgement of a painting’s worth. The brand of ‘masculine’ is thus judged to be more valuable than the brand of ‘feminine’ in a work of art. The feminine is perhaps seen as the inferior, with the masculine a superior choice or option during the evaluation of a collector or gatekeeper’s decision-making process.

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Chapter 2, ‘The price of being a woman artist: Dollars, dirhams, pounds and euros’, presents new data relating to auction prices of contemporary art. While global female visibility at art auctions ranged from a tenth to a quarter of the population, gender art-value gaps of up to around a substantial 80 per cent (the United Kingdom and the United States) have been calculated, with the Middle East case study (perhaps surprisingly) presenting the lowest gender artvalue gaps of as low as 2 per cent. The price of being a woman artist therefore is substantially different to that of being born male and therefore one’s gender as an artist can be said to significantly impact upon the various valuations ascribed to art. Higher auction prices tend to be achieved by women when they paint with mixed media, household paint and acrylic: moving away from the supposed masculinity of oil paint, the use of newer mediums perhaps allows a genderneutral space for women to flourish. However, there is a substantial and statistically significant difference between the higher priced figurative works by male artists compared to their lower selling female colleagues. It has emerged that paintings by women are significantly more likely to fetch higher prices if they are abstract. Conversely, it was found that paintings by male artists are more likely to fetch higher prices if the works are figurative. When work by men is signed, it goes up in value; conversely when work by women is signed, it goes down in value. If indeed unsigned paintings made by female artists are shown to be more valuable than those which are signed, this prompts one to question if the revelation of a feminine or female signature could in fact devalue the artwork to the extent that women artists are more likely to leave their work unsigned. These findings indicate that if a painting has been made by a male artist, the apparent asset of masculinity could add to the painting’s value. The position for female artists shows that women’s representation or popularity appears to have declined since the 1990s rather than reach a stasis, and it is clear fewer women artists are now achieving success. In this scenario, the glass ceiling could therefore be described as a descending glass ceiling. In ‘The museum exposed: Gendered visibilities and essentialist aesthetics through equality’ (Chapter 3), another new theory in paint – an essentialist aesthetics – has been detected through analysis of the Finnish National Gallery’s (FNG) gender-equal contemporary art collection. Statistically significant findings were made in the discovery of differences found in the use of lightness for example in Finnish paintings between the genders suggesting a distinct Nordic feminine and masculine aesthetic in the Finnish model as opposed to the

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new androgynous aesthetics in contemporary painting elsewhere. It is therefore arguable that a stronger female visibility in Finnish painting has enabled a distinct gender identity to develop, that gender equality, perhaps, equates to a greater freedom of expression – or certainly, a distinct Nordic feminine and masculine aesthetic. Butler’s anti-essentialist suggestion is to embrace gender fluidity, ‘when gender expression shifts between masculine and feminine’.8 The contentious issue here is that it is arguable an essentialist standpoint aligns itself with a supposed masculinist approach to gender. In other words one is born either female or male, and gender does not have the fluidity claimed by such theorists as Butler, nor does it allow a freedom of creativity, evidenced through the examination of the sample of paintings from the FNG collection. It was observed in Chapter 3 that perhaps we need to be more aware not only of our society’s achievements in equality but also of the difficulties and inequalities we are still faced with. If it takes an essentialist and supposed ‘masculinist’ approach to identify those difficulties and inequalities, then perhaps we need to re-adapt and re-define a feminist fluidity of gender to establish a so-called ‘masculine’ research territory in order to make new ground and explore and generate new knowledge for the benefit of future generations. In addition, I noted there can be no harm in introducing new methodologies to the field. Moreover, and referring to Butler’s troublesome gender dictum, the fluidity of research methods is perhaps as relevant here as the proposed fluidity of gender itself. Contrary to the discovery of a new androgynous aesthetics in our less equal twenty-first-century museum collections, this new metatheory of ‘essentialist aesthetics’ has occurred alongside an anti-essentialist feminist call towards non-binarification of gender, the fluidity of and the right to select one’s gender, and archaic shadows cast over the notion of the feminine ‘sub-category’ and devaluation of symbolic and economic values in art which is created ‘by women’. However, as stated in Chapter 3, it is important to consider that if the construction of one of our most equal societies has led to very specific essentialist characteristics in the collection of its citizens’ artwork, then perhaps the notion of essentialism ought to be reconsidered. Perhaps we need more ‘dissident’ feminists such as Camille Paglia and Ward Jouvre; let us listen to reason and challenge the dictatorship of some of our big theorists, and move forward towards a freedom of expression and creativity – and ultimately towards an equality as yet unseen. Institutional collections worldwide within the sample (excluding the FNG) were found to contain a disproportionately low female artist visibility. There

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seems to be a global lack of guidance and governance on this issue. While the exposure and support of the Guerrilla Girls by our unequal institutions is indeed a clever tactic or accident to mask the illusion of equality, it was argued that our (often publicly funded) museums’ ‘politically correct’ press articles promoting women artists could be doing female artists more harm than good. It was also demonstrated that work by female artists who are collected by the Tate is likely to be worth slightly less than work by female artists who are not collected by the Tate: when work by a male artist is collected by the museum, the economic value of his work increases; when work by a female artist is collected by the museum, the economic value of her work decreases. It was hinted at that as no other explanation could be given and that there seems to be no concrete method by which museums value their assets, that museums could have over-valued work by women in order to increase gender targets. Meanwhile, institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum may have increased its gender ratio though the launch of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art (undoubtedly generously supported and well intended), yet such an annex arguably risks women’s continued struggle to penetrate the actual structure of the museum organization and achieve equality in the artworld, risking that art history may never be reviewed to be more inclusive to its women artists. In Chapter 4 ‘Gender Parity and Arts Prizes: “Only Men Are Capable of Aesthetic Greatness”’, I discussed the multiple mantras of womankind’s creative inferiority throughout history, some of which has been spectacularly recent and contemporary. Brian Sewell’s belief that women are incapable of aesthetic greatness is borne out in the statistics, with eight out of ten prizes internationally (the Middle East, America, the UK and Europe), displaying a disproportionate gender disparity. Prizes in the Middle East, however, were found to be more gender equal than elsewhere, a finding that lies alongside its claim to the smallest gender value gaps in the sample. In a British case study, it was demonstrated that in the case of the JMPP, the Turner Prize (shortlist only) and New Contemporaries, that the symbolic value attributed to the nomination or award or a prize has converted into, or supported the increase of an artist’s economic capital. The anomaly here is that there is little difference in the auction prices of those who have won – or not won – the Turner Prize. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference when one analyses the price of works made by artists who have been shortlisted for the prize. Thus the Turner ‘prize’ may not be the ultimate validator, but rather the validator appears to be inclusion within the shortlist itself. Again, the findings of this case

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study suggest that if both female and male artists are not given equal chances of being placed in longlists or shortlists for arts prizes because of their gender, that this can significantly impact not only upon their opportunities for visibility and exposure but also upon their chances of being selected for museum inclusion and thus on having their careers propelled forward through the prestige of such symbolic capital being attributed to their work. It was also demonstrated that the award of, or nomination for, a prize leads to the addition of symbolic value upon an artist’s work. Unfortunately, this also depends and is valued upon whether one happens to have been born male or female. While it is likely this is not intentional, museums could reinforce the view that male symbolic value is of a higher worth than female symbolic value. This in turn is a value that may be passed, by example, onto collectors and other stakeholders and thus positively impacts upon the value of work made by male artists, and conversely have a negative impact upon the value of work made by female artists. The next chapter discussed gendered (Bourdieuian) cultural and social capital in contemporary painting. Chapter 5, ‘The importance of wearing the right old (art) school tie: Networking, gender and painting values’, argued that for an artist to receive full recognition, the process of boosting their cultural and social capitals is vital to validation – but the full impact of this is again dependent upon one’s gender. In a new case study of British art, the relationship between an artist’s place of birth/place where the artist lives and or works was addressed in order to determine if there is any significance attached to location and museum inclusion. Artists have a statistically greater chance of achieving Tate inclusion if they happened to have been born in London. This intimates that one’s cultural and social background is important to one’s chance of symbolic success through museum inclusion. It has already been established in Chapter 3 that the statistics on inclusion in the Tate suggests the collection of male artists appears to be a priority. As a link can be shown to an artist’s birthplace and social capital such as a London connection, Chapter 5 argued that female social capital is viewed as less valuable than that of men. A male artist who was born in London is far more likely to have museum (Tate) inclusion than a female artist born in London. Here, it can be seen that an artist has a statistically greater chance of national (Tate) inclusion if they have chosen (or are able) to live or work in the capital city London. This again suggests that one’s social background and foreground is important to an artist’s chance of symbolic success through museum inclusion. In analysing gender alongside place of residence, it can be seen that 57 per cent

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of the female artists in the sample have chosen to live and work in London, compared to 50 per cent of male artists. As a link can be shown to draw together the importance of an artist’s place of residence and accumulation of social capital, this would again suggest that female social capital is not as valuable as that of the men. A male artist who lives in London is more likely to have Tate inclusion than a female artist, thus a contemporary male artist’s symbolic capital could be said to exchange for a higher rate than similar currency acquired by a contemporary female artist. It was also suggested (with regret) which British art schools would be likely to lead to the greatest chances for success in all forms of capital, and that both female and male painters are likely to sell their work for a higher price if they have obtained a London-based undergraduate art education than one elsewhere in regions sited in other parts of the UK or abroad. This suggests that such cultural and ensuing social capital contributes to the maintenance of inequality as people from poorer backgrounds may be increasingly unable to afford the high costs of a London-based education without a student’s essential supplementary parttime work eating significantly into their study. This is particularly pertinent in the case of female art students who, for example, form 74 per cent of fine art graduates in the UK.9 While male artists are in the minority, they are still more likely to achieve higher prices at auction through a more valuable gendered social or cultural capital accumulation. As only 30 per cent of postgraduate qualifiers are male, this arguably demonstrates women are significantly disadvantaged and that cultural and social capitals are also gendered and valued accordingly, thus converting to economic capitals and maintaining a gendered inequality.10 Taking the auction prices as evidence, it is not unreasonable to assume that female currencies acquired through postgraduate art education may be viewed as less valuable than those of their male colleagues. While all respondents spoke about the importance of networking, several female artists discussed their own personal experiences of bringing up a family and not being able to attend previews as a result of motherhood. Research also suggests that women in particular experience barriers to networking because of time constraints and family responsibilities. Margaret Harrison raised an important point here: all-male groups and all-female groups meeting individually to discuss the same issues are perceived in different ways. The men may be seen to be negotiating, organizing, strategizing and achieving, whereas the women may be judged as gossiping and wasting time. Consistent with Bourdieu’s theory, Chapter 5 considered examples of how social, symbolic and cultural capital can convert back into economic

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capital, and therefore maintain class – and in the case of this book’s research – gender inequality. This chapter has therefore led to some important, significant (and perhaps alarming!) findings. Both cultural and social capitals are perceived as gendered, by both stakeholders and external parties. In line with the findings of the symbolic capital analysis, female cultural and social capital is seen as less valuable than the same capitals in male colleagues, and when cultural and social capitals are converted back into economic currency, female artists appear to be judged differently to male artists. In fact, all forms of female Bourdieuian currency are viewed as being less valuable than those acquired or accumulated by male artists. Therefore, the structure and organization of economic, symbolic, cultural and social currencies enable not only a general wealth inequality but also an inequality that is very specific to female stakeholders. The issue of fact being stranger than fiction was commented upon in Chapter 6, ‘Sexism and ageism in visual art values – “But men are allowed to be old or ugly!”’, with a discussion on Siri Hustvedt’s timely novel The Blazing World, where a repressed older female painter living in New York has become so frustrated with her lack of artworld recognition that she persuades three male friends to show her work under their own names. It was also argued that many arts prizes and gallery requisitions mean that artists over the age of thirty-five are excluded and unable to participate, an issue that of course affects both men and women. However, artworld exclusion seems to particularly affect women, as Margaret Harrison commented, ‘But men are allowed to be old or ugly!’ intimating that the work or ability of women artists could often be judged on a woman’s appearance and physical brand, something the visual arts appears to have in common with the TV and film industries.11 Talented younger female artists have been seen to play on their relative youth as a method of selfpromotion, their practice and brand appearing to rely very much upon being young and glamorous – thus helping to reaffirm the polarity between the old and the young, and the possible juxtaposition of gendered age-related success or failure appertaining to female artists. The findings of this chapter indeed suggest that younger artists may be explicitly asserting their brand of youth and sexuality, perhaps above the art they produce, while concurrently sealing the limits of their own shelf life on the market. Although there are of course examples of high-profile women who have done exceedingly well, women are still creating symbolically recognized work (prizewinning artwork) at a younger age than men. There is a significant difference in the ages of female and male artists achieving validation through

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prizes: this suggests that work created by older women artists is not achieving the same visibility or validation, and therefore may be subject to discrimination – or perhaps our women artists are simply dropping out. Perhaps it is intended that work created by sexually desirable younger women is seen as more desirable, as are the women themselves. Perhaps the wheels of ‘The Pram in the Hall’, referred to in Chapter 5, are also starting to spin out of control and another glass ceiling presents itself here – not only upon the perceived values of women’s artwork but also perhaps upon the age up to which a woman can achieve success. In an assessment of the Nordic regions, Finland presents itself exactly equal in gender parity. This is pertinent if we browse back to Chapter 3 where a new essentialist aesthetics was proposed to have emerged between the Finnish genders, as a result of a pioneering and long-standing equality elsewhere in the country. Chapter 6 presented instances of discrimination against female artists by male gatekeepers in the artworld, with one artist even suggesting what seems to be the resurgence of a new contemporary hysteria in the art workplace, intimating the once forgotten Victorian malady of the womb is not dead. Many of the female artists I talked to complained about incidents of female to female discrimination within the artworld. This form of sexism is often referred to as the ‘Queen Bee’ syndrome, hinting at a self-fulfilling prophecy of male domination. Perhaps we can understand the reasons for some women disguising their artwork with initials only such that they are androgynous and unrecognizable as wo-man. The artworld appears to have created an arena rife in discrimination and workplace bullying with the painful stings of Queen Bees and others, which in other industries may not be tolerated quite so blatantly. What could be done to eliminate these various causes of inequality was proposed in Chapter 7 of Women Can’t Paint, ‘Smashing the glass ceiling of the value of women’s artwork’. Discussions and strategies have been presented, which have come about as a result of the book’s research findings. I firmly believe that such manifestos, if adopted in our unequal society, could help to lift the heavy and gendered, glass ceiling weighted down over the ambition, talent and potential of our women artists. Rather than allow white heteromasculinity to continue to underpin our education system, we need to rewrite our art history programmes to be more inclusive so that they do not contribute to the continued underrepresentation and marginalization of women artists. We need to fight for equality in white heteromasculine museum collections, which very often draw from the public purse to exclude over half of the population. We need

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museum diversity and collection policies to be fully inclusive and take account of gender, along with new gender quotas or caps to enable a new equality to emerge. An equality could stem from greater museum and institutional PR responsibility, because our female artists are not tokenist so they should not be presented as so. Artworld regulation should be overhauled so that the onceVictorian and gender-specific malady of hysteria does not rear its ugly head as a surprising method of oppression and discrimination, as it appears to have done very recently in our unpoliced artworld. As art historians or researchers from within the realm of gender studies, let us embrace a quantitative methodology. Numbers after all have been the basis of some of the greatest art in our history books. Finally, our great educational institutions ought to be funding research and possible solutions to the problems they may have partly created or been implicit in the formation of. It is not enough to draw attention to the problems, only to fund relatively inconsequential projects that will only make a difference to the lives of a token number of people. If every arts institution were to fund a small body of research relating to the wider context of inequality, this could have a significant impact upon a huge amount of people: our women artists today and the wider context and supporting network of players, not to mention the possible creation of a gender-equal artworld to enable our daughters and granddaughters to flourish. It has been firmly declared that Georg Baselitz’s poor judgement of artwork quality is based simply and ignorantly upon the biology of the artwork’s creator – and a myriad of glass ceilings have been glued together to prescribe shards of limitations upon the success of female artists. As we have seen, women artists’ social and symbolic capital is gendered and valued accordingly by gatekeepers. Women can paint. We have seen how Bourdieu’s social, symbolic and cultural capitals have indeed converted back into economic capital and maintained gender inequality. If enough notice is taken of the findings in this book and the glass ceilings are broken down shard by shard, we will surely see the values ascribed to women’s artwork soar. Collectors and gatekeepers take note: this is not an ending. The sequel to this book will continue to expose artworld inequalities old and new. Let us work together to break new ground. Let us make the world a better place. Let the revolution begin! #womencantpaint

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Glossary

Abstract painting  Refers to non-representational painting. The category ‘abstract’ has also been listed as a ‘subject matter’, as some paintings within the sample were defined as not representing anything other than the abstract.1 Anarcha-feminism  ‘A political and philosophical theory combining anarchism and feminism, which typically views the state as patriarchal and oppressive.’2 Androgynous aesthetics  The aesthetics of an object, or pictorial qualities of a painting which are ‘partly female and partly male in appearance, of indeterminate sex, or having the physical characteristics of both sexes’.3 First noted as a theory by Helen Gørrill in her PhD thesis ‘The Gendered Economic and Symbolic Values in Contemporary British Painting’ (2016). Anti-Essentialism  ‘Anti-essentialism’ refutes essentialist stand-points. ‘Essentialism is the notion that there is a single woman’s experience that has a clear, constant meaning for everyone in that group. Hence, anti-essentialism accepts that women have multiple voices rather than one clear standpoint.’4 Arithmophobia  The fear of numbers.5 Backlash  ‘A sudden and adverse reaction, esp to a political or social development.’6 See also, Susan Faludi’s text Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. Catalogue of partial catalogues raisonnés (CPCR)  A new term for a catalogue raisonné that contains entries for multiple artists, rather than a monograph of a single artist’s oeuvre. Catalogue Raisonné  A catalogue raisonné is typically formed of a compilation of one-page summaries of a work of art, including text and an image of the work in question. ‘[An] essential tool for art historians, curators, and dealers whose research focuses on understanding the development and oeuvres of individual artists.’7 Cisgendered  Cisgendered describes ‘people whose gender identity matches their birth sex’.8 Cultural Capital  ‘A capital, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the forms of educational qualifications etc.’9 Differential Aesthetics In Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophy and Feminist Understandings, Florence and Foster state, ‘According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term differential means relating to, depending on, or exhibiting the differences of two or more […] physical qualities or effects. Differential in our understanding concerns the relation of the physical/material to all the energies, ideas and psychosocial elements that are often posed as not material.’10

184 Glossary Economic Capital  ‘A capital which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the forms of property rights.’11 Essentialism  In relation to gender, the attribute of a fixed essence to women and men. ‘A belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.’12 Essentialist aesthetics  A term used to describe the appearance of an artwork where it can be shown that the work is specifically ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ depending upon the gender ascribed to its creator. Feminazi  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a derogatory term for a radical feminist, ‘1990s blend of feminist and Nazi’. Feminine  ‘Having qualities or an appearance traditionally associated with women, especially delicacy and prettiness.’13 Figurative painting  Refers to representational painting.14 Gatekeeper  ‘The process by which an individual or group controls access to goods and services but particularly to information and people with power.’15 Gender  ‘“Gender” describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine. “Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.” However, the reader should note that within the confines of this book, the terms “gender” and “sex” may be interchangeable and fluid.’16 Gender conformity  ‘For women: behaving and appearing in ways that are considered feminine. For men: behaving and appearing in ways that are considered masculine.’17 Gender non-conformity  ‘Behaving and appearing in ways that are considered atypical for one’s gender.’18 Gender quota  ‘Quotas for women entail that women must constitute a certain number or percentage of the members of a body, whether it is a candidate list, a parliamentary assembly, a committee, or a government. The quota system places the burden of recruitment not on the individual woman, but on those who control the recruitment process.’19 Gender stereotypes  ‘A gender stereotype is a generalised view or preconception about attributes or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by, or the roles that are or should be performed by women and men. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and make choices about their lives and life plans. Harmful stereotypes can be both hostile/negative (e.g., women are irrational) or seemingly benign (e.g., women are nurturing). It is for example based on the stereotype that women are more nurturing that child rearing responsibilities often fall exclusively on them.’20 Gender stereotyping  ‘Gender stereotyping refers to the practice of ascribing to an individual woman or man specific attributes, characteristics, or roles by reason only

Glossary  185 of her or his membership in the social group of women or men. Gender stereotyping is wrongful when it results in a violation or violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. An example of this is the failure to criminalize marital rape based on societal perception of women as the sexual property of men.’21 Gendered  ‘Reflecting the experience, prejudices, or orientations of one sex more than the other.’22 Gender-neutral  ‘Suitable for, applicable to, or common to both female and male genders.’23 Glass ceiling  The term ‘glass ceiling’ was first used by Gay Bryant to define an inevitable career obstruction. Bryant noted, ‘Women have reached a certain point […] I call it the glass ceiling. They’re in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck.’24 Hammer Price  Auction houses and pay-per-view auction result websites usually publish a distorted (higher) historic auction price than the one which is used today to report on auction sale prices. The lower value published price represents the ‘hammer price’ of paintings, rather than the inflated final auction price that includes buyer’s premium, seller’s premium and VAT which is more widely used today in order to present a higher selling price to the public. Hashtag Feminism  ‘Hashtag feminism covers, specifically, feminist tweets on Twitter, and more broadly, feminist movements that occur primarily on the internet. Hashtag feminism has no singular definition, but, because it is a people-led movement, it has multi-faceted, ever-changing definitions.’25 Hex-code  ‘A colour hex code is a way of specifying colour using hexadecimal values. The code itself is a hex triplet, which represents three separate values that specify the levels of the component colors. The code starts with a hashtag (#) and is followed by six hex values or three hex value pairs (for example, #AFD645). The code is generally associated with HTML and websites, viewed on a screen, and as such the hex value pairs refer to the red, green and blue (RGB) colour space.’26 Indirect discrimination  ‘Putting rules or arrangements in place that apply to everyone, but that put someone with a protected characteristic at an unfair disadvantage’ and harassment – ‘unwanted behaviour linked to a protected characteristic that violates someone’s dignity or creates an offensive environment for them’.27 Inter-relational aesthetics  The term ‘inter-relational aesthetics’ is a new concept developed by the researcher as a result of the database finding patterns of values within different forms of aesthetic qualities. Intersectionality  ‘Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the

186 Glossary organisation of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.’28 Lightness  A summary of the overall average lightness in each painting, calculated using five different software packages consecutively: Microsoft Office Picture Manager, Adobe Photoshop CC, a colour laboratory convertor (Color Hexa) and IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Machismo  ‘An attitude, quality or way of behaving that agrees with traditional ideas about men being very strong and aggressive.’29 Masculine  ‘Having qualities or appearance traditionally associated with men.’30 Medium  For the purpose of this research, the medium or mediums refers to the type of paint applied to a solid surface or support. Minority group  ‘A subordinate group whose members have significantly less control or power over their lives than members of a dominant or majority group.’31 Orientation  Within this context, ‘Orientation’ generally refers to whether a painting is taller than wider (portrait), wider than taller (landscape), square or executed on other formats such as circular or triangular. Overall Average Lightness See Lightness Pop feminism  According to Su Holmes and Diane Negra, In the Limelight and Under the Microscope, pop feminism is ‘marked by a high-profile, culturally pervasive, quasi-feminist rhetoric. This rhetoric relied heavily on female celebrities who embraced the “bad girl” stereotype.’ In Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home, Barbara Klinger notes that pop feminism ‘presumes female independence and girl power’. Queen Bee  Queen Bees ‘are senior women in male-dominated organizations who have achieved success by emphasizing how they differ from other women’.32 Revenge feminism  ‘Revenge feminism’ refers to extreme reactions or solutions to patriarchy and oppression, for example SCUM. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution and Intercourse.33 Scale  The size of the surface area of the 2-D painting, presented as cm². Sex  ‘Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs. Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.’ However, the reader should note that within the confines of this study, the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ may be interchangeable and fluid.34 Social capital  ‘The links, shared values and understandings in society that enable individuals and groups to trust each other and so work together’, ‘a capital made up of social obligations (“connections”)’.35 SPSS  The Statistics Package for the Social Sciences, industry standard statistics software.

Glossary  187 ‘Superwoman’ cult  ‘The idea that [as a woman] you can have it all’ – family and a fulltime career.36 Support  Within this book, a ‘support’ generally refers to the solid 2-D ground which an artist has selected to paint upon, for example canvas, wood, metal and so on. Symbolic capital In Distinction, Bourdieu refers to symbolic capital as ‘the acquisition of a reputation of competence and an image of respectability and honourability’.37 A symbolic value is a capital based upon honour, prestige or recognition – such as the award of an arts prize, or museum inclusion. However, the term ‘symbolic capital’ is often used as an umbrella term for other non-economic forms of currency. Tokenism  ‘The practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.’38 Toxic masculinity  ‘Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits – which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual – are the means by which your status as ‘man’ can be taken away.’39 White heteromasculinism  ‘White heteromasculinism’ is defined by Carrie Mott and Daniel Cockayne as a ‘system of oppression’ that benefits only those who are ‘white, male, able-bodied, economically privileged, heterosexual, and cisgendered’ (see ‘Cisgendered’).40

188 

Appendices

Notes This section contains all the appendices referred to throughout the book. Some of the appendices contain codes. The key for reading this is as follows: Example: Reynolds Alan P23111993-109 The underlined code starts with a letter to denote the auctioneer responsible for selling the artwork (P=Phillips, S=Sothebys, C=Christies, B=Bonhams). The first number that follows the letter indicates the date the auction took place (e.g. 23 November 1993). The second number that follows after the hyphen indicates the lot number (e.g. -109 is Lot no. 109). Therefore the example denotes a work of art sold as Lot 109 made by Alan Reynolds that was sold at a Phillips auction on 23 November 1993. In some charts, the names of female artists have been highlighted in italics to emphasize the gender’s low visibility or disproportionate representation.

Appendix 1: Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 1992–4 London auctions

Freud Lucien S29061994-15 Kossoff Leon S02121992-59 Hockney David S30061994-24 Auerbach Frank S07071992-39 Auerbach Frank S02121992-53 Freud Lucien C03121992-55 Bacon Francis C02071992-46 Freud Lucien S26031992-34 Freud Lucien S24061993-41 Auerbach Frank S07071992-61 Hodgkin Howard S02121993-44 Auerbach Frank S02121992-63 Kossoff Leon S26031992-53 Hodgkin Howard C26101994-194 Kitaj Ronald S29061994-52 Riley Bridget C11061992-38 Auerbach Frank S30061994-229 Auerbach Frank C25051994-128

£798,606

Phillips Tom C26031993-54

£11,740

£355,870

Aitchison Craigie C25051994-168

£11,284

£347,220

Jones Allen C26031992-89

£10,863

£262,220

Phillips Peter C26031993-78

£10,837

£252,855

Howson Peter C26101994-231

£10,666

£215,395

Frost Terry C11061992-73

£10,301

£187,300

Riley Bridget C11061992-39

£10,301

£149,840

Blackadder Eliz. C26101994-232

£9,777

£99,341

Frost Terry C26101994-163

£9,777

£93,650

Williams Kyffin B05111992-102

£9,739

£86,697

Oulton Therese S30061994-230

£9,548

£78,666

Green Anthony C11061992-70

£9,365

£74,920

Innes Callum S30061994-267

£8,680

£71,112

Caulfield Patrick C11061992-80

£8,428

£62,499

Frink Elizabeth C11061992-88

£8,428

£56,190

Hockney David C25031993-67

£8,127

£48,610

Hoyland John C25051994-122

£7,638

£43,402

Bevan Tony C26031993-83

£7,586

Auerbach Frank S02121992-44 Hamilton Richard C24061993-76 Auerbach Frank S02121992-64 Kossoff Leon S02121993-42 Aitchison Craigie C25051994-166 Blake Peter S02121992-46 Jones Allen S07071992-67 Kossoff Leon C11061992-56 Pasmore Victor C26031993-4 Jones Allen C26031992-83 Auerbach Frank C11061992-57 Davie Alan S01121994-178 Heron Patrick C11061992-43 Jones Allen C26031992-81 Auerbach Frank C26101994-213 Davie Alan C26031993-36 Davie Alan C26031993-75 Davie Alan C11061992-42 Davie Alan S01121994-163 Kossoff Leon C26031992-94 Kossoff Leon C02121993-147 Bellany John C11061992-66 Davie Alan C26101994-153 Auerbach Frank C25031993-93

Appendix 1

191

£41,206

Cook Beryl B16071992-94

£7,492

£39,736

Frink Elisabeth C11061992-89

£7,492

£37,460

Frost Terry C26101994-161

£7,466

£36,124

Davie Alan C26031993-35

£7,224

£32,117

Davie Alan S26031992-6

£7,117

£29,968

Frink Elisabeth C11061992-91

£7,117

£29,968

Blackadder Eliz. C26101994-72

£7,111

£29,031

Hoyland John C25051994-124

£6,944

£28,899

Frost Terry C11061992-47

£6,742

£22,476

McLean Bruce C26031993-81

£6,682

£21,539

Buckley Stephen C25051994-125

£6,597

£21,333

Green Anthony C11061992-69

£6,555

£20,603

Ham. Fraser, D. B16071992-192

£6,555

£20,603

Davie Alan C26031993-50

£6,321

£20,444

Weight Carel P23111993-42

£6,321

£19,868

Turnbull William C26031993-58

£6,141

£19,868

Freud Lucien C25051994-131

£6,076

£19,666

Craxton John C26101994-113

£5,866

£19,555

Frink Elisabeth C26031993-91

£5,779

£18,730

Rego Paula C26031993-74

£5,779

£18,062

Heron Patrick C11061992-44

£5,619

£17,793

Heron Patrick C11061992-45

£5,619

£17,778

Philipson Robin B10021992-74

£5,583

£17,158

Hoyland John C25051994-127

£5,555 (Continued)

Appendix 1

192 Bellany John C26031993-66 Davie Alan C26101994-214 Davie Alan C25051994-96 Craxton John C26101994-92 Hambling Maggie C26031993-76 Charlton Alan C26101994-259 Aitchison Craigie B16071992-138 Aitchison Craigie C25051994-167

£17,158

Gear William S03121993-153

£5,418

£15,111

Hockney David C25031993-87

£5,418

£13,888

Pasmore Victor C26031993-5

£5,418

£13,333

Phillips Tom C26031993-84

£5,418

£12,643

Clough Prunella C11061992-74

£5,244

£12,444

Clough Prunella C11061992-80

£5,244

£12,174

Ham. Fraser, D. C11061992-52

£5,244

£12,152

Hoyland John C11061992-81

£5,244

Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, B = Bonhams, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 2: Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 2012–14 London auctions

Doig Peter C01072014-14 Doig Peter S30062014-27 Doig Peter C13022013-9 Doig Peter C25062013-9 Brown Glenn S26022012-23 Doig Peter C16102014-58 Brown Glenn S17102013-13 Hockney David C13022013-12 Hockney David S26062013-10 Riley Bridget C13022014-13 Brown Glenn P27052013-9 Hockney David S26022012-35 Doig Peter C13022014-9 Auerbach Frank S30062014-29 Brown Glenn C18102013-15 Saville Jenny C13022014-? Doig Peter C25062013-16 Auerbach Frank S12022014-14

£8,800,000

Brown Glenn P28062012-10

£400,000

£7,500,000

Hirst Damien C11102012-33

£400,000

£6,500,000

Auerbach Frank S12102012-30

£380,000

£6,500,000

Brown Cecily S17102013-15

£380,000

£4,600,000

Hirst Damien S16022012-118

£380,000

£4,000,000

Riley Bridget S15022012-35

£380,000

£3,100,000

Hirst Damien S15022012-34

£370,000

£3,100,000

Riley Bridget S13022013-138

£370,000

£3,000,000

Auerbach Frank S26022012-41

£350,000

£2,500,000

Doig Peter C18102013-16

£350,000

£2,300,000

Hirst Damien S12022013-43

£350,000

£2,200,000

Hirst Damien S26062013-52

£350,000

£2,050,000

Hirst Damien S26062013-55

£350,000

£2,000,000

Hirst Damien S26062013-67

£350,000

£2,000,000

Auerbach Frank C14022012-10

£340,000

£1,800,000

Hume Gary C13022014-6

£340,000

£1,650,000

Banksy P10022014-26

£330,000

£1,550,000

Banksy S13022013-218

£330,000 (Continued)

Appendix 2

194 Hockney David C02072014-130 Riley Bridget S26062013-12 Anderson Hurvin C01072014-15 Hockney David S26062013-9 Brown Glenn C01072014-21 Hirst Damien C25062013-24 Hirst Damien S26022012-24 Hirst Damien S30062014-4 Hirst Damien C27062012-17 Hirst Damien C13022014-1 Hockney David C13022013-13 Hirst Damien C16102014-62 Doig Peter S17102014-10 Brown Cecily P14022013-19 Brown Cecily C13022013-71 Doig Peter C19102013-241 Auerbach Frank C13022013-21 Hirst Damien S12022013-39 Doig Peter S26062013-328 Auerbach Frank C25062013-30 Hirst Damien P10102012-19 Hirst Damien S26022012-75 Kossoff Leon S15022012-41 Brown Glenn S12022013-29

£1,400,000

Hirst Damien S17102014-50

£320,000

£1,350,000

Hockney David S13022014-150

£320,000

£1,100,000

Ofili Chris C13022014-7

£320,000

£960,000

Saville Jenny S26062013-49

£320,000

£950,000

Auerbach Frank B02072014-40

£310,000

£950,000

Auerbach Frank S26022012-37

£310,000

£950,000

Anderson Hurvin S17102014-11

£300,000

£900,000

Auerbach Frank S26022012-40

£300,000

£800,000

Brown Cecily C26062013-237

£300,000

£750,000

Hirst Damien C13022013-35

£300,000

£750,000

Hirst Damien C27062012-38

£300,000

£650,000

Hirst Damien S26022012-25

£300,000

£620,000

Hodgkin Howard C01072014-49

£300,000

£610,000

Hodgkin Howard S15022012-45

£300,000

£580,000

Auerbach Frank S12102012-27

£280,000

£555,000

Hockney David P16102013-21

£280,000

£550,000

Hodgkin Howard S26022012-34

£280,000

£530,000

Riley Bridget S13102012-140

£280,000

£520,000

Riley Bridget S26062013-146

£280,000

£500,000

Hodgkin Howard S27062012-179

£265,250

£500,000

Hirst Damien C17102014-261

£265,000

£500,000

Auerbach Frank S26022012-36

£260,000

£500,000

Hockney David C26062013-127

£260,000

£480,000

Wateridge Jonathan C11102012-3

£260,000 (Continued)

Hirst Damien P15102014-27 Hirst Damien S15022012-26 Hockney David C17102014-260 Anderson Hurvin S30062014-34 Auerbach Frank S26022012-38 Hirst Damien C01072014-62 Brown Glenn S17102013-17 Saville Jenny C01072014-63

Appendix 2

195

£480,000

Anderson Hurvin S26062013-50

£250,000

£480,000

Doig Peter S27062012-263

£250,000

£480,000

Hirst Damien S27062012-227

£250,000

£450,000

Riley Bridget S18102013-148

£250,000

£450,000

Hirst Damien P14022013-20

£245,000

£450,000

Blake Peter C27062012-22

£240,000

£420,000

Hirst Damien P02072014-10

£240,000

£420,000

Kossoff Leon S16022012-216

£240,000

Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, B = Bonhams, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 3: Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 1992–4 London auctions per cm²

Freud Lucien S26031992-34 Freud Lucien C03121992-55 Freud Lucien S24061993-41 Bacon Francis C02071992-46 Freud Lucien S29061994-15 Auerbach Frank S02121992-44 Hodgkin Howard S02121993-44 Auerbach Frank S07071992-61 Auerbach Frank C25051994-128 Williams Kyffin B01041993-93 Auerbach Frank C11061992-57 Kossoff Leon C26031992-94 Auerbach Frank S02121992-63 Auerbach Frank S02121992-64 Hockney David S30061994-24 Auerbach Frank C25031993-93 Auerbach Frank S07071992-39 Auerbach Frank S02121992-53

£1480.63

Paolozzi Edouardo C26031993-94

£2.71

£542.69

Jones Allen B01041993-73

£2.66

£193.64

Craxton John C26101994-113

£2.60

£172.98

Riley Bridget C11061992-38

£2.55

£172.08

Frost Terry C11061992-79

£2.44

£96.45

Frink Elisabeth C11061992-89

£2.36

£78.80

Davie Alan C26031993-36

£2.35

£57.33

Frink Elizabeth C11061992-88

£2.09

£43.12

Weight Carel P23111993-42

£2.02

£34.00

Craxton John C26101994-92

£2.01

£27.51

Frost Terry C26101994-163

£1.97

£25.97

Davie Alan C26031993-35

£1.97

£21.14

Phillips Tom C26031993-54

£1.88

£20.11

Hockney David C25031993-87

£1.84

£18.70

Jones Allen C26031992-81

£1.67

£17.50

Gear William C11061992-9

£1.62

£17.43

Weight Carel C13051994-123

£1.60

£15.67

Feiler Paul C26031993-47

£1.57

Kossoff Leon S02121992-59 Auerbach Frank S30061994-229 Kossoff Leon C11061992-56 Pasmore Victor C26031993-4 Hodgkin Howard C26101994-194 Pasmore Victor C26031993-5 Blake Peter S02121992-46 Aitchison Craigie C25051994-168 Hockney David C25031993-67 Freud Lucien C25051994-131 Kossoff Leon C02121993-147 Aitchison Craigie B16071992-138 Hamilton Richard C24061993-76 Auerbach Frank C26101994-216 Davie Alan C26031993-50 Heron Patrick C11061992-43 Auerbach Frank C26101994-213 Aitchison Craigie C25051994-167 Phillips Tom C26101994-247 Blackadder Elz. C26102994-228 Reynolds Alan C26101994-64 Kitaj Ronald S29061994-52 Ovenden Grah. C26101994-221 Heron Patrick C26031993-43

Appendix 3

197

£11.41

Oulton Therese C26031993-80

£1.55

£11.22

Bellany John C26031993-64

£1.55

£10.16

Reynolds Alan C26101994-63

£1.54

£9.28

Reynolds Alan B01041993-64

£1.50

£9.02

Reynolds Alan C26101994-62

£1.50

£8.85

Davie Alan C26101994-154

£1.49

£8.76

Frink Elisabeth C11061992-91

£1.45

£8.58

Gear William C25051994-53

£1.44

£8.16

Blackadder, Eliz. C26101994-232

£1.41

£8.07

Frost Terry C11061992-47

£1.40

£7.53

Newcomb Mary B01041993-84

£1.39

£7.53

Fedden Mary B16071992-80

£1.37

£7.32

Frink Elisabeth C26031993-91

£1.35

£7.08

Jones Allen C26031992-83

£1.32

£6.79

Bevan Tony C26031993-83

£1.32

£6.78

Heron Patrick C11061992-45

£1.32

£6.05

Ham. Fraser Don. C26101994-185

£1.28

£5.89

Davie Alan B16071992-109

£1.28

£5.64

Heron Patrick C11061992-44

£1.27

£5.40

Heron Patrick C25051994-58

£1.23

£5.17

Philipson Robin B10021992-74

£1.21

£4.95

Fedden Mary B16071992-157

£1.20

£4.36

Cook Beryl B16071992-94

£1.19

£3.96

Heron Patrick C26101994-166

£1.15 (Continued)

Appendix 3

198 Rego Paula C26031993-74 Reynolds Alan C26101994-65 Kossoff Leon S26031992-53 Kossoff Leon S02121993-42 Reynolds Alan P23111993-109 Davie Alan C26031993-75 Davie Alan S26031992-6 Armfield Diana B29071993-53

£3.90

Heron Patrick C25051994-62

£1.15

£3.86

Davie Alan S01121994-178

£1.14

£3.36

Davie Alan B16071992-108

£1.12

£3.23

Heath Adrian B05111992-60

£1.09

£3.22

Jones Allen S07071992-67

£1.07

£3.20

Davie Alan C11061992-42

£1.06

£3.20

Heron Patrick C25051994-60

£1.06

£3.20

Davie Alan S01121994-163

£1.05

Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, B = Bonhams, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 4: Contemporary British painters with ‘Top 100’ visibility at the 2012–14 London auctions per cm²

Blake Peter C28062012-253 Hockney David S26022012-35 Hockney David S26062013-9 Auerbach Frank S13022013-172 Doig Peter S17102014-10 Auerbach Frank C25062013-30 Auerbach Frank S12102012-30 Hirst Damien C19102013-372 Hirst Damien C17042013-388 Hockney David S13022014-150 Ofili Chris S26062013-353 Kossoff Leon S13022013-175 Auerbach Frank S26022012-36 Riley Bridget S26062013-12 Auerbach Frank S12102012-27 Doig Peter S26062013-328 Doig Peter C01072014-14 Blake Peter C27062012-22

£702.24

Auerbach Frank S17102013-27

£80.53

£591.23

Doig Peter C19102013-241

£77.63

£451.53

Hirst Damien S16022012-102

£77.36

£300.00

Doig Peter C02072014-171

£75.25

£263.45

Hockney David P16102013-21

£75.24

£233.94

Doig Peter S27062012-263

£74.71

£202.99

Auerbach Frank S26062013-150

£72.62

£198.01

Hockney David C02072014-130

£72.06

£193.39

Hockney David C13022013-13

£71.51

£193.23

Saville Jenny C16102014-63

£71.10

£181.81

Ofili Chris S27062012-274

£69.89

£181.20

Auerbach Frank S13022014-157

£69.72

£179.88

Auerbach Frank S12102012-29

£68.30

£170.82

Hirst Damien S16022012-157

£67.86

£163.45

Auerbach Frank S26022012-43

£67.25

£161.29

Doig Peter C02072014-170

£65.97

£160.29

Brown Glenn S26022012-23

£64.15

£156.43

Auerbach Frank C28062012-251

£61.31 (Continued)

Appendix 4

200 Auerbach Frank C13022013-21 Doig Peter S30062014-27 Auerbach Frank S30062014-29 Brown Glenn S12022013-29 Doig Peter C13022013-9 Doig Peter C25062013-9 Kossoff Leon C02072014-208 Hodgkin Howard S27062012-179 Auerbach Frank S26022012-40 Doig Peter C26062013-300 Doig Peter S13102012-279 Auerbach Frank S12022014-14 Auerbach Frank S26022012-42 Hodgkin Howard C01072014-49 Auerbach Frank S26022012-41 Shaw Raqib S17102014-12 Hume Gary S18102013-354 Ofili Chris S26062013-356 Auerbach Frank S26022012-38 Doig Peter C13022014-9 Doig Peter C18102013-16 Brown Glenn P28062012-10 Hockney David S26062013-10 Auerbach Frank B02072014-40

£154.31

Doig Peter C25062013-15

£60.63

£142.52

Doig Peter C19102013-240

£60.00

£134.37

Auerbach Frank S15022012-44

£58.82

£131.47

Riley Bridget C28062012-245

£58.00

£130.00

Riley Bridget C28062012-246

£56.69

£130.00

Kossoff Leon S13022014-153

£55.90

£128.99

Doig Peter C14022012-7

£53.30

£128.01

Brown Glenn S17102013-13

£51.40

£127.33

Riley Bridget C02072014-126

£49.90

£122.69

Hirst Damien S26022012-75

£49.42

£121.16

Brown Glenn S18102013-343

£49.07

£120.12

Brown Glenn S17102013-17

£48.19

£115.06

Ofili Chris C17102014-270

£48.06

£112.68

Riley Bridget C13022014-13

£46.75

£111.21

Hodgkin Howard C28062012-247

£45.51

£111.00

Banksy P10022014-26

£41.89

£111.00

Doig Peter C28062012-165

£40.50

£111.00

Ofili Chris S16022012-152

£40.44

£110.14

Hodgkin Howard S26022012-34

£40.24

£105.13

Hirst Damien C13022014-1

£38.90

£103.51

Hirst Damien S26062012-258

£38.31

£102.17

Auerbach Frank S18102013-215

£37.86

£101.99

Brown Cecily P15022013-150

£37.83

£101.70

Hodgkin Howard S13102012-139

£36.07

Doig Peter C25062013-16 Auerbach Frank C14022012-10 Auerbach Frank S13022014-156 Hockney David C13022013-12 Auerbach Frank S26022012-37 Brown Glenn C01072014-21 Doig Peter S13022013-256 Doig Peter C16102014-58

Appendix 4

201

£99.52

Brown Cecily S16022012-163

£34.95

£98.80

Hockney David C14022013-190

£34.93

£98.49

Banksy C26062013-380

£34.40

£92.56

Ofili Chris S13102012-278

£34.37

£90.93

Kossoff Leon S15022012-41

£33.95

£90.55

Kossoff Leon S01072014-230

£33.78

£82.87

Riley Bridget S13102012-138

£33.64

£81.73

Brown Glenn P27052013-9

£33.44

Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, B = Bonhams, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 5: Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The United States

Artwork Kusama C161116-181 Mehretu C161116-429 Kusama S18112016-141 Crosby S17122016-26 Sillman S18112016-407 Kusama S18112016-175 Kusama S18112016-174 Kusama S18112016-192 Auerbach P28022017-15 Owens S18112016-435

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

1,567,500 1,567,500 1,452,500 1,092,500 504,500 492,500 480,500 468,500 358,000 350,500

5,757,427 5,757,427 5,335,032 4,012,752 1,853,028 1,808,952 1,764,876 1,720,800 1,314,934 1,287,386

1,215,439 1,215,439 1,126,268 847,124 391,189 381,884 372,723 363,415 277,700 271,882

1,334,667 1,334,667 1,236,749 929,905 429,416 419,202 408,988 398,774 304,719 298,386

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 6: Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The United States

Artwork Richter S17122016-13 Richter S17122016-6 Richter C151116-28a Currin C151116-25a Hockney S17122016-43 Ryman C151116-27a Richter S17122016-10 Wool S17122016-30 Prince C151116-23a Doig C151116-26a

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

33,987,500 22,737,500 22,087,500 12,007,500 11,712,500 10,775,500 8,986,000 6,762,500 5,847,500 5,847,500

124,836,087 83,514,837 81,127,387 44,103,547 43,020,012 39,578,411 33,005,578 24,838,662 21,477,867 21,477,867

2,6374,300 17,644,300 17,139,900 9,326,938 9,094,756 8,367,175 6,977,629 5,251,081 4,540,583 4,540,583

28,929,225 19,353,534 18,811,481 10,226,547 9,975,301 9,176,495 7,652,544 5,759,976 4,980,622 4,980,622

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, P = Phillips, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 7: Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The Middle East

Artwork

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

Farmanfarmaian C16032016-35 Etemadi C16032016-148 Shafie C16032016-40 Caland C16032016-13 Kahraman C16032016-39 Halaby C16032016-127 Halaby C16032016-126 Pirhashemi 20102015-111 El Husseini C16032016-130 Balassanian C16032016-175

377,000 137,000 100,000 77,500 68,750 62,500 52,000 43,750 37,500 37,500

1,384,721 503,201 367,300 284,657 252,518 229,562 190,996 160,693 137,737 137,737

292,740 106,394 77,660 60,155 53,363 48,512 40,362 33,958 29,107 29,107

321,110 116,690 85,153 65,993 58,548 53,225 44,291 37,264 31,935 31,935

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 8: Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The Middle East

Artwork El-Nagdi C16032016-5 Zenderoudi C18032017-86 Moshiri C20102015-105 Zenderoudi C20102015-88 Zenderoudi C18102016-22 Banisadr C18032017-7 Zenderoudi C18032017-99 Al-Azawii C18102016-33 Baalbaki C20102015-106 Hossein C16032016-29

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

1,145,000 391,500 389,000 365,000 307,500 259,500 241,500 235,500 233,000 233,000

4,205,585 1,437,979 1,428,797 1,340,645 1,129,447 953,143 887,029 864,991 855,809 855,809

888,650 303.843 301,971 283,341 238,681 201,423 187,452 182,795 180,831 180,831

974,509 333,290 331,162 310,730 261,780 220,916 205,593 200,468 198,340 198,340

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 9: Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: The UK

Artwork Crosby C07032017-3 Brown C07032017-34 Peyton C08032017-110 Dumas C08032017-120 Kusama C08032017-149 Morris C08032017-151 Joffe S12042017-19 Peyton C08032017-3 Kusama S12042017-2 Peyton C08032017-104

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

3,075,774 2,205,710 121,900 60,950 57,902 57,902 40,379 33,522 27,458 24,380

11,297,317 8,101,572 447,738 223,869 212,674 212,674 148,312 123,126 118,434 89,547

2387415 1,710,117 94,521 47,260 49,297 49,297 31,309 25,992 25,018 18,921

2,621,808 1,877,759 103,775 51,892 49,292 49,292 34,375 144,590 23,377 20,756

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, S = Sothebys, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 10: Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: The UK

Artwork Doig C07032017-20 Oehlen C07032017-5 Ghenie C07032017-4 Hockney C07032017-5 Guyton C08032017-127 Rauch C07032017-21 Auerbach C07032017-25 Nara C07032017-54 Kiefer C07032017-50 Doig C07032017-49

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

15,530,398 3,623,230 2,205,710 2,205,710 1,322,615 1,032,590 885,950 709,982 621,998 592,670

57,043,151 13,308,123 8,101,572 8,101,572 4,857,964 3,792,703 3,254,094 2,607,763 2284598 2,176,876

12,060,907 2,814,525 1,712,954 1,712,954 1,027,142 801,909 687,849 551,228 482842 460,040

13,256,282 3,092,680 1,882,728 1,882,728 1,128,944 881,387 756,220 605,915 530828 505,755

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 11: Top 10 performing female artists in the sample: Europe (other than the UK)

Artwork

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

Verdier C08122016-Paris-117 von Heyl C11042017-AMS-31 Kneffel C11042017-AMS-230 Kneffel C11042017-AMS-228 Kneffel C11042017-AMS-229 Kneffel C11042017-AMS-227 Horn C11042017-AMS-153 Dumas C11042017-AMS-147 Zerres C11042017-AMS-244 Bianchi C08122016-Paris-286

86,745 55,809 45,179 37,206 26,576 23,918 23,750 15,281 13,288 5,657

318,614 204,986 165,942 136,657 97,613 87,850 87,233 56,127 48,806 20,778

67,658 43,529 35,238 29,019 20,728 18,655 18,524 11,918 10,364 4,412

73,763 47,456 38,417 31,637 22,598 20,338 20,195 12,994 11,299 4,810

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, AMS = Amsterdam, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 12: Top 10 performing male artists in the sample: Europe (other than the UK)

Artwork

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

Soulages C07122016-Paris-2 Knoebel C11042017-AMS-21 Castellani C05042016-Milan-5 Erro C07122016-Paris-20 Baselitz C07122016-Paris-12 Valdes C08122016-Paris-204 Botero C07122016-Paris-19 Kounellis C05042016-Milan-14 Hirst C07122016-Paris-25 Baselitz C11042017-AMS-18

554,500 461,888 404,400 363,542 266,500 248,382 242,500 240,600 230,500 206,760

471,515 1,696,514 1,485,361 1,335,289 978,854 912,307 890,702 883,723 846,626 759,429

432,493 360,258 315,420 283,551 207,862 193,730 189,142 187,660 179,783 161,266

471,515 392,763 343,879 309,135 226,616 211,210 206,208 204,592 196,004 175,817

All currency converted August 2017. Artwork cataloguing information: Artist surname, Auction – C = Christies, AMS = Amsterdam, date of auction, lot number.

Appendix 13: How gender/the brand of femininity impacts upon aesthetic variables and sales

Aesthetic variable

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

Watercolour m Mixed media m Household m Paper s Symbols sub Acrylic m Objects sub Square o Wood s Unsigned Landscape o Figurative Places sub People sub Signed Abstraction Canvas s Portrait o Oil m Metal s

27,760 377,000 275,000 229,939 9,045 498,459 398,834 160,562 103,359 430,719 205,563 165,948 45,552 218,568 193,554 236,982 218,320 178,409 108,483 0

101,962 1,384,721 1,010,075 1,101,675 33,222 1,830,839 1,464,917 589,744 379,637 1,582,030 755,032 609,527 167,312 802,800 710,923 870,434 801,889 655,296 398,458 0

21,684 294,508 214,826 234,312 7,065 389,545 311,688 125,511 80,795 336,649 160,544 129,738 35,573 170,876 151,320 185,330 170,735 139,523 84,838 0

23,504 319,207 232,843 253,959 7,658 421,975 337,637 136,156 87,648 365,279 174,287 140,699 38,627 185,344 164,160 200,994 185,166 151,341 92,024 0

All currency converted August 2017. m = medium, sub = subject, o = orientation, s = support.

Appendix 14: How gender/the brand of masculinity impacts upon aesthetic variables and sales

Aesthetic variable Watercolour m Mixed media m Household m Paper s Symbols sub Acrylic m Objects sub Square o Wood s Unsigned Landscape o Figurative Places sub People sub Signed Abstraction Canvas s Portrait o Oil m Metal s

Dollars (USD)

Dirhams (AED)

Pounds (GBP)

Euros

113,539 170,373 170,432 180,326 250,818 262,248 279,440 281,866 314,673 333,039 536,393 550,727 657,663 660,000 664,173 749,968 755,773 801,696 991,321 1,427,385

417,028 625,780 625,996 662,337 921,254 963,236 1,026,383 1,035,293 1,155,793 1,223,252 1,970,171 2,022,820 2,415,596 2,424,180 2,439,507 2,754,632 2,775,954 2,944,629 3,641,122 5,242,785

88,660 133,027 132,983 140,708 195,713 204,632 218,047 219,940 245,539 259,870 418,547 429,677 513,108 514,932 518,187 585,125 589,729 625,563 773,321 1,113,491

96,313 144,524 144,550 152,941 212,764 222,460 237,004 239,061 266,886 282,463 454,820 466,975 557,601 559,630 563,168 635,808 640,729 679,604 840,351 1,210,622

All currency converted August 2017. m = medium, sub = subject, o = orientation, s = support.

Appendix 15: Gender equality (age at creation of artwork) in the Finnish National Gallery: A global comparison 45

43 44 39

42

35 35

Finland

USA

UK

Female artists

42 38

UAE Male artists

40

Europe

Appendix 16: An assessment of the levels of abstraction or figuration in contemporary paintings at the Finnish National Gallery Abstraction and figuration 58%

58%

57%

54%

52% 48% 42%

UAE

42%

USA

Europe Abstract

42%

UK

43%

Finland

Figurative

Appendix 17: An assessment of the subject matter in contemporary paintings at the Finnish National Gallery 42% 37%

35% 33%

34%

32% 30% 27%

26%

25% 22%

20% 15% 12%

UAE

14% 12%

11% 9%

USA People

Europe Places

UK Objects

Abstract

Finland

Appendix 18: An assessment and global comparison of the average scale of paintings Average scale of paintings Cm2 24,794 21,617 18,119 14,453 11,704

Europe

USA

UK

UAE

Finland

Appendix 19: A global assessment of the use of media in contemporary paintings 54% 51%

51%

49% 45% 38%

31% 27%

26%

16%

UAE

10%

9%

8%

USA

Europe Oils

15%

Acrylic

UK Water

8%

Finland

Appendix 20: A global assessment of supports in contemporary paintings 83% 73% 65%

63%

61%

26%

22%

19% 9%

17%

16%

7% 1%

2%

UAE

USA Paper

5%

1%

5%

2%

Europe Canvas

UK Metal

13% 2% Finland

Wood

Notes Introduction: Women can’t paint 1 Nick Clark, ‘What’s the Biggest Problem with Women Artists? None of Them Can Actually Paint, Says Georg Baselitz’, The Independent, 6 February 2013, https://www. independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/whats-the-biggest-problem-withwomen-artists-none-of-them-can-actually-paint-says-georg-baselitz-8484019.html. 2 Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ Art News, 1971 and included in Maura Reilly, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Thirty Years After’, in Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, ed. Maura Reilly (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 42–68. 3 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Feminist Aesthetics’, https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/feminism-aesthetics/. 4 Rachel Cooke, ‘Jenny Saville: I Want to Be a Painter of Modern Life, and Modern Bodies’, The Guardian, 9 June 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2012/jun/09/jenny-saville-painter-modern-bodies. 5 As noted by Clark, ‘What’s the Biggest Problem with Women Artists? None of Them Can Actually Paint, Says Georg Baselitz’. 6 See for example Kira Cochrane, ‘Women in Art: Why Are all the Great Artists Men?’ The Guardian, 24 May 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/thewomens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2013/may/24/women-art-great-artists-men; Katherine Markley, ‘Once Again … Where Are All the Women Artists?’ Artnet News, 2013, https://news.artnet.com/market/once-again-where-are-all-the-womenartists-49720 and Katherine Brooks, ‘Let’s Talk about “Women Artists” and What This Term Means’, Huffpost Arts and Culture, 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost. com/entry/women-artists-what-this-term-means_us_5626a52be4b0bce34702b7dd. Anny Shaw, ‘Female Artists Really Do Earn Less Than Men, Survey Finds’, The Art Newspaper, 14 December 2017, http://theartnewspaper.com/news/female-artistsreally-do-earn-less-than-men-survey-finds. 7 Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ 42–68. 8 In British education, the Access course is a route for mature learners and those without a formal further education to gain a qualification and entry to higher (university) education. As I note in the paper, equality in role models for the wide variety of students is vital at this foundation level of study.

Notes  219 9 Helen Gørrill, ‘Disrupting the Masculine Canon in Fine Art Education’, The Arts in Society Annual Review; The International Journal of Arts Education 13, no. 1 (2018), https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/disrupting-the-masculine-canon-in-fineart-education-dac5a860-e5f1-4c22-9bd7-6ffc83c3c120?category_id=commonground-publishing. 10 Ethics Centre, ‘Big Thinker: Susan Faludi’, 10 April 2018, http://www.ethics.org.au/ on-ethics/blog/april-2018/big-thinker-susan-faludi-backlash-feminism. 11 Henry Porter, ‘Britain Is Not Radical Enough: That Is Why We’re in Trouble’, The Guardian, 31 May 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/ may/31/british-identity-henry-porter. 12 KT Press, n.paradoxa, ‘Statistics about Women Artists in the Artworld: There Are Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!’ https://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-statistics. asp; and the response to an email from the author entitled ‘Dear Madam/Sir’, from Ms Dever on 27 June 2016. 13 Emanuel Hammer, ‘Creativity and Feminine Ingredients in Young Male Artists’, Perceptual and Motor Skills 19 (1964): 414. 14 The concept of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ has been traced to the twelfth century, attributed to Bernard of Chartres. Its most familiar expression in English is by Isaac Newton in 1675. 15 Definition provided by the Catalogue Raisonné Scholar’s Association (CRSA), www.catalogueraisonne.org/ 16 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 13–18. 17 Jack Holland, Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice (London: Constable and Robinson Ltd, 2006), xii, 2, 66. 18 Jeff Farrell, ‘Saudi Arabia’s Ban on Women Driving Must Remain Because They “Lack the Intellect” of Men, Says Leading Cleric’, The Independent, 22 September 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabiawoman-driving-ban-remain-lack-intellect-men-sexism-sheikh-saad-al-hajariislamic-leader-a7960501.html. 19 Ibid. It should also be noted that Sheikh Saad al-Hajari may not represent the general opinion in Saudi Arabia regarding women’s right to drive, evidenced by a viral Twitter campaign against him by both women and men, some of whom were very high profile. 20 Holland, Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice, 184. Holland additionally notes, ‘By the middle of the nineteenth century, a male spinner in England earned between 14 and 22 shillings a week, a female around 5; in the United States, a male worker in the cotton industry was paid $1.67 per week, a female employee $1.05. A French male printer’s wage was two francs a day, a female’s one frank’, as noted in Tannahill, Sex in History. 21 Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 177–8.

220 Notes 22 ‘Timeline of Women’s Rights to Vote around the World’, Gulf News, 12 December 2015, https://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/timeline-of-women-s-right-tovote-around-the-world-1.1635917. 23 Mykol Hamilton, David Anderson, Michelle Broaddus and Kate Niehaus, ‘Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-First Century Update’, Sex Roles 55, no. 11/12 (2006): 757–65. 24 Stephen Tomkins, ‘Oops, We Forgot Jesus’s Women’, The Guardian, 30 July 2010, https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/30/pope-friendsjesus-women. 25 The Fawcett Society, ‘New Data on the Gender Pay Gap’, 2016, https://www. fawcettsociety.org.uk/2015/11/new-data-on-the-gender-pay-gap/; and Elin Hurvenes, ‘BoardWatch: Professional Board Forum’, 2016, https://boardsforum. co.uk/index.html. 26 Radhika Sanghani, ‘Think You Know Which Countries Have the Most Female MPs? Think Again’, The Telegraph, 14 May 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/ womens-politics/11600552/Think-you-know-which-countries-have-the-mostfemale-MPs-Think-again.html. 27 Parliament, ‘How Many Male MPs Are There? How Many Female MPs Are There?’ UK Parliament Frequently Asked Questions: MPs, 2016, https://www.parliament.uk/ about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/; and Bowcott, ‘Women Make Up Only 25 per cent of Judges in England and Wales’, The Guardian, 9 October 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/oct/09/uk-lags-europegender-balance-judiciary. 28 National Women’s Law Center, ‘Women in the Federal Judiciary: Still a Long Way to Go’, https://nwlc.org/resources/women-federal-judiciary-still-long-way-go/. 29 Lord Davies, ‘Women on Boards: Davies Review Annual Report’, 2015, https:// www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/415454/ bis-15-134-women-on-boards-2015-report.pdf. 30 Carolyn Korsmeyer, Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction (Feminist Philosophy) (London: Routledge, 2004), 2. 31 Sarah Marsh, ‘The Gender Fluid Generation: Young People on Being Male, Female, or Non-Binary’, The Guardian, 23 March 2016, https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2016/mar/23/gender-fluid-generation-young-people-malefemale-trans. 32 Butler, Gender Trouble. 33 Napp Nazworth, ‘Feminists Ignore Biology, Dissident Feminist Camille Paglia Argues’, The Christian Post, 18 October 2013, https://www.christianpost.com/news/ feminists-ignore-biology-dissident-feminist-camille-paglia-argues-106975/.

Notes  221 34 Katelyn Giel, ‘Hashtag Feminism: An Analysis of Social Media as a Feminist Platform’, ASU Library, https://repository.asu.edu/items/35624. 35 Daisy Murray, ‘Empowerment through Empathy: We Spoke to Tarana Burke, the Woman Who Really Started the “Me Too” Movement’, 23 October 2017, Elle, https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/culture/news/a39429/empowermentthrough-empathy-tarana-burke-me-too/. 36 Abby Ohlheiser, ‘How #MeToo Really Was Different, According to Data’, The Washington Post, 22 January 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theintersect/wp/2018/01/22/how-metoo-really-was-different-according-to-data/?utm_ term=.0563119dc1c9. 37 Anna North, ‘Measuring #MeToo: More Than 80 per cent of Women Have Been Sexually Harassed or Assaulted’, Vox, 21 February 2018, https://www.vox.com/ identities/2018/2/21/17036438/sexual-harassment-me-too-assault-hollywood. 38 Irina Aristarkhova, ‘#MeToo in the Artworld: Genius Should Not Excuse Sexual Harassment’, The Conversation, 3 May 2018, http://theconversation.com/metoo-inthe-art-world-genius-should-not-excuse-sexual-harassment-91554. 39 Nemer, ‘If She Sees It, She Can Be It: Actor Geena Davis Talks Equity at Coca Cola’. 40 As noted in Hilary Robinson, Feminism – Art – Theory. An Anthology 1968–2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 293. 41 Heather Wilhelm, ‘Where #MeToo Goes Off the Rails’, National Review, 20 October 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/metoo-train-wreck-calls-allwomen-victims-all-men-toxic-abusers/. 42 Michael Carley, ‘What Is Toxic Masculinity?’ The Good Men Project, April 2018, https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/what-is-toxic-masculinity-dg/ 43 Alexandra Topping, ‘Leading Feminists on Why Time’s Up and #MeToo Mean There’s No Going Back’, The Guardian, 8 March 2018, https://www.theguardian. com/world/2018/mar/08/sexist-agendas-finally-exposed-internationalwomens-day. 44 Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 2. 45 Eleanor Robertson, ‘Intersectional-what? Feminism’s Problem with Jargon Is That Any Idiot Can Pick It Up and Have a Go’, The Guardian, 30 September 2017, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/30/intersectional-feminism-jargon. 46 Ibid. 47 Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London: Routledge, 1999), 33. 48 Kristine Phillips, ‘Why These Professors Are Warning against Promoting the Work of Straight, White Men’, The Washington Post, 16 July 2016, https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/16/feminist-

222 Notes scientists-say-citing-research-by-straight-white-men-promotes-a-system-ofoppression/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d34cad80f216. 49 David Galenson, ‘The Not-So-Curious Economics of Art’, Huffington Post, 3 January 2013, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-galenson/the-not-so-curiouseconom_b_2790531.html. 50 Ibid. 51 David Galenson, Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), xv. 52 Jonathan Harris, Globalisation and Contemporary Art (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011), 9. 53 Anne Hermann and Abigail Stewart, eds., Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 89. 54 Ibid. 55 Anita Silvers, ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ in Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, eds. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 286. 56 Maura Reilly, ‘Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes’, ArtNews, June 2015: 39–47, and in particular see 44, 46. 57 Sarah Douglas, ‘Special Issue: Women in the Art World – Editor’s Letter’, ArtNews (June 2015): 14. 58 Coco Fusco, ‘Coco Fusco’, ArtNews (June 2015): 50; and Wangechi Mutu, ‘Wangechi Mutu’, ArtNews, June 2015: 61. 59 See www.guerrillagirls.com; www.gallerytally.tumblr.com; www.elartaudit. wordpress.com 60 Jacqueline Rose, Women in Dark Times (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), ix–x. 61 Reilly, ‘Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes’, 39–47, and in particular see 46. 62 Marilyn Waring, If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics (New York: Harpercollins, 1989). 63 Alison Flood, ‘Books about Women Less Likely to Win Prizes, Study Finds’, The Guardian, 1 June 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/ books-about-women-less-likely-to-win-prizes-study-finds. 64 Nicole Ward Jouve, Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 10, 15. 65 Candidly Kim, ‘I am Woman, Hear Me Roar’, HuffPost, 6 December 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/candidly-kim/i-am-woman-hear-meroar_1_b_8914360.html.

Notes  223

Chapter 1 1 Isabelle Graw, High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture (Koln: Sternberg Press, 2009), 63. 2 Julia Halperin, ‘Creating Value around Women Artists: The Chief Curator’s View. Moca’s Helen Molesworth Explains Why the Gender Imbalance in Museums Persists and What Can Be Done to Remove It’, The Art Newspaper, 3 May 2016, https://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/creating-value-around-womenartists-the-chief-curator-s-view/. 3 Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art (Abingdon: Routledge Classics, 2003), xxxi, xxvi. 4 Butler, Gender Trouble, 6. 5 Pollock, Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art, 33. 6 Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ 42–68. 7 Coventry Patmore, Angel in the House (Seattle: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2013); the British Library, ‘Coventry Patmore’s Poem “Angel in the House”’, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/coventry-patmores-poem-theangel-in-the-house. 8 Woolf, ‘Professions for Women’ noted in Elaine Showalter, ‘Killing the Angel in the House: The Autonomy of Women Writers’, The ANTIOCH Review 50, no. 1/2, Winter-Spring (1992): 207–20. 9 Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927), 48. 10 Andrew Johnson, ‘There’s Never Been a Great Woman Artist’, The Independent, 6 July 2008, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/feature/theresnever-been-a-great-woman-artist-860865.html. 11 Kate Connolly, ‘Georg Baselitz: Why Art’s Great Shock Merchant Has Set His Sights on Opera’, The Guardian, 19 May 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2015/may/19/georg-baselitz-artist-glyndebourne-opera-festivalexhibition-white-cube; and M. H. Miller, ‘Update: Georg Baselitz Still Thinks Women Can’t Paint’, ArtNews, 20 May 2015, https://artnews.com/2015/05/20/ update-georg-baselitz-still-thinks-women-cant-paint/. 12 Linda Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1989), 147. 13 Clark, ‘What’s The Biggest Problem with Women Artists? None of Them Can Actually Paint, Says Georg Baselitz’. 14 For further information, see www.margaret-harrison.com 15 Angela McRobbie, British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? (London: Routledge, 1988). 16 Ibid., 34.

224 Notes 17 Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer, Gender and Popular Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 43. 18 Judy Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2014), 19. 19 Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories, 13. 20 Ibid., 33. 21 Rebecca Haslam, HESA statistics, Email to author, 25 February 2016; Susan Jahoda, Blair Murphy, Vicky Virgin and Carolyn Woolard, ‘Artists Report Back: A National Study on the Lives of Art Graduates and Working Artists’, 2014, https://bfamfaphd. com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/BFAMFAPhD_ArtistsReportBack2014-10.pdf. 22 Gombrich, The Story of Art, 2015, 566. 23 Cooke, ‘Jenny Saville: I Want to Be a Painter of Modern Lives, and Modern Bodies’. 24 Penelope Lockwood, ‘Someone Like Me Can Be Successful? Do College Students Need Same-Gender Role Models?’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 30(1): 36–46. 25 Kajsa Gilenstam, Staffan Karp and Karin Henriksson-Larsen, ‘Gender in Ice Hockey: Women in a Male Territory’, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 18 (2008): 235. 26 Alan Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 160. 27 See for example Catherine Good, Joshua Aronson and Jane Harder, ‘Problems in the Pipeline: Stereotype Threat and Women’s Achievement in High-Level Math Courses’, Journal of Applied Development Psychology 29(1) (2008): 17–28; Jennifer Steele and Naini Ambady, ‘Math Is Hard! The Effect of Gender Priming on Women’s Attitudes’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42, no. 4 (2006): 428–36; and Toni Schmader, Michael Johns and Marchelle Barquissau, ‘The Costs of Accepting Gender Differences: The Role of Stereotype Endorsement in Women’s Experience in the Math Domain’, Sex Roles 50, 11/12 (2004): 835–50. 28 Schmader et al., ‘The Costs of Accepting Gender Differences: The Role of Stereotype Endorsement in Women’s Experience in the Math Domain’, 835. 29 See for example Deena Petherbridge, The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice (London: Yale University Press, 2010); and Marsha Meskimmon and Phil Sawdon, Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016). 30 During a discussion with one of the artists, it was perceived this resurgence was down to the preceding practice of Kay Hunt, whose work lay comparatively unrecognized today. 31 For further information see www.lexistrauss.com. 32 Barbara Howey, ‘Introduction’, Real Lives Painted Pictures, exhibition catalogue, 2016–17.

Notes  225 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., unpaginated. 35 See for example Pennina Barnett, The Subversive Stitch, Embroidery in Women’s Lives 1300–1900 and Women and Textiles Today (Manchester: Whitworth and Cornerhouse Gallery, 1988); and Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: I.B. Tauris and Co Ltd, 2010). 36 Howey, Real Lives Painted Pictures. 37 Tyler Cowen, ‘Why Women Succeed, and Fail, in the Arts’, Journal of Cultural Economics (1996): 1–21. 38 Sarah Thornton, ‘The Price of Being Female’, The Economist, 2012, https://www. economist.com/blog/prospero/2012/05/post-war-artists-auction. 39 Cindy Sherman, ‘Cindy Sherman’, ArtNews, June 2015: 56. 40 Meskimmon and Sawdon, Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing; and Jonathan Jones, ‘Why Tracey Emin Is Top Draw at the Royal Academy’, The Guardian, 15 December 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/dec/15/tracey-emin-draw-royal-academy. 41 For further information see Julie Roberts biography at The Essential School of Painting. 42 For further information, see www.katebrinkworth.co.uk. 43 Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, 1. 44 Paul Smith and Jonathan Taylor, Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach (London: Kogan Page Publishers, 2004), 335. 45 Douglas, ‘Special Issue: Women in the Art World – Editor’s Letter’. 46 Overall average lightness has been calculated through carrying out an overall average blur of the image, sampling the result and running through one of the available online colour encyclopaedias and converters Colorhexa, available at www. colorhexa.com. 47 For the hawk-eyed, it should be noted that not all images were available digitally, so while it may have been possible to state the painting’s scale and medium (from the textual), for example, it wasn’t always possible to analyse the paintings for levels of abstraction or figuration, or carry out tests for overall average lightness and so on. Therefore, the percentages for each total may not necessarily add up to 100, as with most percentages. 48 Ian Foster, ‘How Computation Changes Research’, in Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, eds. Thomas Bartscherer and Roderick Coover (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 21. 49 J. Paul Getty Trust, ‘Categories for the Description of Works of Art’, https://www. getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/. 50 Technopedia, definition of ‘color hex code’.

226 Notes 51 Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (Oxon: Routledge Ltd, 2005), 78; emphasis mine. 52 James Eade, Chess for Dummies (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2005), 272. 53 Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), 33–4; and Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, 79. 54 Ibid., 80; Remy Gourmont, ‘Introduction’, The Natural Philosophy of Love (Kyiv: Leopold Classic Library, 1957). 55 Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, 80. 56 Butler, Gender Trouble, 6. 57 Angela Darby, ‘Androgynous Aesthetics: Interview with Brendan Jamison’, Aesthetica, 2012, https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/androgynouse-aestheticsinterview-with-brendan-jamison/. 58 Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 1967, http://www.tbook.constantvzw. org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf. 59 Cynthia Freeland, Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 109. 60 Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1989), 11. 61 Carl Jung, ‘Commentary on “The Secret of the Gold Flower”’, in Collected Works, eds. Herbert Read et al. (London: Routledge, 1957), 41. 62 Hammer, ‘Creativity and Feminine Ingredients in Young Male Artists’, 414. 63 Jonathan Jones, ‘Stoned Love: Why Tracey Emin Married a Rock’, The Guardian, 22 March 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/ mar/22/tracey-emin-married-rock-love-intimacy. 64 Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, 11. 65 Fromm, The Art of Loving, 33–4. 66 Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, 79. 67 Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, 149. 68 For further information see www.anniekevans.com. 69 For further information see www.englandsfavoritelandscape.co.uk. 70 Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, ‘Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians’, American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 715–41. 71 Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, 149. 72 Richard Dorment, ‘Louise Bourgeois Invented Confessional Art’, The Telegraph, 1 June 2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/7794168/Louise-Bourgeoisinvented-confessional-art.html. 73 Alexandra Pollard, ‘Why Are Only Women Described as “Confessional” SingerSongwriters?’ The Guardian, 9 April 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/

Notes  227 music/2015/apr/09/why-are-only-women-described-as-confessional-singersongwriters 74 Jenn Selby, ‘Taylor Swift Changes Her Stance on Feminism: “Misogyny Is Ingrained in People from the Time They Are Born”’, The Independent, 20 May 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/taylor-swift-changes-herstance-on-feminism-misogyny-is-ingrained-in-people-from-the-time-theyare-10260143.html. 75 Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, 10. 76 Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (King’s Lynn: Pandora Books, 1995), 132–3. 77 Pat Kirkham, ed., The Gendered Object (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 9. 78 Ibid., 25; and Juliet Kinchin, ‘Interiors: Nineteenth-Century Essays on the “Masculine” and the “Feminine” Room’, in The Gendered Object, ed. Pat Kirkham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 12–29. 79 Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, Women Artists at the Millenium (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 318; and Maura Reilly, ed., Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader (London: Thames and Hudson, 2015), 318. 80 Alice Vincent, ‘Artist Claims Women Can’t Paint – As a Female Painting Sells for £7 Million’, The Telegraph, 7 February 2013, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/ art-news/9854535/Artist-claims-women-cant-paint-as-a-female-painting-sells-for7-million.html. 81 Maria Lind and Olav Velthuis, Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 185. 82 Graw, High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture, 47; Whitney Museum of American Art, The Price of Everything … Perspectives on the Art Market (Whitney: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2007), 5. 83 Michael Rushton, ‘For What It’s Worth’, Arts Journal, 2015, https://www.artsjournal. com/worth/2015/01/who-bears-the-burden-of-auction-house-fees-buyers-orsellers/. 84 Renée Adams, Roman Kraussl, Marco Navone and Patrick Verwijmeren, ‘Is Gender in the Eye of the Beholder? Identifying Cultural Attitudes with Art Auction Prices’, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNnXmZBxmTc. 85 Benjamin Sutton, ‘Art By Women Sells for 47.6% Less Study Finds’, Hyperallergenic, 14 December 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/417356/art-by-women-gender-studysexism/. 86 Halperin, ‘Creating Value around Women Artists: The Chief Curator’s View. Moca’s Helen Molesworth Explains Why the Gender Imbalance in Museums Persists and What Can Be Done to Remove It’.

228 Notes 87 See Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics; Mira Schor, Wet: On Painting Feminism, and Art Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories; and Farshid Moussavi, ‘Agenda Bender: The Case for the Abolition of Female Role Models’, The Architectural Review 231, no. 1384 (2012): 31–4.

Chapter 2 1 Rachel Spence, ‘Where Are all the Women Artists?’, Financial Times, 17 July 2015. 2 Guerrilla Girls, Women in America Earn 2/3 of What Men Do, 1985, https://www. guerrillagirls.com/posters/twothirds2.shtml. 3 National Museum of Women in the Arts, Get the Facts, https://nmwa.org/advocate/ get-facts; East London Fawcett (ELF), ‘The Great East London Art Audit’, London, 2012–2013, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OiZZp4JmiIUKD0qf06gu9_ FRh_bpq0sFjd0PDKzO4zE/edit#gid=0. 4 Mike Williams, ‘We Live in an Age of Gender Equality So Why Do We Still Think Men Should Pay for Dates?’ Metro, 8 April 2017, https://metro.co.uk/2017/04/08/ we-live-in-an-age-of-gender-equality-so-why-do-we-still-think-men-should-payfor-dates-6552138/. 5 Michael Shermer, ‘How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail’, Scientific American, 1 January 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convincesomeone-when-facts-fail/. 6 Ibid. 7 Olav Velthuis, Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1. 8 Ibid. 9 Graw, High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture, 63. 10 For example, Art Price - www.artprice.com, and Blouin Art Info - www. blouinartinfo.com. 11 The Quotations Page, Publilius Syrus. 12 Joseph, D. Lyons, ‘The Gender Wage Gap Is Even More Devastating for American Mothers’, Bustle, 15 May 2017, https://www.bustle.com/p/the-gender-wage-gapis-even-more-devastating-for-american-mothers-57824; and Patrick McNeil, ‘In 2017, Black Women Still Face a Devastating Wage Gap’, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, 31 July 2017, https://leadershipconferenceedfund.org/blog/2017black-women-still-face-devastating-wage-gap/. 13 World Health Organisation, Women and Gender Equity, https://www.who.int/ social_determinants/themes/womenandgender/en/.

Notes  229 14 Jamie Doward, ‘Women Have Achieved Gender Equality at Long Last … According to Men’, The Guardian, 29 January 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2017/jan/29/women-inequality-survey. 15 Jerry Saltz, ‘Right Now Is a Blockbuster Moment in New York for Female Artists’, Vulture: Devouring Culture, 19 May 2017, https://www.vulture.com/2017/05/rightnow-is-a-blockbuster-moment-for-female-artists.html. 16 See Anna Louie Sussman, ‘Why Old Women Have Replaced Young Men as the Art World’s Darlings’, Artsy, 19 June 2017, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorialwomen-replaced-young-men-art-worlds-darlings. 17 See for example Cochrane, ‘Women in Art: Why Are all the Great Artists Men?’; Markley, ‘Once Again … Where Are all the Women Artists?’ and Brooks, ‘Let’s Talk about “Women Artists” and What This Term Means’. 18 Michael Findlay, The Value of Art: Money, Beauty, Power (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2012), 39. 19 Germaine Greer, The Obstacle Race (London: I.B. Tauris and Co Ltd, 1979), 7. 20 Judith Mottram, ‘Critical Concepts and Change in Painting: The Relationship of Influence’ (PhD thesis. Manchester: Manchester Polytechnic, 1988), 346. 21 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, 33. 22 Velthuis, Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art. 23 Ibid., 109, 226; and University of Luxembourg findings noted in Sutton, ‘Art by Women Sells for 47.6% Less Study Finds’. 24 Ellen Lubell, ‘Women March on MOMA’, Village Voice, 19 June 1984. 25 Cochrane, ‘Women in Art: Why Are all the “Great” Artists Men?’ 26 Katherine Brooks, ‘Let These Masked Feminists Explain How Depressing Gender Inequality in Art Is’, Huffpost Arts and Culture, 14 January 2016, http://www. huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/guerrilla-girls-late-show:us_5697b262e4b0778f46f8 3fd5. 27 Ibid. 28 David Perfect, ‘Gender Pay Gaps’, Equality and Human Rights Commission Briefing Paper 2, 2011, https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/briefingpaper-2-gender-pay-gap_0.pdf. 29 Eve Tutchell and John Edmonds, Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power (Farnham: Gower Publishing Limited, 2015), 76–7. 30 Valentine Moghadam, ‘Towards Gender Equality in the Arab/Middle East Region’, Islam, Culture and Feminist Activism, 2004, https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ hdr2004_valentine_moghadam.pdf. 31 American Association of University Women (AAUW), ‘The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap’, Economic Justice, Spring 2017, https://www.aauw.org/research/

230 Notes the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/; Katie Allen, ‘UK’s Gender Pay Rankings Will Put Discrimination under Spotlight’, The Guardian, 22 April, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/02/uk-gender-pay-rankingswill-put-discrimination-under-spotlight; and European Union, Gender Pay Gap Statistics, Eurostat Statistics Explained. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics: in the UAE, women expect to earn nearly as much as men, but only 42 per cent of females participate in the labour force, compared with 92 per cent of males. The women who work in the UAE and Morocco tend to have higher education levels, a factor that partly drives their higher relative income. 32 Jeff Kauflin, ‘The Countries with the Best and Worst Gender Pay Gap Expectations and How the US Stacks Up’, Forbes, 11 January 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ jeffkauflin/2017/01/11/the-countries-with-the-best-and-worst-gender-pay-gapexpectations-and-how-the-u-s-stacks-up/#7468a2343cb1. 33 See for example Andrew Pulver, ‘Scarlett Johansson and the Film Industry’s Gender Pay Gap’, The Guardian, 1 July 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/ jul/01/scarlett-johansson-and-the-film-industrys-gender-pay-gap; Brittany Vonow, ‘It’s the Same Bloody Job! Julie Walters Blasts Gender Pay Gap in Film Industry in the Wake of BBC Uproar’, The Sun, 26 July 2017, https://www.thesun.co.uk/ news/2199148/julie-walters-blasts-gender-pay-gap-film-industry/; and Graham Ruddick, ‘BBC Facing Backlash from Female Stars after Gender Pay Gap Revealed’, The Guardian, 20 July 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/19/ evans-lineker-bbc-top-earners-only-two-women-among-best-paid-stars. 34 Halperin, ‘Creating Value around Women Artists: The Chief Curator’s View. Moca’s Helen Molesworth Explains Why the Gender Imbalance in Museums Persists and What Can Be Done to Remove It’. 35 Ibid. 36 Tutchell and Edmonds, Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power, 33. 37 Meskimmon and Sawdon, Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing. 38 Cowen, ‘Why Women Succeed, and Fail, in the Arts’. 39 Sherman, ‘Cindy Sherman’, 56. 40 Meskimmon and Sawdon, Drawing Difference: Connections between Gender and Drawing. 41 Ann Buchanan and Anna Rotkirch, Grandfathers: Global Perspectives (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 57. 42 Kinchin, ‘Interiors: Nineteenth-Century Essays on the “Masculine” and the “Feminine” Room’, 25.

Notes  231 43 Anonymous, On Being a Female Painter, Email to author, 29 September 2015. 44 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, 72. 45 Anna Lewis, ‘Here’s Why JK Rowling Uses Her Initials Rather Than Her Name’, Cosmopolitan, 2017, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a10287947/ jk-rowling-initials-instead-real-name/. 46 Laura-Blaise McDowell, ‘5 Women Writers Who Use Male Pseudonyms (and Why)’, Book Culture, 2017, https://www.bookstr.com/5-women-writers-who-usedpseudonyms-why. 47 Elisabetto Lazzaro, ‘The Market Appreciation of a Contemporary Painter: An Investigation through Auction Records’, in The 3rd International Conference in Arts Management (Venice: International Center for Art Economics (ICARE), 1996). 48 See for example Cochrane, ‘Women in Art: Why Are All the Great Artists Men?’; Markley, ‘Once Again … Where Are All the Women Artists?’ and Brooks, ‘Let’s Talk about “Women Artists” and What This Term Means’. 49 Cochrane, ‘Women in Art: Why Are All the Great Artists Men?’ 50 See for example Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Framing Feminism (Kings Lynn: Pandora Books, 1995). 51 A number of the artists I interviewed had wealthy partners or families and were unable to understand that others did not have such a financial cushion and needed to earn a living in order to provide the basic needs of food and shelter. 52 Tate, ‘Art Terms: Abstract Art’. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-art. 53 Ibid. 54 Judith Mottram and Helen Gørrill, ‘Colouring in the Gaps: Exploring Transnational Aesthetics through Digital Collections’, in The Researching Digital Cultural Heritage International Conference (Manchester: University of Manchester, Institute for Cultural Practices, 2017). 55 Penny Florence and Nicola Foster, eds., Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophies and Feminist Understandings (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2000), 281. 56 Rebecca Fortnum and Gisela Houghton, ‘Women and Contemporary Painting: Re-presenting Representation’, Women’s Artist’s Slide Library Journal 28 (1989). 57 Sarah Kent, ‘Therese Oulton in Conversation with Sarah Kent’, Flash Art, April 1986. 58 Fortnum and Houghton, ‘Women and Contemporary Painting: Re-presenting Representation’. 59 Noted in Robinson, Feminism – Art – Theory. An Anthology 1968-2000, 293; Howey, ‘Real Lives Painted Pictures’, 2. 60 Greer, The Obstacle Race, 7. 61 For example, Greer, The Obstacle Race; Kent, ‘Therese Oulton in Conversation with Sarah Kent’; Fortnum and Houghton, ‘Women and Contemporary Painting:

232 Notes Re-presenting Representation’; and Betterton, ‘A Matter of Paint: The Carnal Subject of Aesthetics’, in Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophies and Feminist Understandings, eds. Penny Florence and Nicola Foster (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2000).

Chapter 3 1 Guerrilla Girls, ‘Complaints Department’, https://www.guerrillagirls.com/ datebook-archive/2016/10/3/interactive-residency-tate-exchange-space. 2 William Safire, ‘The Spinner Spun’, New York Times, 22 December 1996. 3 Hannah Furness, ‘Female Artists Are Stars of the Show in a Bid to Inspire Girls’, The Telegraph, 14 January 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/ howaboutthat/12100786/Female-artists-are-stars-of-the-show-at-Tate-in-bid-toinspire-girls.html; David Sanderson, ‘Women Rule the Roost in Tate’s Modern Approach’, The Times, 15 January 2016, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/ visualarts/article4665829.ece; Holly Williams, ‘Tate Modern’s Autumn Show, The World Goes Pop, Finally Gives Female Artists Their Due’, The Independent, 5 September 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/ tate-modern-s-autumn-show-the-world-goes-pop-finally-gives-female-popartists-their-dues-10487047.html; and Ted Stansfield, ‘Tate Modern’s New Director on Celebrating Women Artists’, Dazed Digital, 2016, https://www.dazeddigital. com/artsandculture/article/31601/1/tate-modern-s-new-director-on-celebratingwomen-artists. 4 LSE Middle East Centre, ‘Multitudes Exhibition – Celebrating Contemporary Female Artists from the MENA Region’, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2017/03/08/ multitudes-exhibition-celebrating-contemporary-female-artists-from-the-menaregion/; Rhodri Davies, ‘Arab Women Artists and Their Long Road to Expression’, Al Jazeera, 19 March 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/03/ arab-women-artists-long-road-expression-160317071732279.html; Qatar Museums, ‘100 Most Powerful Women in Art’, 2014, https://www.qm.org.qa/en/ blog/100-most-powerful-women-art; and Lilly Wei, ‘The Women of the Arab Artworld’, ArtNews, 2014, https://www.artnews.com/2014/11/04/women-of-thearab-art-world/. 5 Hilary Sheets, ‘Women Artists Are (finally) Getting Their Turn’, New York Times, 29 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/arts/design/theresurgences-of-women-only-art-shows.html; Martha Schwendener, ‘There at the Creation, Profiles of Seven 20th Century Artists, all Women’, New York Times, 24 February 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/books/review/identity-

Notes  233 unknown-rediscovering-seven-american-women-artists-donna-seaman.html; Randy Kennedy, ‘The Most Powerful Woman in the New York Art World’, New York Times, 4 May 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/arts/design/newmuseum-director-lisa-phillips.html; and Peter Schjeldahl, ‘The XX Factor: Women and Abstract Art’, The New Yorker, 24 April 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2017/04/24/the-xx-factor. 6 Sharratt, ‘Shortlisted Artists Condemn No Fees and “Other Problematic Aspects” of German Art Prize’. 7 Safire, ‘The Spinner Spun’. 8 Scottish Government, Policy, ‘Gender Equality’, https://beta.gov.scot/policies/ gender-equality/, as noted alongside evaluation of collection in Gørrill, ‘IASH Postdoctoral Proposal for the University of Edinburgh’. 9 Definition appears in Merriam Webster dictionary. 10 Olav Velthuis, ‘The Contemporary Art Market between Stasis and Flux’, Instituut voor Beeldende, audiovisuele en mediakunst, 2012, https://www.bamart.be/files/ BKveldanalyseOlavVelthuis.pdf. 11 Alan Bowness, The Conditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 11. 12 Velthuis, ‘Exchanging Meaning’, in Talking Prices (2005): 74. 13 International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), ‘Research’, https:// promundoglobal.org/programs/international-men-and-gender-equality-surveyimages/. 14 Ibid. 15 With no direct access to a digital database, images sourced and subsequent data mine was from those provided by Mathaf: Museum of Modern Art at Qatar to Google Cultural Institute. 16 Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Tunisia, UAE, Lebanon and Malaysia are found at the bottom of the YouGov, ‘Global Gender Equality Attitude Ranking’, https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/12/global-genderequality-report/. 17 Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Australia, Norway, France, Britain, Germany, United States and China are found at the top of the YouGov, ‘Global Gender Equality Attitude Ranking’. 18 Guerrilla Girls, ‘Thanks MoMA’, https://www.guerrillagirls.com/thanks-moma; Ariella Budick, ‘Female Artists: Still in the Shadow at MoMA’, The Financial Times, 21 April 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/e383f9a0-2432-11e7-a34a538b4cb30025. 19 MoMA, Annual Report, https://www.moma.org/interactives/annualreportFY16/ assets/MoMA_2015-16_Acquistions.pdf.

234 Notes 20 Guerrilla Girls, ‘Press Releases – Guerrilla Girls – Is It Even Worse in Europe?’ The Whitechapel Gallery, https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/pressrelease-guerrilla-girls-is-it-even-worse-in-europe/ 21 Reilly, ‘Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures and Fixes’. 22 Ruth Iskin, ed., Re-envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World (London: Routledge, 2016). 23 Hamburger Kunsthalle, ‘Collecting for Hamburg: New Acquisitions and Donations for the Department of Prints and Drawings, 2001-2016’, https://www.hamburgerkunsthalle.de/en/exhibitions/collecting-hamburg. 24 Kroller Muller Museum, ‘Annual Review 2016’, https://krollermuller.nl/en/annualreviews. 25 Sarah Bailey, Freedom of Information Act Request – Case Reference 547, Gender Breakdown of Tate Collections and Acquisitions, Letter to author, 16 September 2015. 26 Tate, ‘New Acquisitions’, 2015, https://tate.org.uk/art/ search?gid=9999999981&page=44, ‘Tate Report 2014/15’, https://www.tate.org.uk/ download/file/fid/53001 and ‘Tate Report 2014/15’, Appendix A: Tate Collection Acquisitions, https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/tate-reports. 27 Rachel Cooper and Helena Morrissey, ‘Should There Be Positive Discrimination towards Female Artists?’ The Royal Academy Magazine, 22 May 2014, https://www. royalacademy.org.uk/article/should-there-be-positive. 28 Amy Sedghi, ‘The London Art Audit: How Well Are Female Artists Represented?’ The Guardian, 24 May 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/ may/24/london-art-audit-female-artists-represented and UK Feminista, ‘Men Still on Top in the Arts’, https://ukfeminista.org.uk/news/press-releases/men-still-ontop-in-the-arts/. 29 Kate Parsons (Head of Collection Management at Tate), FOI Request 642 Response, Letter to author, 6 February 2017. 30 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, 11. 31 MOMA, ‘Collections Management Policy’, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/ shared/pdfs/docs/explore/CollectionsMgmtPolicyMoMA_Oct10.pdf. 32 European Union, ‘Relevance of Gender in the Policy Area’, Culture: Policy Area, http://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/culture. 33 Ibid. 34 Tate, ‘Acquisitions and Disposal Policy’, https://www.tate.org.uk/about/our-work/ collection/acquisitions. 35 Tate, ‘Diversity at Tate’, https://www.tate.org.uk/about/working-at-tate/diversityat-tate. 36 Tate, Minutes of the meeting of the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery held on Wednesday 21 January 2015 at Tate Britain, and Tate, Minutes of the meeting of

Notes  235 the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery held on Wednesday 23 September 2015 at Tate Liverpool. 37 See for example, Amy Levin, ed., Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader (Oxon: Routledge, 2010). 38 UK Parliament, ‘Sex Discrimination Act 1975’, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1975/65. 39 UK Parliament, ‘Public Sector Equality Duty’, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1975/65. 40 Tate, ‘Governance’, https://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/governance. 41 Museums Association, ‘Equalities Legislation’, https://www.museumsassociation. org/careers/diversify/equalities-legislation. 42 Museums Association, ‘Acquisition Guidance on the Ethics and Practicalities of Acquisition’, http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=11114. 43 Equality Advice and Support Service (EASS), Advice Sought Regarding Disproportionate Gendered Representation of Artists in the Tate’s Acquisitions of Contemporary Artists, email to author, 29 January 2016. 44 Furness, ‘Female Artists Are Stars of the Show at Tate in Order to Inspire Girls’. 45 Helen Gørrill and Jill Journeaux, ‘Tate Should Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is’, The Telegraph, 11 April 2016, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-dailytelegraph/20160126/281977491639557. 46 J. Callendar, ‘Response to Tate Should Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is’, The Telegraph, 26 January 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/. 47 Art Fund, ‘About Us’, https://www.artfund.org/about-us. 48 Eleanor McGrath, email to author, 14 August 2017. 49 For further information see www.eileencooper.co.uk. 50 Lyn Gardner, ‘Theatre’s Gender Inequality Is Shocking - But Change Is in the Air’, The Guardian, 22 September 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ theatreblog/2014/sep/22/theatre-gender-inequality-tonic-advance. 51 Robert Hughes, The Curse of the Mona Lisa, 2008, https://documentary-movie. com/the-mona-lisa-curse/. 52 Office for National Statistics, 2011. 53 Rebecca Machin, ‘Gender Representation in the Natural History Galleries at the Manchester Museum’, in Gender, Sexuality and Museums, eds. Amy Levin (Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 187–200. 54 Holland, Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice. 55 Lara Perry and Angela Dimitrakaki, Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions (Value: Art: Politics) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013). 56 See Brooklyn Museum, ‘Artabase’, www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa.

236 Notes 57 Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (New York: Merrell Publications, 2007), 13. 58 Noted at Tate, Toward a Curatorial Activism, Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating. Podcast of Symposium, 19 May 2012, https://www.tate.org. uk/whats-on/tate-modern/conference/civil-partnerships-queer-and-feministcurating. 59 See Brooklyn Museum, ‘Artabase’, for example Patricia Piccinini. 60 Ibid., for example, Amy Sillman. 61 Ibid., for example, Lisa Wade. 62 Ibid., for example, Nancy Friedemann; Ibid., for example, Louise Fishman; See Rebecca Fortnum, ‘Seeing and Feeling’, in Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women’s Contemporary Painting, ed. Rosemary Betterton (London: IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 2004); and Pam Skelton ‘Restretching the Canvas’, in Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women’s Contemporary Painting, ed. Rosemary Betterton (London: IB Tauris, 2004). 63 Helena Reckitt and Peggy Phelan, ‘preface’, in Art and Feminism (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2001). 64 Parker and Pollock, Framing Feminism. 65 Fawcett Society, Sex Equality: State of the Nation, 2016, https://www.fawcettsociety. org.uk/2016/01/fawcett-releases-state-of-the-nation-2016-report/. 66 Karren Brady, ‘No Matter What Some People May Say They Think, Feminism Isn’t a Dirty Word’, The Sun, 11 February 2018, https://www.thesun.co.uk/ news/5548246/karren-brady-on-feminism-and-the-womans-vote/. 67 Scott London, ‘The Future of Feminism’, http://dissidentfeminism.blogspot.com/. 68 Selby, ‘Taylor Swift Changes Her Stance on Feminism: “Misogyny Is Ingrained in People from the Time They Are Born’’’. 69 Noted in Zillah Eisenstein, Hatreds: Radicalised and Sexualised Conflicts in the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 1996). 70 Noted in Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home (Oakland: University of California Press, 2006). 71 Weiyi Cai and Scott Clement, ‘What Americans Really Think about Feminism Today’, The Washington Post, 27 January 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ graphics/national/feminism-project/poll/??noredirect=on. 72 Richard Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 192–4. 73 Juli Carson, ‘On Discourse as Monument: Institutional Spaces and Feminist Problematics’, in Museums after Modernism: Strategies of Engagement, eds. Griselda Pollock and Joyce Zemans (London: Wiley, 2008), 202. 74 Tate, Toward a Curatorial Activism.

Notes  237 75 Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference, 194. 76 Laura Meyer with Faith Wilding, ‘Collaboration and Conflict in the Fresno Feminist Art Program: An Experiment in Feminist Pedagogy’, in Entering the Picture, ed. Jill Fields (New York: Routledge, 2012), 47. 77 Ibid. 78 Carson, ‘On Discourse as Monument: Institutional Spaces and Feminist Problematics’, 191–2. 79 For example, the American artist, Ferne Jacobs, born in 1942, who ‘expresses a woman’s point of view through her art practice’. See Jacobs, ‘Feminist Art Artabase’. 80 Noted at Tate, Toward a Curatorial Activism. 81 Ibid. 82 Schwartz, ‘MoMA’s Modern Women Project, Feminisms and Curatorial Practice’, in Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces, ed. Jessica Sjoholm Skrubbe (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 93. 83 Reilly and Nochlin, Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, 23. 84 Ralph Rugoff, ‘You Talking to Me? On Curating Group Shows That Give You a Chance to Join the Group’, in Questions of Practice: What Makes a Great Exhibition? ed. Paula Marincola (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, 2010). 85 Gaby Porter, ‘Seeing through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums’, in Theorizing Museums, eds. Sharon MacDonald and Gordon Fyfe (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 105–6. 86 Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision (London: Verso, 1986). 87 Porter, ‘Seeing through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums’, 62. 88 Griselda Pollock, ‘The Missing Future’, in Modern Women: Women Artists in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, eds. Cornelia Butler and Alexandra Schwartz (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 54. 89 Ibid. 90 See Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education. 91 Helen Molesworth, ‘How to Install Art as a Feminist’, in Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, eds. Connie Butler and Alexandra Schwartz (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 509. 92 Noted at Tate, Toward a Curatorial Activism. 93 Gavin Haines, ‘Mapped: The Best (and Worst) Countries for Gender Equality’, The Telegraph, 3 November 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-andgraphics/mapped-the-best-and-worst-countries-for-gender-equality/. 94 Arto Haapala, ‘Contemporary Finnish Aesthetics’, Philosophy Compass, 4 January 2011, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00371.x/ abstract?sms_ss=twitter&at_xt=4d5529c5a21ddeb3,1.

238 Notes 95 Mette Sandbye, ‘The New Nordic? A Critical Examination’, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 8 November 2016, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/jac. v8.33571. 96 UNESCO, Gender Equality, Heritage and Creativity, 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0022/002294/229418e.pdf, 29. 97 This is Finland, ‘Finland Launches International Gender Equality Prize’, 8 March 2017, https://finland.fi/life-society/finland-launches-international-gender-equalityprize/. 98 Ibid. 99 Johanna Drucker, ‘Doing Art History Digitally/Doing Digital Art History?’ https:// digitalarthistory.weebly.com/uploads/6/9/4/3/6943163/johannadrucker_remarks_ gettydah-lab_2013.pdf 100 Google Cultural Institute, ‘About Google Cultural Institute’. 101 Foster, Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, 21. 102 Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories, 33. 103 Ward Jouve, Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender, 10, 15. 104 Nazworth, ‘Feminists Ignore Biology, Dissident Feminist Camille Paglia Argues’. 105 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, 33. 106 Jonathan Mitchell, ‘School Bans Girls from Wearing Skirts in Gender-free Move’, Evening Standard, 7 September 2017, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/ school-bans-girls-from-wearing-skirts-in-genderfree-move-a3629331.html. 107 Steven Morris, ‘Teenage Boys Wear Skirts to School to Protest against “No Shorts” Policy’, The Guardian, 22 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2017/jun/22/teenage-boys-wear-skirts-to-school-protest-no-shortsuniform-policy. 108 Pollock, Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art (A Macat Analysis) (London: Routledge, 2017), xxvi. 109 Ibid., 33.

Chapter 4 1 Johnson, ‘There’s Never Been a Great Woman Artist’. 2 Ellen Scott, ‘If You Repeat a Lie Enough, People Think It’s True’, Metro, 1 December 2015, http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/01/if-you-repeat-a-lie-enough-people-think-itstrue-5536488/. 3 Ibid.

Notes  239 4 Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories, 5. 5 Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, 224; Phaidon Press Ltd statement; Roger Clark, Ashley Folgo and Jane Pichette, ‘Have There Been Any Great Women Artists? An Investigation of the Visibility of Women Artists in Recent Art History Textbooks’, Art Education 58, no. 3 (2015): 6–13. 6 Ibid. 7 Hammer, ‘Creativity and Feminine Ingredients in Young Male Artists’, 414. 8 Connolly, ‘Georg Baselitz: Why Art’s Great Shock Merchant Has Set His Sights on Opera’. 9 Kyung Hee Kim, The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation (New York: Prometheus Books, 2016), 163. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 170–2. 12 Tama Starr, ‘Introduction’, The ‘Natural Inferiority’ of Women: Outrageous Pronouncements by Misguided Male (New York: Poseidon Press, 1991). 13 James English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 2–3. 14 Alice Losq, ‘A Guide to the World’s Biggest Art Prizes’, Artspace, 16 August 2014, http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/art_market/art_prizes-5932. 15 English, The Economy of Prestige, 329. 16 Johnson, ‘There’s Never Been a Great Woman Artist’. 17 Whitney Museum of American Art, ‘About the Bucksbaum Award’, http://whitney. org/About/BucksbaumAward. 18 Ibid. 19 Hugo Boss, ‘The Hugo Boss Prize’, http://group.hugoboss.com/en/group/ sponsoring/art-sponsoring/hugo-boss-prize/. 20 Guggenheim, ‘Timeline of the Hugo Boss Prize’, https://www.guggenheim.org/ hugo-boss-prize/time-line. 21 New Contemporaries, ‘Submission Guidelines’, https://www.newcontemporaries. org.uk/about/submissions-guidelines-2016. 22 According to their own website, Walker Art Gallery, ‘About the John Moores’, https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/. 23 Tate, ‘What Is the Turner Prize?’ https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain/turnerprize/what-it-is; Will Gompertz, ‘The Turner Prize 2010 … and Beyond’, BBC News, 4 May 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/willgompertz/2010/05/ the_turner_prize_2010.html. 24 Kennedy, FoI Request: Gender and Turner Prize Longlist, email to author, 23 December, 2014. 25 Ibid.

240 Notes 26 Association for International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF), ‘The Marcel Duchamp Prize’, https://www.adiaf.com/en/the-marcel-duchamp-prize/overview/. 27 La Biennale Di Venezia, ‘122 Years of History’, http://www.labiennale.org/en/ history. 28 Zoe Williams, ‘Going Ape’, The Guardian, 29 June 2006. 29 CoUNTess, ‘Countess Goes to 55th International’, http://countesses.blogspot. co.uk/2013/05/countess-goes-to-55th-international.html. 30 Gender Bias in the Arts, ‘Building Awareness’, https://www.genderbiasinthearts. org/get-engaged/; Chris Wiley, ‘The 57th Venice Biennale’, Frieze, 11 August 2017, https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-0. 31 Charlotte Bonham-Carter, ‘Are Female Artists under Represented?’ The Freelands Foundation, https://www.freelandsfoundation.co.uk/documents/representation_of_ female_report.pdf 32 Sovereign Art Foundation, ‘The MENA Art Prize’, https:// sovereignartfoundation.com. 33 Abraaj Group, ‘The Abraaj Group Art Prize’, http://abraajgroupartprize.com/. 34 Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), ‘Jameel Prize’, https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/ jameel-prize-4/. 35 Chris Sharratt, ‘Shortlisted Artists Condemn “No Fees” and “Other Problematic Aspects” of German Art Prize’, A-N, https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/shortlisted-artistscondemn-no-fees-problematic-aspects-german-art-prize. 36 Pierre Penet and Kangsan Lee, ‘Prize and Price: The Turner Prize as a Valuation Device in the Contemporary Art Market’, Poetics 43 (2014). 37 Marsha Meskimmon, Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2003), 2. 38 Flood, ‘Books about Women Less Likely to Win Prizes, Study Finds’. 39 Ibid.

Chapter 5 1 Routledge, ‘Cultural Capital, Social Theory Re-wired’, https://www.routledgesoc. com/category/profile-tags/cultural-capital. 2 David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (London: The University of Chicago Press Ltd, 1997), 80. 3 Ronald S. Burt, Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), x. 4 Overall average lightness has been calculated through carrying out an overall average blur of the image, sampling the result and running through one of the available online colour encyclopaedias and converters (Colorhexa).

Notes  241 5 John Kelleher, ‘Why Arabs Love London’, The National, July 2011, https://www. thenational.ae/arts-culture/why-arabs-love-london-1.451629. 6 Rebecca Haslam, HESA Statistics, Email to author, 8 April 2016. 7 David Galenson, ‘Anticipating Artistic Success: Lessons from History’, World Economics 6, no. 2 (2005): 11. 8 William Powhida, ‘Artistic Success in American Means Wearing the Right Old School Tie’, Art Newspaper, 2015, http://williampowhida.com/wordpress/ archives/3813, 49. 9 Artsy, ‘The Fifteen Most Influential Art World Cities of 2015’, 2015: The Year in Art, 15 December 2015, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-contemporary-arts-most-influential-cities. 10 Juliet Garside, ‘Recession Rich: Britain’s Wealthiest Double Net Worth since Crisis’, The Guardian, 26 April 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/26/ recession-rich-britains-wealthiest-double-net-worth-since-crisis. 11 BBC, ‘Arts Council England Funding Must Shift from London, MPs Say’, Entertainment and Arts, 2014, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainmentarts-29897903. 12 Ian Jack, ‘Why Is the Garden Bridge Worth as Much as Five Lancashire Museums?’ The Guardian, 14 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2016/feb/13/why-is-londons-garden-bridge-worth-as-much-asfive-lancashire-museums-ask-joanna-lumley. 13 See for example, Jenny Stevens, ‘The Maccabees: It’s Impossible – Bands Can’t Afford to Live in London Any More’, The Guardian, 9 July 2015, https://www. theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/09/the-maccabees-its-impossible-bands-cantafford-to-live-in-london-any-more. 14 Kiran Moodley, ‘Grayson Perry: “London Needs Affordable Housing Because Rich People Don’t Create Culture”’, The Independent, 21 November 2014, http://www. independent.co.uk/news/people/grayson-perry-london-needs-affordable-housingbecause-rich-people-dont-create-culture-9875422.html. 15 Sarah Cascone, ‘40 Per Cent of New York Artists Can’t Afford Their Art Supplies’, Artnet, 19 May 2017, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/nyc-cultural-plan-879665. 16 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education, 13. 17 Ibid. 18 Newell, ‘The Superwoman Syndrome: A Comparison of the “Heroine” in Denmark and the UK’, Women in Management Review, 11, no.15 (2011). 19 Ella Alexander, ‘Tracey Emin: There Are Good Artists That Have Children. They Are Called Men’, The Independent, 2 October 2014, https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/people/tracey-emin-there-are-good-artists-that-have-children-they-arecalled-men-9771053.html.

242 Notes 20 See for example Juliet Miller, The Creative Feminine and Her Discontents: Psychotherapy, Art and Destruction (London: Karnac Books, 2008). 21 Tate, ‘Mary Kelly: Post-Partum Document’, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ kelly-post-partum-document-analysed-markings-and-diary-perspective-schemaexperimentum-t03925/text-catalogue-entry. 22 Luke Pittaway, Maxine Robertson, Kamal Munir, David Denyer and Andy Neely, ‘Networking and Innovation in the UK’, Aim Research: Advanced Institute of Management Research, 2004, https://www.aimresearch.org/uploads/File/ Publications/Academic%20Publications%202/Networking_and_Innovation_in_ the_UK.pdf. 23 Colette Phillips, ‘The Art of Schmoozing: How Networking Really Works!’ Huffington Post, 30 May 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/colette-amphillips/ the-art-of-schmoozing-how:b_5406416.html 24 Monica Forret and Thomas Dougherty, ‘Networking Behaviors and Career Outcomes: Differences for Men and Women?’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 25 (2004): 419–37; Margaret Lineham and James Walsh, ‘Key Issues in the Senior Female International Career Move: A Qualitative Study in a European Context’, British Journal of Management 12 (2001): 110–32. 25 Parliament, Parliamentary Business, https://www.parliament.uk/business/. 26 Ibid. 27 Marieke van Den Brink and Yvonne Benschop, ‘Gender in Academic Networking: The Role of Gatekeepers in Professional Recruitment’, The Journal of Management Studies, 51, no. 3 (2014): 460. 28 Lynn Morgan and Marilyn Davidson, ‘Sexual Dynamics in Mentoring Relationships – A Critical Review’, British Journal of Management, 19 (2008): 120–9; Savita Kumra and Susan Vinnicombe, ‘A Study of the Promotion to Partner Process in a Professional Services Firm: How Women Are Disadvantaged’, British Journal of Management, 19 February 2008, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ j.1467-8551.2008.00572.x, 65–74. 29 Maria Socratous, ‘Networking: A Male Dominated Game’, Chartered Management Institute, https://managers.org.uk/individuals/existing-members/get-involved/ management-articles-of-the-year/management-articles/networkingdominated-game. 30 Mette Hersby, Michelle Ryan and Jolanda Jetten, ‘Getting Together to Get Ahead: The Impact of Social Structure on Women’s Networking’, British Journal of Management 20 (2008): 416. 31 Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (London: Penguin, 2012).

Notes  243 32 Trina Grillo, ‘Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House’, Guerrilla Girls Broadband, http://guerrillagirlsbroadband.com/ speakup/whats-anti-essentialism-and-intersectionality-anyway.

Chapter 6 1 Ana Finel Honigman, ‘Is the Art World Ageist?’ The Guardian, 30 November 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2006/nov/30/ istheartworldageist. 2 Kate Salter, ‘Life in Full Colour: The Artist Rose Hilton’, The Telegraph, 24 October 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9614902/Life-in-fullcolour-the-artist-Rose-Hilton.html; emphasis in original. 3 See for example, Karen Sands, ‘The Invisible Woman’, Huff Post, 8 April 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-invisible-woman_ us_57a379f8e4b0c863d40055f4; Joan Gage, ‘The Invisible (Old) Woman’, Huff Post, 9 November 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-gage/feelinginvisible_b_5754466.html; Mary Gold, ‘Over 50? Bye Bye Totty, Hello Invisible Woman’, The Daily Mail, 17 February 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ article-1357716/Over-50-Bye-bye-totty-hello-Invisible-Woman.html; and Eve Pollard, ‘How I Became an Invisible Woman’, The Daily Mail, 9 June 2017, http:// www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4586716/How-invisible-woman-EVEPOLLARD.html. 4 Age UK, ‘Ageism’, https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work-learning/ discrimination-right/ageism/. 5 Age UK, ‘Ageism at Work’, https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/worklearning/discrimination-rights/ageism/ageism-at-work/. 6 Eurofound, ‘UK Rulings on Retirement Age and Discrimination Law’, EurWORK, 31 May 2009, https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/articles/ ecj-rulings-on-retirement-age-and-discrimination-law. 7 Ministry of Justice Finland, ‘The Constitution of Finland’, https://www.finlex.fi/en/ laki/kaannokset/1999/en19990731.pdf. 8 US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, ‘The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967’, https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm. 9 Age Discrimination, ‘United Arab Emirates’, http://www.agediscrimination.info/ international-age-discrimination/united-arab-emirates. 10 Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, ‘Overview’, http:// equalnationalityrights.org/countries/global-overview.

244 Notes 11 As noted on the Art Edge blog, et al., ‘Let’s Have an Ar(t)gument: Ageism and Art Galleries’, 25 March 2014, http://theartedge.faso.com/blog/73636/lets-have-anartgument-ageism-and-art-galleries. 12 Mall Galleries, The Alfred Teddy Smith Zsuzsi Roboz Award, Winsor and Newton, Winsor and Newton Oil Painters Award, Mall Galleries, the Phyllis Roberts Award. 13 Age UK, ‘The Equality Act’, https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/worklearning/discrimination-rights/the-equality-act/. 14 Aesthetica, ‘Shifting Terms’, 3 April 2017, http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/ shifting-terms/. 15 Stefano Baia Curioni, P. Dubini and M. Equi Pierazzini, ‘From Glass Ceiling to Ivory Tower: Legitimation Patterns in the Contemporary Art System’, Working Paper: Ask Research Centre, Università. 16 G. Dudilovski, ‘The Gender Wage Gap Theory and Art Auction Sales: Decomposing Price Differentials between Male and Female Artists’, Unpublished Master thesis. Rotterdam: Erasmus School of Economics, 2013. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Women Artists: 1990 to 2005. 17 K. Biswas, ‘Remember Cool Britannia?’ The Times Literary Supplement, 26 March 2014, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1392199.ece 18 June O’Neill and Solomon Polachek, ‘Why the Gender Gap in Wages Narrowed in the 1980s’, Journal of Labour Economics 11, no. 1 (1993). 19 Jakubowicz, Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference, 66. 20 Sarah Maple, ‘Sarah Maple: Official Website of the Young Contemporary Artist’, https://www.sarahmaple.com; and Beverley Knowles, ‘Sarah Maple at Kunstihoone Tallinn’, https://beverleyknowles.com/2013/curator/sarah-maple-at-kunstihoonetallinn/. 21 Hal Foster, ‘The Medium Is the Market’, in The Market (Documents of Contemporary Art), ed. Natasha Degen (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2008). 22 Claire Luxton, The Contemporary Collective. 23 Jakubowicz, Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art, 66. 24 Artnet News, ‘We Asked 20 Women, Is the Art World Biased?’ ArtNet, 2014, https:// news.artnet.com/people/we-asked-20-women-is-the-art-world-biased-heres-whatthey-said-81162 25 ‘Billie: My Doubts about Hollywood’s Metoo Movement’, Daily Mail, 5 February 2018, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20180205/282080572283738. 26 Kristin Lieb, Gender, Branding and the Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female Popular Music Stars (London: Routledge: 2013), iv. 27 Ibid., xvii. 28 As noted on artist’s personal website in 2016.

Notes  245 29 See for example, Paul Kindersley, ‘Getting ahead in the Business World: A Makeup Tutorial’, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNGmGJdrSQI. 30 Jakubowicz, Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference, 35. 31 Lieb, Gender, Branding and the Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female Popular Music Stars, 88–9. 32 Lieb, noted in Miranda Banks, Bridget Conor and Vicki Mayer, eds., Production Studies, The Sequel! Cultural Studies of Global Media Industries (London: Routledge, 2015). 33 Pierre Penet and Kangsan Lee, ‘Prize and Price: The Turner Prize as a Valuation Device in the Contemporary Art Market’, Poetics 43 (2014): 156. 34 See David Galenson, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 35 BBC, ‘Turner Prize 2017: Lubaina Himid’s Win Makes History’, 6 December 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42244324; and ‘Rose Wylie Wins John Moores Painting Prize aged 80’, 19 September 2014, https://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/entertainment-arts-29281142. 36 BBC, ‘Phyllida Barlow to Represent Britain at Venice Biennale’, 4 March 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35724489. 37 Royal Academy, Marina Abramovich Hon RA, https://www.royalacademy.org. uk/art-artists/name/marina-abramovic-hon-ra; and MoMA, Carolee Schneeman: Kinetic Painting, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3658. 38 Artsy, Mona Hatoum, https://www.artsy.net/show/centre-pompidou-monahatoum#!; and Tate, Mona Hatoum, http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/ exhibition/mona-hatoum. 39 Jessica Woodroffe, ‘Not Having It All: How Motherhood Reduces Women’s Pay and Employment Prospects’, The Fawcett Society, 2009, http://www.equality-ne.co.uk/ downloads/445_NotHavingItAll.pdf. 40 Data was sourced from a complete sample of paintings featuring in major London auctions between 1992–4 and 2012–14. 41 UNESCO, ‘Gender Equality, Heritage and Creativity’, 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0022/002294/229418e.pdf, 29. 42 This is Finland, ‘Finland launches International Gender Equality Prize’. 43 For explanation of the term ‘feminazi’ refer to Proudman, ‘I Was Labelled a Feminazi – Here’s How Feminists Can Fight the Word’. 44 Charlotte Proudman, ‘I Was Labelled a Feminazi – Here Is How Feminists Can Fight the Word’, The Guardian, 1 October 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2015/oct/01/feminazi-feminists-women-rights-feminism-charlotteproudman. 45 Fawcett Society, ‘Sex Equality: State of the Nation’.

246 Notes 46 See for example Valerie Solanos, S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) (Chico, CA: AK Press, 1967); Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1970); and Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (New York: The Free Press, 1987). 47 As noted in Robinson, Feminism – Art – Theory: An Anthology 1968–2000, 293. 48 Chicago, Institutional Time: A Critique of Art School Education, 92. 49 Jane Morris, ‘Nicholas Serota the Great Transformer’, The Art Newspaper, 15 June 2016, https://theartnewspaper.com/reports/tate-modern/the-great-transformer/. 50 See for example, Greta Depledge, ‘Conflicting Interpretations of Gender: Hysteria, Masculinity and Marriage in Florence Marryat’s Nelly Brooke’, Critical Survey 23, no. 1 (2011); Joe Melling and Bill Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: The State, Insanity and Society in England, 1845-1914 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006); and Jane E. Kromm, ‘The Feminization of Madness in Visual Representation’, Feminist Studies, 20, no. 3 (1994). 51 Definition from the Merriam Webster Dictionary. 52 UK Parliament, ‘Discrimination: Your Rights’, https://www.gov.uk/discriminationyour-rights/types-of-discrimination. 53 Belle Derks, Colette Van Laar, Naomi Ellemers and Kim de Groot, ‘Gender-Bias Primes Elicit Queen Bee Responses among Senior Policewomen’, Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 10 June 2011, https:// pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/08/26/0956797611417258.abstract>. 54 Gareth Harris and Thomas Forwood, ‘The Networks that Buy the Tate’s Art’, The Art Newspaper, 280 (2016): 18–19. 55 Belle Derks, Colette Van Laar, Naomi Ellemers and Gauwrie Raghoe, ‘Extending the Queen Bee Effect: How Hindustani Workers Cope with Disadvantage by Distancing’, Journal of Social Issues, 71, no. 3 (2015). 56 Ibid. 57 Tate, ‘Governance’. 58 Michael Carter and Adam Geczy, Re Framing Art (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 49. 59 Andi Zeisler, Feminism and Pop Culture (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 21. 60 Derks et al., ‘Extending the Queen Bee Effect: How Hindustani Workers Cope with Disadvantage’. 61 G. L. Staines, T. E. Jayaratne and C. Tavris, ‘The Queen Bee Syndrome’, in The Female Experience, ed. C. Tavris (Del Mar, CA: CRM Books, 1973). 62 Proudman, speaking at The Fawcett Society 2016 Conference. 63 Rebecca Asher, Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); and Hochschild and Machung, Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. 64 Hochschild and Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home, 4.

Notes  247 65 Finel Honigman, ‘Is the Art World Ageist?’ 66 Marlo Thomas, ‘The Curious History of Women Who Passed as Men in Pursuit of a Dream’, Huffington Post, 5 March 2013, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlothomas/women-who-passed-as-men_b_3203857.html.

Chapter 7 1 2 3 4

Flood, ‘Books about Women Less Likely to Win Prizes, Study Finds’. Silvers, ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ 286. Ward Jouvre, Female Genesis: Creativity, Self and Gender, 10, 15. Pramanick Prosenjit, ‘Two Trees Grows’, https://www.researchgate.net/post/ Two_trees_grows_Red_mark_in_picture_from_one_tree_What_is_the_reason_ behind_this. 5 Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (London: Routledge, 1995), 51. 6 Solanos, S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men); Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution; and Dworkin, Intercourse. 7 Butler, Gender Trouble, 13. 8 Ibid., 6. 9 Tutchell and Edmonds, Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power. 10 Ibid. 11 Silvers, ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ 286. 12 Definition of ‘Flourish’ from the Oxford English Dictionary. 13 Definition of ‘Parasite’ from the Oxford English Dictionary. 14 UNESCO, ‘The EFA Movement’, https://www.unesco.org/en/efa/the-efa-movement. 15 UNESCO, ‘Gender and Education for All: the Leap to Equality’, 2003, https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001325/132550e.pdf. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 15–16. 18 Ibid., 16. 19 Lockwood, ‘Someone Like Me Can Be Successful? Do College Students Need SameGender Role Models?’ 20 Tutchell and Edmonds, Man-Made: Why So Few Women Are in Positions of Power, 61. 21 For example, David Marx and Jasmin Roman, ‘Female Role Models: Protecting Women’s Math Test Performance’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, no. 9 (2002): 1183–93; Jennifer Collins and Donna Cooke, ‘Creative Role Models: Personality and Performance’, Journal of Management Development,

248 Notes 32, no. 4 (2013): 336–50; and Isabel Stevens, ‘Finding the Right Medium: The Pioneering Conceptual Artist Susan Hiller talks to Apollo about Her Interest in the Supernatural, Working in Different Materials, Her Commitment to Feminism - and Why Role Models Are Hard to Find’, Apollo, 183, no. 638 (2016): 56. 22 Jakubowicz, Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference, 16. 23 Moussavi, ‘Agenda Bender: The Case for the Abolition of Female Role Models’, 31–4. 24 Hoyt and Simon, ‘Female Leaders: Injurious or Inspiring Role Models for Women?’ Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35, no. 1 (2011): 143. 25 Recruiting Times, ‘Experts Warn That the “Superwoman” Cult Is Putting Women Off Business’, 17 May 2018, https://recruitingtimes.org/recruitment-and-hrfeatures/23317/experts-warn-superwoman-cult-putting-women-off-business/. 26 QAA, ‘QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Art and Design’, https://www. qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/Subject-benchmark-statement---Artand-design-.pdf; and QAA, ‘Subject Benchmark Statement for History of Art, Architecture and Design’, https://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/ Subject-benchmark-statement-History-of-art-architecture-and-design.pdf. 27 QAA, ‘QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Art and Design’. 28 Ibid. 29 Gørrill, ‘Disrupting the Masculine Canon in Fine Art Education’, 2018. 30 Sharratt, ‘Shortlisted Artists Condemn No Fees and Other “Problematic Aspects” of German Art Prize’. 31 Tate, ‘Diversity at Tate’. 32 Helen Gørrill, Offer to discuss thesis findings in respect of the Tate’s Diversity and Equality policy, email to Helen Beeckmans, 28 January 2016; Request for interview and further information in respect of the Tate’s Diversity and Equality policy, letter to Emma Green, Tate’s Diversity Officer, 4 February 2016; Request for interview and further information in respect of the Tate’s Diversity and Equality policy, letter to Emma Green, Tate’s Diversity Officer (chasing up previous letter), 14 March 2016. 33 See Levin, Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader., etc. 34 Tate, ‘Tate for All: Diversity Action Plan’, https://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/ fid/30715. 35 Gareth Harris, ‘Tate Director Maria Balshaw Apologises for Comments Made about Sexual Harassment’, The Art Newspaper, 9 February 2018, https://www. theartnewspaper.com/news/tate-director-maria-balshaw-drawn-into-sexualharassment-row. 36 Ben Quinn, ‘Tate Artist in Residence Quits, Claiming Gallery Is Failing Women’, The Guardian, 7 March 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/ mar/07/tate-modern-artist-quits-saying-gallery-is-failing-women.

Notes  249 37 Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, 152. 38 Museums Association, ‘Equalities Legislation’. 39 Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), ‘UK Equality Act 2010’, https:// www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/documents/PSD/technical_ guidance_on_the_public_sector_equality_duty_england.pdf. 40 www.theclimbinglab.co.uk. 41 Matt Green Media, [email protected]. 42 Art Fund, ‘How We Are Funded’, https://www.artfund.org/about-us/how-we-arefunded. 43 Eleanor McGrath, email to author, 14 August 2017. 44 Morris, ‘Nicholas Serota the Great Transformer’. 45 See for example Guerrilla Girls, Women in America Earn 2/3 of What Men Do, Why Has 87% of Icelandic Film Centre Funding Gone to Men?; and The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, 1988, https://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/advantages. shtml; and Degen, ‘Code of Ethics for Art Museums’, in The Market: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. Natasha Degen (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2013). 46 For example Furness, ‘Female Artists Are Stars of the Show in a Bid to Inspire Girls’; and Sanderson, ‘Women Rule the Roost in Tate’s Modern Approach’. 47 Ibid., and Williams, ‘Tate Modern’s Autumn Show, The World Goes Pop, Finally Gives Female Artists Their Due’. 48 Graw, High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture, 63. 49 UK Parliament, ‘Equality Act 2010’, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act2010-guidance. 50 Hannah Furness, ‘Art World Is “Hot Bed” of Corruption, Collector Claims’, The Telegraph, 2 June 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/02/art-world-ishotbed-of-corruption-collector-claims/. 51 Eleanor Lawrie, ‘Gender Pay Gaps Must Be Declared by UK Companies’, BBC, 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39502872; and Allen, ‘UK’s Gender Pay Rankings Will Put Discrimination under Spotlight’. 52 Silvers, ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ 286. 53 Guardian, ‘As Easy as 1, 1, 2, 3’, Classical Music, 12 May 2005, https://www. theguardian.com/music/2005/may/12/classicalmusicandopera1. 54 Flood, ‘Books about Women Less Likely to Win Prizes, Study Finds’. 55 For definition of ‘Anarcho-feminism’ see Glossary. 56 Paul Mellon Foundation, see www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/fellowships-and-grants/ awarded. 57 The Leverhulme Trust, see www.leverhulme.ac.uk/awards-made/recent-awards. 58 Owen Jones, ‘The Establishment Uncovered and How They Get away with It’, The Guardian, 26 August 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/26/theestablishment-uncovered-how-power-works-in-britain-elites-stranglehold.

250 Notes

Conclusion: Baselitz’s folly: Women can paint 1 Butler, Gender Trouble. 2 Ibid., 13–18. 3 Pollock, Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art, xxvi. 4 Nazworth, ‘Feminists Ignore Biology, Dissident Feminist Camille Paglia Argues’. 5 Silvers, ‘Has Her(oine’s) Time Now Come?’ 284. 6 Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’; and Reilly, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Thirty Years After’. 7 Armstrong and de Zegher, Women Artists at the Millenium, 318; and Reilly, Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, 318. 8 Butler, Gender Trouble, 6; and Lauren Booker, ‘What It Means to Be Gender Fluid’, CNN, 13 April 2006, https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/living/gender-fluid-feat/ index.html. 9 Rebecca Haslam, HESA Statistics, Email to author, 25 February 2016. 10 Rebecca Haslam, HESA Statistics, Email to author, 8 April 2016. 11 Further research into the branding of artists can be seen in books by Don Thompson, including The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (London: Aurum Press, 2012); The Supermodel and the Brillo Box (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); and The Orange Balloon Dog: Turmoil and Avarice in the Contemporary Art Market (London: Aurum Press, 2018).

Glossary 1 See also the Tate definition of ‘abstract art’ at www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/ abstract-art. 2 Definition of ‘Anarcha Feminism’ from Wictionary. 3 Definition of ‘Androgyny’ appears in the Oxford English Dictionaries. 4 Guerrilla Girls Broadband, ‘What’s Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality Anyway?’ http://guerrillagirlsbroadband.com/speakup/whats-anti-essentialismand-intersectionality-anyway 5 Definition of ‘Arithmophobia’ appears in the Collins English Dictionary. 6 Definition of ‘Backlash’ appears in the Collins English Dictionary. 7 Definition provided by the Catalogue Raisonné Scholar’s Association (CRSA), www.catalogueraisonne.org/. 8 Phillips, ‘Why These Professors Are Warning against Promoting the Work of Straight, White Men’.

Notes  251 9 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John Richardson (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Ltd, 1986), 241. 10 Penny Florence and Nicola Foster, Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophy and Feminist Understandings (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2000), 2. 11 Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, 241. 12 Definition of ‘Essentialism’ appears in the Oxford English Dictionaries. 13 Definition of ‘Feminine’ appears in the Oxford English Dictionaries. 14 See also the Tate definition of ‘figurative art’, www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tateliverpool/exhibition/dla-piper-series-twentieth-century/twentieth-centuryexhibition-4. 15 Definition of ‘Gatekeeper’ appears in the Open Education Sociology Dictionary. 16 Definition of ‘Gender’ written by Monash University: Medicine, Nursing and Health Studies. 17 Eric Anthony Grollman, ‘What Is Gender “NonConformity?”’ The Kinsey Institute, 8 March 2011, https://kinseyconfidential.org/gender-nonconformity. 18 Ibid. 19 Eurogender, ‘Quota Project – Global Database of Quotas for Women’, 2013. https:// eurogender.eige.europa.eu/posts/quota-project-global-database-quotas-women. 20 United Nations Human Rights, ‘Gender Stereotypes/Stereotyping’, https://www. ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Women/WRGS/Pages/GenderStereotypes.aspx. 21 Ibid. 22 Definition of ‘Gendered’ appears in the Merriam Webster dictionary. 23 Definition of ‘Gender-neutral’ appears in the Oxford English Dictionaries. 24 Gay Bryant, The Working Woman Report: Succeeding in Business in the 80’s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). 25 Lerman and Paules-Bronet, ‘Hashtag Feminism’. 26 Definition provided by Technopedia. 27 Definition of ‘indirect discrimination’ appears on UK Parliament website. 28 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 2. 29 Definition of ‘machismo’ appears in the Merriam Webster dictionary. 30 Definition of ‘masculine’ appears in the Oxford English Dictionary. 31 Richard Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014). 32 Belle Derks et al., ‘Gender-Bias Primes Elicit Queen Bee Responses among Senior Policewomen’. 33 Solanos, S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto; Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution and Dworkin, Intercourse. 34 Definition of ‘Sex’ written by Monash University: Medicine, Nursing and Health Studies.

252 Notes 35 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), ‘What Is Social Capital?’ https://oecd.org/insights/37966934.pdf; Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, 241. 36 See for example, Recruiting Times, ‘Experts Warn That the “Superwoman” Cult Is Putting Women Off Business’. 37 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (London: Routledge, 1984), 291. 38 Definition of ‘tokenism’ provided by Merriam Webster dictionary. 39 Carley, ‘What Is Toxic Masculinity?’ 40 Phillips, ‘Why These Professors Are Warning against Promoting the Work of Straight, White Men’.

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Index Abraaj Group Art Prize  108 abstract painting  18, 33–6, 40, 70–4, 87, 90, 94–5, 118, 121, 147, 174, 182 Abu Dhabi Global Market  135 aesthetics American  21–50, 73–98, 212–15 androgynous  4, 12, 18, 21–50, 32, 36, 40–1, 47–9, 95, 98, 154, 172–5, 180, 182 art prizes  101–2 British  21–50, 73–98, 212–15 differential  3, 9, 25–6, 34, 44–5, 47, 49, 57, 71, 173, 182 essentialist  18, 21–50, 22, 23, 42, 73, 91, 95, 97–8, 144, 165, 172, 174–5, 180, 182–3 European  33, 42, 52, 95–6, 212–15 feminine  21–50, 51–72, 208 feminist  45, 71, 113, 155 Finnish  91–2, 94–8, 174–5, 180, 211–15 gendered  8, 17, 21–50, 34, 43, 51–72, 63, 208–9 inter-relational  184 masculine  21–50, 51–72, 209 Middle Eastern  42, 60, 95–6, 212–15 Nordic  92–3, 95, 97, 174–5, 180 value and gender  51–72, 63, 71 age  113–54, 210 discrimination in Employment Act  134 success (of men and women)  113–54, 210 ageism (against women)  2, 19, 28, 57, 61, 93, 95, 113–54, 179 Alfred Teddy Smith Zsuzsi Roboz Award  135 alpha bias  15 American aesthetics  21–50, 73–98, 212–15 anarcha-feminism  169, 182

androgynous aesthetics  4, 12, 18, 21–50, 32, 36, 40–1, 47–9, 95, 98, 154, 172–5, 180, 182 anti-essentialism  22–3, 98, 131, 172, 175, 182 arithmophobia  16–17, 23, 167, 182 Art Audit (ELF)  16 art education, impact of location of  117–32, 121–2 ArtFund  84, 164 artworld corruption  166 opacity  21 regulations  181 autobiographical art  45 backlash  2, 97, 182 Barthes, Roland  41–2, 57 Basel Art Fair  136 binaries (in gender studies)  9, 17, 22–3, 97, 155, 167, 171–2, 175 bisexuality, of behaviour in creativity  41 42 Bourdieu, Pierre  117–18, 129, 130–2, 177–9, 181 BP Portrait Prize  110 branding, of gender  19, 48, 57, 63, 66, 86–7, 134, 139, 140, 146–7, 154, 173, 179, 208–9 British aesthetics  21–50, 73–98, 212–15 androgynous aesthetics in paint  42 art value/pay gap  8 auctions, top performing artists  188–99, 204–5 case study, impact of arts prizes on economic values  112 case study, impact of arts prizes on museum inclusion  112 glass ceiling  69 Brooklyn Museum  85, 87, 89–91, 147, 165, 176, see also Elizabeth Sackler Center

Index Bucksbaum Award  103 Butler, Judith  3, 6, 9, 17, 22–3, 41, 97–8, 156, 171–2, 175 California Institute of the Arts  122–3 Chelsea College of Arts (UAL)  124 Chicago, Judy  25, 58, 66, 81, 85, 88, 90–1, 97, 126, 142 Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art  14 cisgendered  182, 186 Colombia University  123 Cool Britannia  136 corruption artworld  21, 53, 142, 165–6 institutional  166, 170 crafts  85 cultural capital  81, 101, 104, 117–32, 177–9, 181–2 databases, in art  5, 14–15, 17, 33–4, 94, 119, 184 differential aesthetics  3, 9, 25–6, 34, 44–5, 47, 49, 57, 71, 173, 182 digital art history  93 Disability Equality Duty  161 domestic commitments (women’s)  24, 28–9, 42, 126–7, 130–1, 152–3, see also motherhood drawing, and gender  29–30, 64, 75, 80 economic capital  51–72, 111, 117, 123–4, 176, 178, 181–3 education, place of  18, 117, 120–2, 124, 178–9 Education for All (EFA)  158 Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art  16, 79, 85, 87–91, 147, 165, 176 Elles@CentrePompidou  79 Emin, Tracey  29–30, 42, 45, 86, 126–7, 137, 142, 147 equality and Advice and Support Service (EASS)  82 and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)  59, 61–2, 83, 161 essentialism  97–8, 132, 175, 182–3

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essentialist aesthetics  42, 91, 95, 97–8, 175, 183 European aesthetics  33, 42, 52, 95–6, 211–15 inequality  53–4, 56, 59, 60–2, 79, 92, 134, 143–4, 159, 176, 210 prizes  106 top performing female artists  206 top performing male artists  207 Union, Gender in Culture  81 Faludi, Susan  2, 182 fauxmosexuality  140 Fawcett society  8, 16, 86, 142, 146, 150, 152 Federation of British Artists  135 feminazi  145, 183 feminine aesthetics  21–50, 51–72, 208 media, traditional  25, 29, 30, 85, 172 femininity (and masculinity) in painting  21–50, 208 feminism  6, 8, 10–11, 15–16, 19, 23, 32, 85–9, 97, 138, 146–7, 151, 155–6, 169, 171–2, 182, 184 criticisms of  4, 6, 16, 23, 86, 172 pop culture  45, 86–7, 151, 185 feminist aesthetics  45, 71, 113, 155 art  2–3, 16,  30, 63–4, 69, 79, 85–91, 147, 165, 176 art history (see masculine art history; Pollock, Griselda) art movement  64 Art Program (FAP)  88, 91 curation  85–91 (see also segregation of women artists) Fibonacci  167 fiction, a comparison with art equality  17, 66, 114, 155 figurative painting  33–5, 70–2, 94–5, 118, 147, 174, 183, 208, 209, 211 film and television industry, a comparison with  11, 19, 61, 136, 138, 179 Finland Ministry of Education and Culture  145

280 Index Finnish abstraction and figuration in art  211 aesthetics  91–2, 94–8, 211–12, 174–5, 180, 211–15 (see also essentialist aesthetics) artist age and visibility  143–4, 210, equality, culture of  91–3, 134, 145, 180 female artist visibility  92, 94–5, 175, 180 lightness in paintings  96 media in painting  95, 214 National Gallery, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art  94, 145, 174, 210 National Gallery collections, abstraction and figuration  211 painting support  213 scale of paintings  213 subject matter in the Finnish National Gallery collections  212 Freunde der Nationalgalerie  74 funding (lack of research funding in equalities)  13, 72, 157–8, 167–70, 181 Galenson, David  14, 122–3, 141 gatekeepers  5, 7, 11–12, 30, 48, 53, 57, 102, 115, 131, 134, 141, 149–50, 153, 162, 168, 173, 183 gender aesthetics  8, 17, 21–50, 34, 42–3, 45, 51–72, 73–98, 172, 208–9 ageism  133–54 branding  19, 48, 57, 63, 66, 86–7, 134, 139, 140, 146–7, 154, 173, 179, 208–9 discrimination  51–99, 150 disparity, in art prizes  99–115 drawing, and gender  29–30, 64, 75, 80 fluidity  6, 9, 41, 58, 98, 125, 175, 184 income gap  51–72 leisure gap  153 neutrality  64, 125, 184 pay gap in art (UK, Europe, Middle East, USA)  51–72, 53–6, 60–2, 150, 166–7, 183

postcode lottery  117–32 quotas  74, 150, 152, 163, 168, 181, 183 signature, on artwork  18, 33, 40–1, 63, 65–6, 118, 173–4 sports comparison  27–8, 64, 82 stereotyping, gender  9, 11, 23, 27–8, 44, 46, 49, 89, 146, 159–60, 166, 183–4 genius and masculinity  10, 24, 30, 41–2, 45, 83, 99–100, 141, 176 glass ceiling  1–2, 5–6, 16, 19, 51–2, 67–70, 102, 144, 155, 174, 180–1, 183–4 Global Campaign for National Equality Rights  135 Goldsmiths (UoL)  124 Greer, Germaine  3–4, 57–8, 72 Grosz, Elizabeth  156 Guerrilla Girls  16, 51, 62, 73–4, 79, 107, 165, 176 Guggenheim  14, 104 Hamburger Kunsthalle  80 harassment  9–11, 148, 151, 158, 162–3, 184, see also hashtag feminism; metoo hashtag feminism  9–12, 19, 184, see also harassment Hebron Gallery Tally  16 Hugo Boss Prize  104 Hustvedt, Siri  133, 154, 179 hysteria  147–8, 180–1, 183 indirect discrimination  184 inequality ageism  133–54 American  53, 55, 60, 92, 143–4, 200–1 British (case studies)  21–50, 51–72, 73–99 economic  51–72 European  53–4, 56, 59, 60–2, 79, 92, 134, 143–4, 159, 176, 210 Leverhulme Trust  169–70 Middle East  53–9, 78, 92, 95, 135 museum  72–98 (see also Tate) postcode lottery  117–32

Index prize  99–115 solutions to  155–70 Tate  51–72, 80–3, 93, 163, 165, 177 International Men and Gender Equality Survey  78 International Women’s Day  163 inter-relational aesthetics  184 intersectionality  12–13, 131–2, 138, 184–5 invisible woman  17, 55, 133–4, 142, 163 J. Paul Getty Museum, categorisation of art  35 Jameel Prize  108 John Moores Painting Prize  29, 43, 102, 105, 111–13, 141, 176 Jungian theory  41–2, 173 Kroller Muller Museum  80 Lacanian theory  45 lack of female role models  26 language and femininity  46 and masculinity  46 leisure gap, and gender  153 Leverhulme Trust, and inequality  169–70 lightness (and darkness) in painting  18, 33, 38–9, 41, 47, 64, 94–6, 118, 173–4, 185 London, see also art schools listed individually Art Audit  16 Art Fair  137 artists (born in)  119, 124 auctions  33, 67, 75–7, 111, 118, 124, 188–209 -centricity  94, 119, 125 -centricity and Tate inclusion  119, 120, 125, 177 education  122–4, 178 galleries  44, 79, 122, 145, 149, 151 living and working in  119–21, 123–4, 178 machismo  11, 186 Mall Galleries  135, 138

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Marcel Duchamp Prize  106 masculine aesthetics  21–50, 51–72, 209 art history  2, 26–7, 44, 67, 81–2, 87, 91, 98, 100, 160, 162, 169, 176, 180 canon  2, 5, 9, 13–14, 22, 25–6, 71, 79, 91, 97, 159, 161 genius  10, 24, 30, 41–2, 45, 83, 99–100, 141, 176 painting (as occupation)  24, 26, 28 territory, traditional  8, 27, 31–2, 166 masculinity (and femininity) in painting  21–50, 208 mass media culture  137 MATHAF: Arab Museum of Contemporary Art, Qatar  78, 95 matriarchal society  156 MENA Art Prize  107 MeToo, #  9–12, 19, 184, see also harassment; hashtag feminism Middle East aesthetics  42, 60, 95–6, 212–15 art market  21, 33 equality  53, 60, 109, 174, 176 inequality  53–9, 78, 92, 95, 135 International men and gender equality survey  78 lightness in paintings  96 media in painting  214 MENA Art Prize  107 museum collection  33, 73, 78 painting support  213 pay gap  174 prizes  107–9 scale of paintings  213 subject matter in the UAE collection  212 top performing female artists  202 top performing male artists  203 millennials, the generation of  9, 87 misandry  4, 146, 156, 185 misogyny  7, 45, 49, 61, 84–5, 87, 100–2, 114, 133, 145, 152 motherhood  7–8, 29, 42, 100, 125–8, 141–3, 153, 180, 183 museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles  61, 90

282 Index diversity and collection policies  181 inequality  73–98 of Modern Art (MoMA), New York  14, 45, 59, 73, 79, 81, 141 policies  161 public relations (PR) responsibility  6, 73–4, 83, 165–6 museumology  88 Museums Association  82 music industry, a comparison with  19, 44, 125, 139–40, 167, see also pop feminism National Endowment for the Arts  136 Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museum  74 National Museum of Women in the Arts  51 natural history, in the gallery  85 networking, gendered  5, 18, 117–32, 126–7, 130, 152, 177–8, see also social capital New Contemporaries (award)  104–5, 111–13, 176 New York  16, 57, 59, 73–4, 79, 81, 88, 104, 123–5, 133, 142, 149, 179 Nochlin, Linda  1, 3, 32, 43–5, 47, 155, 163, 172–3 non-binarization (of gender)  17, 98, 171, 175, see also binaries Nordic aesthetics  92–3, 95, 97, 174–5, 180, see also Finnish aesthetics Nordic identity  91, 92 Northern Art Prize  25 older (women) artists  19, 133–54, 180 opacity of the artworld  21, 53, 142, 165–6 orientation, see picture format in painting over-valuation of artwork, by museums  80–1 Paglia, Camille  9, 97–8, 171, 175 painting aesthetics  21–50 ageism  133–54 inequality  51–72 masculinity of  21–50

prizes  91–115 sexism  133–54 patriarchal society  28, 45, 88, 100–1, 114, 156 , 182 Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists  25 Paul Mellon Foundation  169 philanthropy (the need for equality funding)  90, 167, 169–70 photography medium  30, 44, 64 prize  44 Phyllis Roberts Award  135 picture format in painting  37–8 place of education  18, 117, 120–2, 124, 178–9 Pollock, Griselda  2–3, 9, 13, 22–5, 34, 45, 58, 86, 90, 97–8, 137, 139, 146–7, 171–3 Pompidou, Paris  73, 79, 89, 106, 141 pop feminism  45, 86–7, 151, 185 Preis der Nationalgalerie  109, 162 public relations ‘spin’  73, 83, 165–6 Public Sector Equality Duty  82 Pussy Galore  59 Queen Bee syndrome  148–53, 180, 185 quotas, gender  74, 150, 152, 163, 168, 181, 183 racism  13 research funding (lack of, in equalities)  13, 72, 157–8, 167–70, 181 revenge feminism  156, 185 Riley, Bridget  11, 24, 43, 67–9, 146, 188–99 role models, gendered  2–3, 26–7, 30, 71, 100, 130, 142, 158–9, 160–1, 164, 172 Royal Academy  124 Royal College of Art  29, 124 Sandal, Richard  88 Saville, Jenny  1, 27, 68–9, 191–7 scale of paintings  18, 28–9, 39–40, 44, 47, 52, 53–4, 60, 64, 68–9, 76, 94–5, 185, 213 School of Art, Institute of Chicago  122–3

Index Scottish Parliament art collection  74 segregation of women artists  3–4, 13, 85–91, 165 Sex Discrimination Act  82 Sex Equality Report  86 sexism in art schools  25 Sherman, Cindy  30, 64 signature, on artwork  18, 33, 40–1, 63, 65–6, 118, 173–4 size, see scale of paintings Slade School of Fine Art (UCL)  123 social capital, in art  110, 117–18, 122, 128, 130–2, 177–9, 185, see also networking Sovereign Art Foundation  107, 115 sports and gender, a comparison with visual art  27–8, 64, 82 stereotyping, gender  9, 11, 23, 27–8, 44, 46, 49, 89, 146, 159–60, 166, 183–4 Subject Benchmark Statements in art and design (QAA)  161 subject matter in painting  18, 29, 33, 35–6, 40, 44, 63, 64, 70, 94, 118, 170, 182, 212 superwoman cult  126, 160, 186 symbolic capital  75, 109, 113, 120, 132, 177–9, 181, 186 Tate acquisition panels  81–2, 149–50 collections and artist nationality  119 diversity policy  82, 162 gender inequality  51–72, 80–3, 93, 163, 165, 177 impact upon art values  76–8, 176 inclusion, impact on art value  77, 119, 177 inclusion of artists, factors influencing  18, 112–22 masculinity of  83 media coverage (responsibility for)  75, 83 minority groups  75, 147 prizes and influence on the museum  113

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Public Sector Equality Duty (responsibility for)  82 tokenism  83, 147 textiles (as feminine media)  25, 30, 172 tokenism  3, 5, 74, 75, 80, 83, 141, 151, 165, 181, 186 toxic masculinity  11–12, 186 Turner Prize  105–6, 111–12, 114, 136, 141, 164, 176 TV and film industry, comparison with  61, 138, 151–2, 179 UCLA  123 undervaluation, of female work  70, see also over-valuation UNESCO gender equality and culture  92, 145, 158 University of California, Los Angeles  122 of California at San Diego  122–3 value, and gender  51–72, 63, 71 Velthuis, Olav  48, 52–3, 58, 76, 78 Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia)  107, 141 Victorian narratives  7–8, 11, 24, 28, 64, 100, 147, 180–1 White Cube Gallery  122, 151 white heteromasculinism  2, 14, 161, 186 Whitechapel Gallery  79 Whitney Biennial  103, 122–3 Winsor and Newton Young Artists Award  135 Womanhouse  88 Women Artists’ Visibility Event (WAVE)  59 Women’s Liberation Art Group  25 Woolf, Virginia  24, 27, 155 World Economic Forum, the gender gap  91, 144 World Health Organization  54 Yale  123 Young British Artists (YBAs)  28, 74–5, 121, 136–7, 148

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