Where Are The Famous Female Artists?

You know, I was thinking of role models the other day and it occurred to me, that other than one single female artist (Emily Carr),  all of my 'role models' are male!

I realize that up until the last couple of centuries, we have lived in totally male dominated society, which would explain the lack of famous female visual artists... But it's been a couple of hundred years here where women have been making inroads on equality, and still, I really haven't seen any larger than life genre defining women appear on the horizons. 

I've been discussing this from time to time with my writer friend and she has many theories as to why. 

I've even read a book about different types of societies and how humanity seemed to have started with something more equal, not a male dominated society, back in the days of Crete. 

The book was called the 'The Chalice and the Blade' by Riane Eisler, and it was pretty dry, but very, very interesting...  Ms. Eilser advanced the theory that early societies in human history were based on Goddess worship rather than focusing on a male God.  This led to less warlike tendencies, greater harmony between the sexes and also with nature... She went on to mention how our archeological history was slanted to give credit to males while discrediting, misinterpreting or dismissing female accomplishments found in historical artifacts.  This was a natural tendency as the bulk of archeologists were men and historically, women were not really thought to matter. 

I'm pretty glad that society has changed, I know I didn't enjoy growing up in the seventies with my mother harping at me to become a housewife and stop having so many opinions!

As for Ms. Eisler's theory, light of how western society has worked in the past, it makes a lot of sense.  I've noticed that history has a way of highlighting male accomplishments while just leaving out the women.  It's a definite void in history, it's like we are missing half of our background!

I wonder if there were more female visual artists that were just left out, overlooked?  It would be interesting to try to collect them and get a more detailed picture of how art evolved over time...

On the other hand, I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and hypothesize that we may have done some of this to ourselves...  Women have been socialized to be modest and self effacing... That type of approach would certainly lead to women not putting themselves forward to create new art movements. 

In fact, one of the things I was taken to task on by my rather traditional mother was my lack of modesty about my artwork...

But I figured that if I didn't like my own work and put it forward, certainly nobody else would do it for me!  I've noticed that people that stand back and wait for others to notice their merits tend to be left standing on the sidelines...

I've never been that good at waiting for things, and blending into the crowd on the sidelines sounds like a special kind of feminine torture to me... So I think I'll just carry on with being myself and let my mother rest with her traditions back in the last century!

But I still think it would be nice to have some more famous female artists out there...  Hmmm... Maybe I could help fill that void someday!

References:  Eisler, Riane. 1989. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Harper & Row. New York.

Images:
Paintings by Teresa Young, photograph of Teresa Young by Nina Munteanu.
1. Undercurrents - Mar.2009,  2. Central Viewpoint - Aug.2009,  3. Near The Edge of Reason - Sept.2009,  4. Halo - May.2001.

Would Intelligent Aliens Wipe Us Out?

 

I was reading on the Internet today that Steven Hawkings warned against being friendly with aliens...

I can see his point, I've read tons of science fiction over the years, and the most realistic stories involving alien contact always ended up with human nature getting in the way and causing all sorts of problems.  I saw District 9 last year, and it really tackled that question, it was an uncomfortable movie to watch, but it was riveting, that's for sure!

There's no reason to not assume that whatever 'alien nature' turns out to be, it could have a dark side that wouldn't bode well for the human race!

He compares humanity meeting an alien race to the coming of Columbus to North America...  An exploitation of the resources with no regard for the people that are already in residence.  If you stop and think about it, we've been getting this message quite a bit through the decades, in one form or another....  The problem here is that we can't step outside of ourselves and project our motivations onto the external.  Meaning that we think aliens would react as we would react in a first contact situation, and human nature takes over and it's downhill from there.

If you've ever read Robert J. Sawyer's novel 'Calculating God', he tackles that perspective issue elegantly.  He proposes that humans could not conceive of the motives of aliens.  They'd be as alien to our thinking as their physical bodies are to our perceptions! 

I think Hawkings is right though, we do send out a lot of information, some on purpose, but the bulk of it isn't on purpose.
What would stop anything that was technologically advanced from tapping into our broadcasts?  And the next question that comes to my mind is what kind of picture do we paint of ourselves with what is sitting on the airwaves? 

Probably a pretty accurate one when you get right down to it.  I hate to say that, but your character is always most exposed when you are unaware you have an audience.  An even more accurate study into human nature at it's basest could be done when you are under stress, this would probably make 'Survivor' very educational for aliens!  With all of the 'reality TV' that's popular programming now, it would definitely give them a widely diverse picture of humanity.

Maybe the underlying problem here is that cheerful things, things that don't reflect the darker sides of humanity, just don't make interesting viewing or reading.  It would probably leave out our lighter side if TV and video was used exclusively to build a picture of humans...

Mind you, if they swallowed our entertainment media as the truth, it could ultimately work in humanity's favour!  Just think, we could seem to have paranormal powers, extremely advanced technology, and other way-out things that would make us intimidating to invade.  Hopefully, it would scare them away and Hawkings would never be proved right!

Then we wouldn't be wiped out after all.  Saved by the junk on TV, how ironic!

Art Images by Teresa Young:
1. Stained Glass Entity - Mar.2009,  2. Under The Surface - Jun.2009,  3. SF Girl - Jan.2008,  4. Force One - Jul.2001.