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.
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