Narrator: What do the artists of the top ten most expensive paintings in history have in
common? That’s right - they’re all men.
In fact, when you look at the amount of current artists represented by galleries in Europe
and North America, it’s only just one in ten that are female.
Holly Prentice: It can often be a bit dispiriting when you’re pulling out rack and screen
after screen. It’s just a sea of male faces looking back at you. White, a certain class.
Narrator: Now, given that 63% of undergraduates are women, and 66% of postgraduates in creative
arts and design are women, this seems really outdated and wrong.
Why then are so few female artists represented in the world of art?
And are these figures finally starting to shift?
Like so much inequality in our society, the male skew in the art world has a long history.
Fiona Menzies: For so long male artists have been put on a pedestal.
Lucy Askew: The systems in place institutionally have really colluded against the women
being able to follow those artistic training and pathways.
Kirstie Meehan: Whether it’s childcare commitments, or whether that’s access to education.
Narrator: Take art education. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, women were barred from
studying the nude model - which really formed the basis of any academic training.
Lucy Askew: Drawing the male nude was not seen to be a womanly, ladylike thing to do.
Narrator: Although the RA had two female founders
the academy only allowed female life drawing classes in 1883, after various petitions.
And even then were told:
This was hugely prohibitive, particularly given how dominated art at the time was
by pieces depicting the human form.
Specific prestigious institutions didn’t let women study at all.
London’s Royal Academy of Art only opened its doors to women in 1860,
when one Laura Herford was accidentally admitted after submitting work under her initials, LH.
This exclusion of women from education meant that they were often excluded from entire
art movements.
Take the Bauhaus.
Though women were allowed to study, and its founder claimed there was:
Lucy Askew: Women were accepted into the Bauhaus, but they were pushed towards so called craft.
Narrator: Women were pigeonholed in this way throughout history.
These crafts were seen more as decorative than art.
but in recent years, they’ve been gaining recognition as important artworks in their own right.
Kirsten Dunne: Think about embroideries and tapestries, I mean they’re exquisite when
you get up close to them.
Fiona Menzies: Phoebe Anna Traquair for example,
if you look at her embroidery work, which are on a scale of a large painting
you can really appreciate the skill – not as an embroiderer, but as an artist.
Narrator: Historical crafts were more than just technical and decorative, often raising
challenging or emotional subjects.
This specimen table, by Jane and Mary Parminter, based on their experience travelling around
Europe on what was known as a ‘Grand Tour’, is an intricate arrangement of shells and
micro-mosaics around a central plaque; a response to the death of their sister, stating:
When women were able to work in more traditionally ‘artistic’ mediums, there were issues
with the legacy and the longevity of the work.
Kirstie Meehan: There’s sort of a historical effacement of their work, so what they were
producing wasn’t considered worthy of keeping, and looking after, and having that legacy,
so it doesn’t survive in the art collections, because over generations, people have thought
that it didn’t have that value.
Narrator: This all has a huge knock-on effect on which historical works by female artists
galleries can acquire and display today.
Tricia Allerston: It’s not just us choosing, and it’s not just us not buying – there
aren’t a lot of works out there, particularly works you can show permanently. And the ones
that are coming up on the market, everybody is going for them, so the competition is huge.
Kirstie Meehan: We don’t have a large budget for acquiring material, so if we’re trying
to fill in those historical gaps, we’re being priced out of the market a little bit.
Narrator: Related to all this is the treatment of female artists as individuals.
Lucy Askew: Women have often been a kind of footnote, seen as the muse, partner of, the lover of.
Their own integrity, and their own abilities have therefore been underplayed or neglected completely.
Narrator: Leonora Carrington was commonly referred to as being Max Ernst’s muse.
But she has called this claim ‘bulls**t’, saying:
Fiona Menzies: She didn’t have time to be a muse.
Fiona Menzies: Which she is being seen as now. She has an incredible collection, all
over the world.
Narrator: Jumping forward to the present day, the contemporary art world continues to be
influenced by historic inequality.
Lucy Askew: Name recognition becomes a kind of tool that people are using to make decisions.
Kirstie Meehan: And it’s those big names, those well established art historical figures
who bring the punters in. Lucy Askew: But of course, if women have not
had visibility, they are less recognised by virtue of that. I suppose it’s a kind of cycle.
Narrator: As Francis Morris of the Tate Modern says:
To give you a sense of how gender-skewed art markets are, of 196 billion dollars spent
on art at auctions in the last decade, work made by women made up only 4 billion dollars
- or two percent.
And of those 2%, half of all sales of female art were pieces by just five artists.
So, new decade - we have to ask - are things finally changing?
Fiona Menzies: Ooh that’s contentious.
Lucy Askew: I would say it’s slow.
Kirsten Dunne: When you feel like you’re getting somewhere, and then you realise that
your eight year old daughter’s confronted with the same things that you were confronted
with when you were eight, and you just think, come on.
Narrator: There are positive steps being made.
Fiona Menzies: All around the world, more and more women artists are being collected.
Holly Prentice: The more contemporary art, there is definitely a move to collecting more
female artists.
Narrator: The art world is starting to see more women in more senior positions.
Lucy Askew: We’ve got really important role models within the sector who are making great change.
Kirsten Dunne: A growing female population of staff who are talking about it a lot.
Narrator: There’s also a broader cultural shift toward equality in representation and
opportunity, which is putting pressure on galleries and the art makers to focus more
on female artists.
Fiona Menzies: Attitudes are changing.
Tricia Allerston: It is the question everybody asks, ‘where are the female artists?’
Lucy Askew: There is definitely a sea-change in society.
Kirsten Dunne: Post #metoo movement, I think that had a massive impact,
because we’d just had enough of not talking about it.
Narrator: But, of course, there’s still a long way to go.
Although we can, to an extent, 'rewrite' historical art in terms of making the women who were making art visible,
we can't change the historic gender imbalance.
Fiona Menzies: It’s a shame that it’s now hindsight that we’re recognising these artists.
Tricia Allerston: It’s difficult because ultimately you can’t show what you don’t have
but it means that you have to do a lot with what you do have
so you have to make sure that you're thinking about how you’re presenting work.
Kirstie Meehan: It does mean there are gaps in the historical record
which we’re constantly trying to research and fill in,
but it’s a difficult task sometimes.
Narrator: But there is a hope that the decisions we make now about what we collect, which artists
we give opportunities to, we can - and will - change the landscape for future generations.
Lucy Askew: I am optimistic about change, because I think that there’s a collective
understanding, not just within the art sector, but I think within the world at large.
Kirstie Meehan: In terms of both acquisition and programming, these artists and those forms
of art are getting a higher and higher profile. And I think that’s really positive.
Narrator: Let us know who your favourite female artists are in the comments below - and check
out our channel for more videos in the series