Woman and Art

Artemisia Gentileschi 

There has been a severe lack of women reviewers over the centuries.

I used to wonder why there were no women artists - was it because the were too busy with children!?
A few months ago Amanda Vickery hosted an excellent BBC tv series on Women artists, most of whom many of us will never have heard of while these women were outstanding and wonderful artists.  

I studied Art Higher at school and won the art prize in fourth year. I have also visited many art galleries - in Paris, Florence, New York, Washington, Rome, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Barcelona, more.  Yet these women artists are all new to me!  

Back several hundred years ago, one way for a woman to pursue art was offered by religion and entering a convent as an escape from 'woman's duties and where they could learn literature and art. The down side was that their art was seldom seen! 

The privacy of the convent offered protection for female artists, such as Plautilla Nelli the first female artist in Florence, who was a self-taught nun-artist, and her large painting of the last supper hung unseen for over 500 years in a monk’s dining room.  Could a woman artist become independent and heading a workshop and battling men for commissions? There was a very interesting tv show on recently about women artists down the centuries and I was shocked. Here is just a small sampling of some of these wonderful women artists you may well never have heard of before!  

Sofonisba Anguissola 

Sofonisba Anguissola (1550 Spain) She was a pioneer of painting beautiful conversation pieces with an informal intimacy. She came from impoverished nobility and her father had sent one of her drawings to Michelangelo. She was admitted to the Spanish court of Phillip II, where she painted more formal royal portraits.  In her later years the Dutch painter Van Dyke admired her work and visited her.  However she is unknown and was never bought or sold. Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona. She received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts, and her apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art

Sofonisba Anguissola

Lavinia Fontana (1520 Italy) as she was the daughter of an artist in Bologna Italy, she had access to oils and learned the business side of art. There were powerful Guilds that barred women. Women commissioned her art and she was the first professional woman artist. However family art was not as valued as historical and religious art.  Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter. She is regarded as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male counterparts outside of a court or convent.

Lavinia Fontana

Artemisia Gentileschi 

Artemisia Gentileschi (1615 Italy). She painted historical epics and of female strength and bravery in adversity. Of the triumph of art over ordeals. She had the patronage of the Medici family.   Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio.

Dutch Art offered greater freedoms with their still life’s and restraint. The Dutch believed that a well run house meant a well run country.  Clara Peeters (1594) She was a still life painter of the Flemish school.  

Lady Butler (1846 England) She attended the London School of Design for women and painted large epic war paintings of the Crimean war and famously the charge of the Scotsmen. She was the first artist to paint the human side of war -  the pathos of war.  Elizabeth Thompson, better known as Lady Butler, was a British painter who painted military battle scenes. Some of her most famous military scenes come from the Napoleonic Wars  and she covered most major 19th-century wars and painted several works showing the First World War.

Berthe Morisot (1841 France) She was painted by Edouard Manet eleven times and exhibited alongside the other impressionists, and later married his brother Eugene. She painted a fresh version of family life in vivid whites. In 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of photographer Nadar.

Karin Larsson (1859 Sweden)  After she married she concentrated on using her art, which was fresh and unpretentious, to decorate her home. Her aim was a more family and children centred interior design with informal, playful free designs and bold experimentation.  Her work had a big impact on how homes were designed and led to the national identity and bold home designs half a century later by Swedish giant IKEA. Larsson's work has had more impact on people's lives than any painting ever has.  She was married to Carl Larsson who painted her designs.  Her aim was lifestyle as art for everyone.  Karin Larsson  was a Swedish artist and designer.   

Margaret MacDonald (1864 Scotland) She is celebrated for her  panels in Glasgow's famous Willow Tearooms -  The May Queen, and Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowood. Along with her husband Rennie Macintosh and Herbert MacNair, she was one of the most influential members of the collective known as the Glasgow Four. She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession, where she was an influence on the Secessionists Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.  Macintosh credited her with being an important part of his figurative and symbolic interior designs. "Remember, you are half if not four-quarters of all my architectural...Margaret has genius, I have only talent."

Georgia O'Keefe (1887 America)  She is known as the greatest American artist of her era. She painted large format magnified dreamy large seductive flowers in very subtle shades. Later she escaped to New Mexico and painted dramatic landscapes there in vivid, bold and striking dessert colours.  Early on she was a muse for the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz..

Georgia O'Keefe 

I notice too how often female artists are referred to as - collaborating with their partners, or being painted by them - when the reality is that these women artists were strong independent artists in their own right. On Berthe Morrisot's grave it only says, widow with no mention of artist, yet she has sold more than any other female artist (7m for a painting recently). While of course Renoir sells for 20m and Manet 40m.

Many of these female artists were trail blazers.

Female art - so much is hidden and unsung in dark corners of houses and museums....

I studied Art Higher and won the art prize in fourth year. I have also visited many art galleries - in Paris, Florence, New York, Washington, Rome, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Barcelona, more.  Yet these women artists are all new to me!  

THE STORY OF WOMEN AND ART, Amanda Vikcery - 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/womenartists

Today goggling the artists I found this website - National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) http://nmwa.org/

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is a gender specific museum, located in Washington, D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Since opening its doors in 1987, the museum has acquired a collection of more than 4,500 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative art. Highlights of the collection include works by Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun. 

Exhibition Margaret MacDonald

There is a big exhibition of Rennie Macintosh's work at the Huntarian Glasgow. I am a great admirer of his work and it was devastating about the Glasgow Art school fire this year.

His wife Margaret MacDonald, I probably admire her work even more - and her exhibition is away in Helensburgh. I've been writing on women artists recently - and they are usually treated as second class or ignored and hidden away. I notice too how often female artists are referred to as - collaborating with their partners, or being painted by them - when the reality is that these women artists were strong independent artists in their own right.

Margaret influenced the wonderful Austrian artist Klimt and others.

Macintosh credited her with being an important part of his figurative and symbolic interior designs. "Remember, you are half if not four-quarters of all my architectural...Margaret has genius, I have only talent."

Margaret MacDonald, (1864 Scotland) She was celebrated for her panels in Glasgow's famous Willow Tearooms - The May Queen, and Oh ye, all ye that walk in Willowood. Along with her husband Rennie Macintosh and Herbert MacNair, she was one of the most influential members of the collective known as the Glasgow Four. She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession, where she was an influence on the Secessionists Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.

Dylan wrote on political issues

Dylan wrote on political issues - but he fled from being tied to any one ideology or to men in suits and straight jackets.  He went straight to the heart of things, never skirting around the edges or pretending.  He looked at things from all the angles - he questioned and illuminated weakness, falseness, beauty and all the shades of grey,

He wrote songs that have had the most impact on issues such as those who peddling war - most remarkably in "Masters of War"

"Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness

Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul."

He wrote songs such as "You Gotta Serve Someone" which looks so cleverly and insightfully at what motivates us most.  

When I feel have questions and I feel confused over ignorance, I turn to Dylan's true, honest and questioning voice... His songs are A great reassurance in an often highly confusing world - and the knowing there are poetic voices of truth out there - even when the truth may not be what we might want to hear.

Quote Dylan, "There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt."

I read these notes he wrote for Broadside 1962 - and this is it for me too - about those who see wrong but walk on by. 

"Too many people are telling me where the answer is, but oh, I dont believe that. I still say its in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper , its got to come down some time, But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not many people get to see and know it.. and then it flies away again, I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those who turn their heads away when they see wrong and know its wrong.............."

It is all about spin when there is no vision or passions, that's what worries me the most...about centralizing power and in so doing restricting our basic human rights and freedoms, its very very scary. We have a system in place with no checks and balances to the power of the 'Crown' that resides with our prime minister.

Quote Dylan, "People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient and then repent... "

Ian Bell; Time Out of Mind at EIBF 2014

I have read Ian Bell on the Scottish Independence questions in the only press for YES, The Sunday Herald, and he writes well on why Scottish Independence is the most sensible way forward.   

Bell gave an informed and entertaining chat on the most famous songwriter for more than a generation, of our times and also timeless, with fellow Scottish journalist Alan Taylor at Edinburgh International Book festival 2014. He said Dylan was enigmatic, elusive and perhaps unexplainable and hard to unravel. When the character that he created became successful was Dylan content with what he had created? Dylan's time as the folk singer of protest songs was only brief and he shied away from any leadership role. He was an artist, not a leader. He thought art tends to flee when politics arrive and that is propaganda and not art. 

Dylan always had a need to reinvent himself. Bell said he was a brilliant editor of verses. He was both defiant and fearless, and he doesn't care what others may be doing.  He was also terrifically ambitious. 

Bell said Dylan's 1974 Blood on The Tracks was an extraordinary return to an even higher artistic form.

He said although Dylan's Chronicles was embedded with many quotations he wasn't allowed to quote directly from his autobiography. Dylan wrote about how he steals. The fact is all artist steal it just depends how we do it and what we do with it and with the worldwide web its just all become a much hotter thing to deal with. 

He spoke of Dylan's Bootleg series and that some are terrible recordings but we need them to understand Dylan. He said that Dylan was royally ripped of by his first manager Albert Grossman. 

Bell thought today's generation has it too easy with access to millions of artists. Back then you followed the artists, curating material. In a sea of music, authenticity becomes important to a minority.

Dylan was influenced by poetry, American history, Joan Baez, Robert Burns and the Scottish border ballads. He took bits and pieces from My Hearts in The Highlands. He then stepped away from any political commentary in his songs such as the Vietnam war.

Ian offered some favourite song lines. We all have them, any of us long time Dylan listeners - although he said he didn't particularly like to have favourite ones.  

 'Ain't it just like the night when your tryin' to be so quiet/  Once upon a time you dressed so fine,

 'I'm not There' was a favourite song he said, about those connections between what you understand and why you understand it.

He said that Dylan had a 'Burned cathedral of a voice which worked, especially for Dylan the live performer.' We know Dylan through his songs.

He felt there was something to be gained by knowing Dylan's life, times and art - and how the three work together.

Bob Dylan Glasgow 2011

Scottish Press; Dialogue on Media - EIBF August 2014.

The dead wood press is now selling a quarter what it once did and that most of the Scottish press is now under foreign ownership. 

This event was hosted by journalist Ruth Wishart, and with fellow journalists Iain MacWhirter (Herald) Stephan Khan (Observer London) and Niki Seth-Smith (Common weel).

They spoke of the vigorous diversity of the Referendum debates in particular online websites such as National Collective, Kiltr, Bella Caledonia etc.  

Iain MacWhirter (Herald)

He said that professional Journalism allows for long form research.

He talked of Online Journalism. Citizen journalism provides more and cheap instant views, when journalism becomes often opinion journalism. Media used to be the privileged elite but now everyone has a voice.  There is a difference between sharing information though, instant opinions and researched facts.

The Decline of Scottish press stood at a drop of 100,000 sales per year, that it maybe had 5 years left. .

Most of the Scottish press was now foreign owned and The Scotsman had been taken over and had become the Daily Mail of Scotland. He said the dead tree press (professional journalism) are the cultural curators. The business model doesn't work on the internet though and the trouble is that real journalism cant' be done for nothing. 

He spoke of the one-sided media right now in Scotland which is hostile to independence.  What is happening here would be illegal in Scandinavia as the constitution is to have diversity of press. 

We have only had the one newspaper here - The Sunday Herald - supporting independence in Scotland.  He said that the BBC is still dependent for news on the dead tree press. 

Stephan Khan (Observer London) spoke of the plurality of press

He said the new consumer was more sophisticated. The problem with new media is there was often no raw copy and no research online. 

The question now is what happens after the Referendum. 

There was good online media and entrepreneurship but which do too often relies on press stories. 

He said, 'Comment is free, facts are sacred.'

He spoke of the need for objectivity and the blurring of the line between comment and fact.  Journalist will also make academic papers readable for the general public.  

Niki Seth-Smith (Common weel)  stated that online there were also often multiple drafts and editorial time too to provide decent facts with rigorous fact checking.   

MacWhirter suggested public funding for say a National Enquirer paper that was for factual news gathering rather than opinions or speculations and to help to ensure diversity of expression was properly informed.

The BBC is struggling with devolution or what it is really about.  Scotland has national politics and no national press. I notice now that many of the respected in this debate are not going on the BBC news programs - understandably. 

They thought that the best bet for small democracies was an open democracy that also pays contributors. 

Twitter feeds are difficult at reflecting on news with no longer articles and they felt that Print still has a future.