“There is no such thing as a woman artist.
There are only two kinds of artists. Bad and good.”
Dame Ethel Walker, 1938
It is in under stormy London skies in June that my optimism pushes me outside of the house wearing my mustard corduroy, unbutton-able, hood-free jacket, to attend the curator talk and visit of Now You See Us.
It is thus with wet hair and cold limbs that I take a seat in a medium-size lecture hall of my beloved Tate Britain, next to a 60 year-old man. I get my phone out, lower the screen luminosity to a minimum, and start typing quotes of Tabitha Barber, the exhibition curator. I can feel my neighbour shrugging and try to keep the screen as close to my chest as I can. “Sorry.” I mutter. He whispers in my ear that “it is really annoying”. I do my best to type swiftly and keep my phone down as soon I am done typing. I seriously consider stopping, but then decide otherwise, as I won’t be able to remember what Tabitha Barber is saying, and this talk is not recorded. I need my notes for research purposes. Within 10 minutes, neighbour sighs, then abruptly stands, hissing in my ear again: “Thank you for ruining my night” before storming out.
Ruining. His. NIGHT.
My heart is pounding.
I hate my crippling guilt.
I understand he was distracted, but did he really have to leave like that?
"Read taught her orphaned niece Helena Beatson (1762-1839) to work in pastels, and here, the artist captures the young child looking up from a drawing."
When I go to a museum or exhibition, I try and make a conscious effort to memorise at least one element that strikes me, be it the name of an artist or architectural details of the building. This time, I felt an urge to remember all of the names that were exhibited.
Not just because all of the artists were incredibly talented, or because I fell in love with several portraits, but mostly because I knew that they wouldn’t stick. Those female names had not been in my history books. They never came out of people’s mouths as I grew up. They were hardly ever displayed on gallery walls. As a result, in my socially artistic structured mind, they were not available.
Not "ready-to-use".
They were bound to be forgotten.
“Every time the exhibition ends, the women recede into the background.”
Tabitha Barber, curator of Now You See Us, Tate Britain
The female artists exhibited at Tate Britain’s Now You See Us were all professionals. They made a living painting and exhibiting portraits, war scenes, landscapes, city life. They founded and directed schools, they travelled the world. Some were extremely famous, like Elizabeth Thomson (aka Lady Butler) whose painting The Roll Call had to be guarded by policemen to protect it from the crowd, Maria Cosway, whose success was perceived as a threat by her husband (they lived separately for most of their lives), or Royal Academy founding members Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser*.
This exhibition is substantial. Rich. Full. I wander the halls and occasionally marvel at the depiction of young children.
If mothers wanted to be considered serious about their paintings, they had to give up pastels, watercolour, flowers**, and focus on portraiture*** - and they excelled at painting the faces they saw: the children’s and their own.
Of course, all of the little ones look fresh and clean (not to mention white), deprived of the messiness of mother-and child-hood****. Still, they look real. Perhaps even more so because mothers knew how fragile those little lives were. They also knew for a fact that being a mother would make their career extremely difficult. It turns out most of them did not have many children, if any. Those they were surrounded by were often their sisters' or friends'.
I want new-old names to stick to my brain through fresh neurological pathways.
They are names I repeat over and over in my head.
They feel like friends I meet in my adult years. They are here to stay.
My lecture-hall neighbour probably didn’t care about Kaufman or Cosway all that much. Had he cared enough, a low-lit phone screen wouldn’t have stopped him from listening to Tabitha Barber. Had he cared at all, he definitely wouldn’t have been sipping a drink at the bar outside of the conference room instead of admiring the fabulous display of artworks upstairs.
Clearly, he cared more about making an exit than about seeing US.
And, with that thought, all guilt is now gone.
*"After Moser's death in 1816, no further female member of the Academy was elected until Dame Laura Knight in 1936". (source)
**in 1770, the Academy declared that they were “lower” categories - “just what ladies do when they paint for their own amusement” (Joshua Reynolds, then president of the Academy). Interestingly, in 17th century France, arts which were then considered “minor” (mosaic, miniature…) were allocated to women, when “major” (oil paintings, sculpture…) arts were allocated to men. (Source: https://www.50-50magazine.fr/2021/04/14/femmes-artistes-un-art-au-feminin-ou-un-art-au-masculin/)
***Female artists were forbidden from painting nudes.
**** On that note, I will quote curator Susan Wilson on her visit to the National Gallery with her toddler, which still reflects a feeling shared by many: “As we flew along I noticed this putti peeing everywhere and frolicking, climbing, falling, scrambling. There aren’t really any contemporary images to help us as we raise small children, only advertisements of posed, smiling, clean, fresh faced calm creatures. No utter chaos.”(Susan Wilson, Reclaiming the Madonna, Artists as Mothers catalog, 1993)
コメント