Are female artists worth collecting? Tate doesn’t seem to think so
Helen Gørrill
The museum preaches diversity, but its annual acquistions suggest that great art is mostly created by men
So, the progressive idea is that the technocrats run things. Those who know what they’re doing that is. Within that is the assumption that those running things know what they’re oing. The Tate buyers knowing what art is for example.
So, maybe it’s true that men create most of the art then?
What’s all this about reducing the inequalities between rich & poor? I thought artists starving in garrets was in the job description.
But … but gender is a social construct, so these arguments are BIGOTED!
Which is it, dear? Make up your tiny mind, then go and make me a sandwich.
Tate fails to mention gender or equality in its collection policy, seeking only to collect works of art of outstanding quality as well as works of distinctive aesthetic character or importance.
So the artist is more important than the artwork? A scribble or daub by a feminist should get priority over a work by (say) Turner?
Or is she simply bitter that her work doesn’t feature in the Tate?
After all, her work is in the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art’s digital archive….
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gorrill
Taking this policy and Tate’s acquisition data into account, it can be reasonably assumed the museum perceives that great works of art are mostly created by men.
No, you can’t reasonably assume that at all. You are an axe- grinding parasite. And you are confusing your feels with reality.
I would suspect the Tate is taking its cue from collectors and they ain’t collecting feminists.
None of the art in modern art collections is worth collecting to start with.
She is “the founder of the British contemporary urban collage movement”.
And she wonders why the Tate isn’t buying her stuff?
And she wonders why the Tate isn’t buying her stuff?
She’d be better off flogging it to the Tat Modern.
Her “religious” art with fem doms and crawling men likely sums up why no one not a crawling , masochistic pervert wants to collect it.
https://www.degreeart.com/artists/helen-gørrill
I can see why museums don’t want her work.
Is it not the case that women’s IQs cluster around the mean, so fewer thickos (would partially explain lower criminality) but also fewer geniuses?
Perhaps the same is true for talent?
OTH I can think of lots of wonderful female novelists.
“OTH I can think of lots of wonderful female novelists.”
That’s the mystery – why should the writing of novels be the one art at which women shine? (Although if you count making a garden as an art – and why not? – you could add some women there.)
I think Helen has a point somewhere in there.
“75% of fine arts graduates are women”.
That does need explaining. Something is going on. Unfortunately Helen doesn’t really nail it down what exactly that is.
She just skips right to an implied remedy:50% acquisitions of both sexes and the justification: its our money.
OK, just looking forward to how that would play out. The problems will arise if you have that policy combined with the standard duty to make sound investments. So if there’s a clash between which has primacy, the gender acquisiton ratio, or the long term return on investment ratio with “our money”.
“75% of fine arts graduates are women”.
“That does need explaining.”
The bar for fine arts graduates is set very low?
@ bis
Perhaps most men think that they will have to earn a living so most of them pick degree courses that will help, or at least permit, them to do so.
One of my schoolfriends was a very talented artist (at least he appeared to be based on what he produced at school – I’ve seen worse stuff in galleries) taking double Maths, Physics and Art at ‘A’ level and IIRC his best marks were for Art – but he then became an Actuarial trainee (never qualified as a FIA but a good steady job).
Very very few people make a living out of Art so it’s surprising that as many as 25% are male.
No idea. It’s kind of sui generis isn’t it. Difficult to tell if its a vocational course or the ultimate “arts” degree. I do regularly chat with a couple who recently graduated in this field.
Not the brightest sparks (IMHO) ever, but a lot of that derives from their quite extreme naivité. That said the girlfriend is definitely the more switched on of the two. He got a job in a local art hestablishment, but was basically employed for moving heavy things about, resigned/sacked after attempting to suggest some the owner commision some of his art. Now’ he’s bottle washing in a girl’s school whilst she’s gone into retail in an esteemed department store in the capital.
I sincerely doubt there’s much intersection between the groups ‘holders of a fine art degree’ and ‘great artists’.
“75% of fine arts graduates are women”.
“That does need explaining.”
More women than men think they don’t have to make a living in the real world.
Modern art is wank. It makes no sense to have galleries in the era of mass production. You can share a painting or photograph with a million people on Instagram.
It’s why gallery art turned to shit after WW2. The talent moved into advertising and cinema.
Name a great artwork since Nighthawks.
Helen Gørrill is apparently doing research and is publishing a book, so the article was as much an advert as anything else. However, on top of all the flaws with her argument so far mentioned, what about artists employed as artists in e.g. advertising? How do women do in that market?
I suspect they do better then than when going independent, but that would be a guess.
NDReader,
Still not that good. I think Fay Weldon was a copywriter but most of the great TV ads were directed by men.
There’s a history of people moving from making commercials to movies and they’re all men like Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, Jonathon Glazer.
There’s a very open market in the arts: guerilla filmmaking. Shooting a film with cheap cameras and editing on Final Cut Pro. Films like El Mariachi, Clerks, Tangerine and Primer. There’s no patriarchy stopping anyone doing this. You can almost do it for nothing now. Soderbergh made a film on iPhones. And there’s almost no women making these films. Same with video games. They complain it’s a boys club but anyone can download Unity 3D for free and make a game. Women don’t.
Nighthawks was that film with Sylvester Stallone where they blew up Arding and Hobbs in Clapham Junction.
My neighbour’s daughter is about to start a Modern Arts degree, she was offered an unconditional place based on her schoolwork. It’s nice stuff and she is talented, pretty and intelligent, but I can’t help thinking that she’ll end up flipping burgers. Hallowed Be mentions naivity and this girl has it in spades.
BNLIA,
99% of people need to treat art as a hobby or beer money. I see filmmakers on Twitter crying about how to get into the industry but the simple problem is that there’s a glut of people who want to be film directors. A tiny number are going to be Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese, like most bands are playing weddings rather than Wembley.
I sincerely doubt there’s much intersection between the groups ‘holders of a fine art degree’ and ‘great artists’
When I was at university the Fine Art students were almost exclusively posh young women from awfully good schools, not particularly bright. I suspect the intersection is almost no -existent.
Still, it neatly illustrates the middle class belief that just because you have a degree in something you deserve everyone else provide a living for you from it.
Spot on Bloke on M4 and Rob
Just as most women in IT end up as “Relationship magaers” or some other bollox, with very few able to program effectively or solve complex problems, so most art students will end up in marketing or if really lucky in advertising. Even the successful female modern artists such as Emin or Whiteread are one-trick ponies.
Re. Fine Art degrees
See, also, the Venn diagram of ‘composition majors’ and ‘The Beatles’.
Well,
BoM4;
“Modern art is wank. It makes no sense to have galleries in the era of mass production. You can share a painting or photograph with a million people on Instagram.
It’s why gallery art turned to shit after WW2. The talent moved into advertising and cinema.”
and dearieme;
“That’s the mystery – why should the writing of novels be the one art at which women shine?
Sturgeon’s Law and tournament theory.
Was the stuff in the galleries pre-WW2 actually any good? How many galleries would you have had to visit to find the good stuff? Are women novelists actually any better than men? What do publishers’ trash piles look like when divided by the author’s gender?
At a guess, mass production/distribution magnified superstar effects – the bulk of artistes are still going to be starving in garrets – and the internet might have collapsed the search problem 60 years later, but it hasn’t resolved how the bulk of these muppets get paid. Also, the growth in degree education is near as dammit coterminous with internet adoption – the quality of execution has probably improved (depends what they’re actually teaching), but that won’t alter the market structure.