Women in Art

   After a forty-year reign of Milton Esterow, ARTnews has become ARTNEWS. With her first issue (September 2014), the new editor-in-chief, Sarah Douglas, has also launched a very handsome new design. Much hangs from the fact that the magazine is now three quarters of an inch wider, giving ARTNEWS a classier look and feel. Gone are pages with three narrow columns.  The pervasive format now is a page with two columns that are a bit wider than in the prior layout: calmer, easier on the eye. Gone, too, are quite large and very black headlines; they have been replaced by classy capitals, big enough at five sixteenth of an inch to stand out, even though they are elegantly slim. There are other modifications going in the same direction; even the ads—of which there are of course many—strike me as calmer. The new totality is quieter without being reticent and very handsome. The new broom has swept well.

   Because of the new look I went through the issue more alertly, even though Ms. Douglas noted in her Editor’s Letter that its content had been determined before she came aboard. In doing so, I became fully conscious of a fact of which I had been vaguely aware before this. Let me get to my point by citing a few statistics.

   The September 2014 issue consists of thirty-six articles and reviews that are signed by their authors. Of these, twenty-nine were written by seventeen women, since five of the authors wrote more than one piece, with Barbara Pollack and Barbara MacAdam, ARTnews old timers, writing five of them between them. Seven of the articles were written by men, with none writing more than one. To show that I can do elementary arithmetic, this comes to 80.5+% feminine authorship, compared to 19.4+% pieces written by males.

   This ratio is very similar to that put before us by journalists and others who keep track of ratios of male and female incumbents in leading roles: CEOs, engineers, etc.  Except! that the sexes (OK: genders) are reversed. Here, for art reporting, the big number holds for women.

   My explanation for this fact—for what it’s worth—is not very flattering to the cadre who are doing such a splendid job reporting on what goes on in the world of art. There are vastly more female elementary school teachers than there are men in those jobs. It’s a fair analogy, even if the reasons are not cheerful. Both jobs call for a considerable amount of competence, if different, to be sure, and dedication. Neither, however, is paid all that well; indeed, neither job may pay enough to afford a life of reasonable comfort. So, I have no doubt—without having any actual knowledge—that a significant portion of those teachers and art reporters are what used to be called second earners. While I am ignorant of the background of most of the male authors, I’d bet that writing for ARTNEWS is for them not what they actually live on. There is room for progress!

   On a related front, it was good to see that Linda Nochlin’s upbeat interview thirty-six years after her famous 1971 ARTnews article, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” In the extensive conversation with Barbara MacAdam—for years associated with that publication and now co-executive editor. Find that conversation here: http://www.artnews.com/2007/02/01/where-the-great-women-artists-are-now/. It’s not just that Linda (we were colleagues at Vassar many moons ago) has mellowed, but, as you’d expect, she was totally au courant with the art scene of the day (the conversation took place in 2007). Maybe she had notes in front of her, but whether or not, her recital of a great many women artists now at work was impressive. She didn’t simply rattle off a lot of names, but characterized the work of most of the ones she mentioned. The upshot—not really news for a reasonably alert observer of the art scene—was a picture of a lively and very varied population of women artists.

   Has the millennium of gender equality been reached? No, not as yet. The vast majority of those who buy works of art are men who express their attitude by paying higher prices for their purchases when the creators are men than they do for the work of women artists.

   Finally, Linda Nochlin did not promote any of the post-1971 women artists into the “great” category that was the subject of her original article. But in many ways, her optimism in that interview makes that issue moot. It is clear—though she did not say so—that she thinks the structural reasons that, through decades, indeed centuries, prevented (or made it extremely unlikely) for a great woman artist to emerge have largely if not entirely disappeared. If so, that’s the good news. But alas, the removal of obstacles is only a necessary condition for bringing about such a desired goal. The sufficient condition for the appearance of a great woman artist is to have a female genius be born. And that is beyond anyone’s control. Even Rembrandt’s parents were just lucky.