"I'll show you what a woman can do"
~ Artemisia Gentileschi, 1649
I am always reading a book, haunting the local used bookstores, and checking out hefty stacks from the library. My literary interests are far-ranging. Of course, as an artist, I enjoy a good book on art history! I have been reading a whole lot this summer and I've just finished The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel and I thought I would post my review here!
I have been a fan of Katy Hessel's podcast, The Great Women Artists for years now. I devour each episode and highly recommend it! So when I heard she was putting this book out I was beyond excited!
Hessel takes us on a chronological journey through time, art movements, and trends, from the 12th century to the art of today, and through every medium imaginable. Covering the overlooked great women artists of every class, including queer women, women of color, and nerodivergent women, from across the globe.
Women for hundreds of years, were not allowed the same advantages as men when it came to art making. Women were not allowed to study the figure, look at models clothed or unclothed, or receive formal training. Often, women who were the exception had significant privileges, like an artist father, that opened the door for them. (My favorite tidbit from these early artists, was that they often snuck self-portraits into their work, either as stand-ins for mythic figures or in the reflection of a still-life vase!)
As times changed, and we see slow progress being made, a disheartening common theme, from the Baroque to Modernism, is the brazen copying of their work by male artists. The pattern seems to be: woman creates in a new way, man does the same a few years later, he is credited with founding a new art movement, and she dies poor and unrecognized. (There are exceptions of course, for example, Warhol saw Kusama's Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, and just two years later, his very similar (to put it mildly) installation, Cow Wallpaper shows up. This did not affect her growth in the art world, she is one of the most successful contemporary artists living today!)
One example of this pattern is discussed on pages 239-40. The self-taught artist Janet Sobel was a pioneer of the abstract expressionist movement, who in her time, was praised by the New York art crowd. She mixed enamel paints with sand to then tip and pour across her canvas, covering the entire surface in layered color. One of her more notable gallery shows was frequented by Jackson Pollock. Pollock was said to have been "enthralled" and later his wife, the artist Lee Krasner, wrote of him using similar titles to Sobel's work immediately after viewing her show. It is clearly documented that she influenced Pollock yet most of us have never seen her work or heard her name.
This pattern is proven via written and photographic documentation as in the case of Kusama/Warhol and Sobel/Pollock. And other times we can only speculate via dates and location, as is the case for Klimt and Kandinsky. Kandinsky has been considered the first abstract artist. But Hilma af Klimt was working in abstration several years before him. We don't know if he ever came across her work but they overlap socially, professionally, and geographically in ways that make you wonder. Unfortunately, there are too many examples of this pattern of behavior mentioned in this book for me to share here.
In a similar vein, we have many once-forgotten artists who were brought back into the canon by hardworking feminists of the 60's and 70's. Often, their work was attributed to a famous male artist of their time. In one case, a famously beloved and praised painting (considered 'one of the great masterpieces of all time') thought to have been painted by the most prominent male artist of Neoclassicism, was discovered to have been painted by a woman. Hessel writes, "It comes as no surprise that a male critic commented that 'there are certain weaknesses of which a painter of David's caliber would not have been guilty." 🙄
Despite its heft, the book is an easy read. Hessel writes with enthusiasm, clarity, and respect for the women discussed within these pages. She doesn't pit male and female artists against each other, she only presents us with a perspective that was intentionally left behind. She doesn't shy from criticism either. As we know well, female artists have been guilty of the same racial mishaps as men. Later, she discusses some who experimented with gender in life and work with care, contextualizing the social differences between their time and ours and by using modern language (calling an artist "they" instead of "she") in a way that didn't come off as tokenizing, pandering, or like she was rewriting history, but in a way that felt respectful and thoughtful.
There are a lot of women covered and because of that, we cannot go deep into every artist presented. But what she does condense, is well done. I brought with me a good amount of previous knowledge on many of these artists but I think if you came to it fresh, it would be easily digested. It is a well-made book, somewhere between fact-filled non-fiction and a coffee table book, with its glossy pages and high-quality images. Linda Nochlin's powerful 1971 essay for ARTnews Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? is a clear inspiration for Hessel's work, it is referenced a few times in the book, and it would be a great companion read.
I will add one final thought to this review. I think we start the women-focused art history at the 12th century without much of an introduction. I think it would have been fun to read a few pages dedicated to ancient artworks. Because history has been primarily written and interpreted by white men, we are often left with a less-than-accurate view. When women, queer, and POC perspectives are left out, we miss A LOT. It has now been speculated that some of the first-ever artworks were in fact created by women.
For example, the "Venus Figures" (named by male archeologists and interpreted by male-gaze archeology) were originally thought to have been made by men as erotic fertility fetishes. Feminists and female archeologists have challenged this line of thinking. An alternative view of this has been made by McCoid and McDermott, with research and hypothesizes that show how the Venus figurines were likely a form of self-representation. Instead of passive spectators, the statues were created by women through the only means of self-examination available.
For a woman living in the Paleolithic, to know what she looked like, she could only look down at herself.
By recreating that perspective with modern photography, it has been shown that the view of a woman looking down at her own body would appear similar to the shape of these Venus statues.
McDermott and McCoid argue that this perspective would explain why many Venuses lack defined faces, have smaller heads, and taper off towards the feet.
Another interesting bit of ancient art history I would have liked to have seen in this book: cave hand prints. A recent study found that three-quarters of all cave hand prints were by women. The archaeological male bias has had to be corrected over and over again. Archaeologists have found hundreds of hand stencils on cave walls across the world. Because many of these early paintings also showcase game animals, many researchers assumed that they were made by male hunters, perhaps to chronicle their kills or as some kind of magic to improve the success of the hunt. (This man=hunter, woman=gatherer binary has also been proven false. Read more on that here.) This new study proves that it simply isn't true, that women may have been the first ever artists.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys art history! Katy Hessel writes with humor and humanity. She makes art and art history very accessible in this important book.
The erased history of women artists and the misogyny of the art world greatly affects female artists at all levels. Like in this study here. And critics are still making bullshit comments disparaging female artists.
When we ignore the work of women artists we lose out on, not only great work but a whole facet of human experience and emotion.
"We were using art to change things"
~Lubaina Himid, 2020
If you read and enjoyed this book I would also recommend the following:
Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies by Cathrine McCormack
9th Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle
Louise Bourgeois by Frances Morris
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington
Up next on my art books reading list:
Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum
Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marylin Chase
Artemisia Gentileschi By Mary D. Garrard
Through The Flower: My Struggle as A Woman Artist by Judy Chicago
Where Is Ana Mendieta?: Identity, Performativity, and Exile by Jane Blocker
Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings
What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined: An Autobiography of Niki de Saint Phalle by Nicole Rudick
Paula Rego by John McEwan
Betye Saar by Jane H. Carpenter
Art books I recommend for the kids:
Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois
A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa
My coloring book is a great start to get kids into art history: https://tianatraffasart.bigcartel.com/product/coloring-book
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