History vs Women: The Defiant Lives That They Don’t Want You to Know by Sarkeesian Anita & Adams Ebony

Author:Sarkeesian, Anita & Adams, Ebony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

RESTLESS ARTISTS

If the first artists you think of are white men from Europe, you’ll be blown away by these five women whose talent with a paintbrush, a pen, or a pirouette was simply breathtaking.

Close your eyes and conjure up an image of the great artists of the past. Who comes to mind? Picasso? Rembrandt? Michelangelo, maybe? What about da Vinci, van Gogh, or Andy Warhol?

We probably don’t need to explain what all these Great Artists of History have in common, but we are going to anyway: They’re white, they’re male, and they’re of European descent. Whether or not you’ve taken an art history class, the names of men like Monet, Renoir, or Degas are ingrained in our collective consciousness as capital A artists. Artists to imitate, to idolize, to worship. We suspect that it would take just a little longer for most people to come up with a list of comparable length and breadth of great female artists from history. Sadly, things aren’t much better even when we reflect on other forms of “high culture” such as literature and classical music. How many female composers can you name?

Art is more than the physical canvas from which a portrait stares back at you. It is greater than the musical notes on a page, more than the accumulation of pages of a novel, and stronger than the marble of a statue. Art, in all its many forms, is a historical and cultural treasure. We cherish it for the ways it memorializes, entertains, challenges, imagines, and subverts. The value of art is so widely understood that when precious works are in danger of loss or destruction, folks risk their lives to preserve them.

Our cultural values aren’t just passed down to us through politics or formal education. No matter how we define it, art permeates every aspect of our lives. It is one of the ways we learn about ourselves and others. Through art, we are constantly forming and shaping our cultural understanding of the world.

So, it’s pretty tragic that white men from the West continue to occupy an outsized place in our global imagination. By making them the bearers and representatives of culture, we essentially allow them to make society in their image. But what about everyone else? Where are the women?

The reality is that women have been creating art in one form or another since humans began to walk on this planet, but their works have rarely been acknowledged. Women have traditionally been excluded from producing many forms of high art, and their creative work is often dismissed as not being real art at all. Women’s work in the domestic realm—cooking, sewing, knitting—is thought of as labor, not art, no matter how exceptional. Things are slowly changing, but think about it: For many people a great female cook is still a cook, while a great male cook is a chef. It’s no surprise that with greater respect comes greater cultural, social, and often economic benefits. Meanwhile, women’s creative work continues to be overlooked.

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