Copied from the Art News Blog:“Jerry Saltz has published an interesting article over at the New York Magazine. Saltz asks where are all the women? (at the MoMa)“MoMA is our fountain of youth, our Garden of Eden, our Promised Land. But all these things will not last much longer if this institution continues excluding women from the display of its permanent collection of painting and sculpture from 1879 to 1969..”and continues with..“I’m not declaring them sexist bigots. Nor am I a quota queen, advocating that women be allotted their 51 percent: Art history isn’t about fairness. Nevertheless—and this is a vital point—MoMA’s master narrative would not be disrupted if more women were placed on view. In fact, that narrative would come to life in ways it never has before, ways that would be revitalizing, even revolutionary. Ask yourself if hanging any of the following artists would really ruin the narrative espoused by the museum: Barbara Hepworth, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, Dorthea Rockburne, Yoko Ono, and Florine Stettheimer.” Read the full article at NY Mag here.I think it would be political correctness gone mad if museums were forced to purchase art because the artist is female, a particular skin color, or any other categorization of person that has ever felt neglected at some point in time. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t think more women artists should be bought by museums, but they definitely shouldn’t be bought just because they are women.Art should be bought on merit, not the sex of the artist. The sex of the artist is the last thing on my mind when I’m looking at good art.”I found myself at an interesting crossroad after reading this article. Really I clicked on it because it was titled “Women in MoMa” and since I really had no idea what MoMa is and what women were doing in it I thought it would make an interesting read. Interesting and thought provoking were more then I bargained for.My thoughts that were provoked centered around the idea of gender. I began to wonder how anyone could seriously view art without thinking about the gender of the artist. There are a few reasons why I think this. The first one is that gender is something that is physical, emotional and societal.If we start purely with the physical aspects and how it affects an artist there are obvious differences. A woman has a vagina and a man has a penis. There are differences in the hormones that each body holds, each sex faces different dangers and pitfalls as well as similar ones. If art is a expression of a culmination of experiences, how can we ignore the physical experiences that are tied into emotional ones?The emotional aspects of gender play a huge role in how an artist expresses themselves as well. Men and women respond to stresses and emotional triggers differently. There are expansive amounts of literature discussing how each gender responds to the messy journey we call life.The emotional and physical aspects of gender are just the foundations that affect expression. On top of these foundations are built the norms and mores of societies gender roles. These vary as well with the artists society. It would be foolish to assume that a woman determined by society to be “masculine” would express herself in the same way as a woman determined by society to be “feminine.”All these ramblings to say that while I agree that quota systems and political correctness are foolish dreams; I would challenge anyone who says that art is merited on its own without consideration to the artists gender.I shouldn’t read these things late at night.-Jessica
Jess Boctor 