The Louvre, the gendered gaze, and artistic assumptions

[mariness]

Some years back I happened to be in St. Augustine and decided to go on the St. Augustine historical reenactment tour. It was awful, but this post is not about that. Rather, it's about the woman who was doing the candlemaking demonstration, who told me that before the 19th century, no women could read

Comments

[mariness]

You're welcome, although I'm currently kicking myself for accidentally leaving out a sentence in the opening paragraph when I first posted this. Fixed now which should help clarify things.

[bellakara]

Yes, this is an age old problem, and in the face of no evidence to the contrary, literary and art critics and historians will always assume 'Anonymous' is a man. The need for evidence favours men because their papers are more likely to be preserved anyway, and they're more likely to write about each other than women. So women get locked out in their own lifetimes, and then later by the largely male historians and their little boy networks. Male writers and artists have the patronage of the living to keep their reputations going

[mariness]

Interestingly enough, before the French Revolution, women in France were admitted to art training and the Royal Academy and did display their paintings. This did not happen without protest - some men felt that the women artists would distract the men (even as the men brought in wives and lovers and so on, so, you know, they were good at distracting themselves.)

This temporarily ended with the French Revolution. For all of our images of knitting women shouting down the aristocracy (which in some ways was an image used by men to decry and denigrate the French Revolution) the Revolution actually was a setback for some women artists and writers.

I shall now lose some of my feminist credibility by admitting that Christine de Pisan bored me. But you'd be surprised at how many people firmly believe that the first women author was Jane Austen, and stare when you explain that Aphra Behn was earlier and unlike Austen actually managed to make a living (however precarious) out of it.

[malterre]

After I finished running around the room screaming about the reenactor, thank you for the blog

[mariness]

It was like a lesson on how not to do historical reenactments. Even apart from the candlemaking demonstration.

[lyndarama]

Great stuff.

Now post a pic of a Lolcat, just to even things out a little.

[chattycatsmeow]

Like this? :D

[lyndarama]

Exactly.

Awesome.

[lareinenoire]

Here via toshieri and just wanted to say this post is marvellous -- too many people make blanket assumptions about women's historical roles, not just in art, but in general. And you make a really good point about anonymity -- there were long periods of time during which people created art without necessarily identifying themselves.