by Sofia Francioni
In 1971, in the title of one of his most famous essays, the art historian Linda Nochlin he asked: “Why weren’t there great female artists?“. For her, in the midst of the second wave of feminism, the problem was a social one. Today a study conducted by Renée B. Adams, Roman Kraeussl, Marco A. Navone and Patrick Verwijmeren proves you are right. “In the last forty years, out of 1.5 million art auctions carried out, female artists have earned almost 48% less from works than their colleagues,” the scholars write. “The downside is substantial. Gender culture can be a source of price bias at auction. The Discount on the works of the artists varies over timebetween countries, but is always related to cultural factors related to gender inequality“. To find out, the authors of the research analyzed a sample of 1.5 million transactions in art auctions in 49 countries in the period from 1970 to 2016.
Painting by Berthe Morisot, the only semi-unknown painter compared to her famous colleagues of the Expressionist season
At every latitude, to varying degrees and always, the artistse they earn almost half of the artistsi. And yes, the point is precisely the ending of their title. The discount, for scholars, is not otherwise justifiable: “Neither for size, style O technique used in the paintings, nor for theage of the painter or painter nor for thetopic treaty from the work “. Their study is in line with the reflections of the art historian Nochilin: “In the arts as well as in a hundred other fields, the situation is unfavorable, heavy and discouraging for anyone who has not had the good fortune to be born male white and preferably from the middle class up“.
In Italy, only 18% of the works of art in the galleries are signed by female artists
Cheaper, despite themselves, women are still today hindered access to the art market. Invisible barriers divide artists from exhibiting their works in auctions, galleries, biennial, triennial and four-year. Another 2017 study tells us, the report Presence and representation of female artists in Italy realized by the Master in Contemporary Art Markets: in Italy, despite the 66,7% of students enrolled in the academies of Fine Arts and women, if you look at the female signatures in the works of the galleries you find that the artists are the 18% out of the total number of artists exhibited. A gap artistic genre that can also be read in the selection of museum institutions: here only the 19% of the exhibitions held during the year concerned the artists. And the same goes for auctions and therefore for the market. As happens in many other sectors, the more you go up to important and top positions, the more the glass ceiling thickens and the female presence decreases.
Feminist battles to shed light on the artistic gender gap
It was 1914 when the suffragette Mary Richardson, to draw public attention to the vote for women, decided to enter the National Gallery of London and slash the Venus of Velàzquez, defined by the Times as “the finest nude work in the world”. Seventy-five years later, in 1989, the feminist group of Guerrilla Girls in posters posted on New York City buses and walls bet above the face ofOdalisca naked of Ingres the face of a furious gorilla. The provocation of the activists wanted to shed light on a systemic discrimination: “Do women have to undress to enter the Met? given that less than 5% of the artists exhibited in the modern art section were women, while the85% some nudes were female ”, they wrote.
The 1989 Guerrilla girls poster: “Do women have to undress to enter the Met? given that less than 5% of the artists exhibited in the modern art section were women, while the85% some nudes were female “
In Denmark, in 2001, five anonymous artists have buried their works where the foundations of the new museum would be built hoops The gesture, revealed only on the eve of its opening three years later, meant a propitiatory rite for a better reception of the artists in the Danish museum and in those around the world. If art is the mirror of society, this reflection informs us that, yesterday as today, the path of women is bumpy with silent discrimination and invisibility: on and off the canvas. Because, as the art historian Nochilin wrote, “The fault is not in the stars, in our hormones, in our menstrual cycles or in our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and in our education – education itself, after all , includes everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of significant symbols, signs and signals ”.