'Old Mistresses - Women Art and Ideology' by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock

Old Mistresses is a book discussing women's place in the history of art; why women artists have been ignored and why their art has been misrepresented. This blog is aiming to investigate the theories and ideologies in this book, and debate its acheivements and limitations, concluding with how this book has influenced other writers.

Précis

‘Old Mistresses,’ is a text written by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock which explores women’s place in the history of art; why women artists have been ignored or misrepresented. In the introduction to the text the authors state that the exclusion of women is critical to the development of art history, it is not until the 20th Century that writers began to investigate women artists and the work they produced. They aim to look at the limitations which have been put on women through which they have had to work. These limitations come from a range of factors, such as social, economic and historical. The authors hope to examine this by looking at biographies of women artists and their relation to art practise, although they emphasise that the text is ‘not a history of women artists but an analysis of relations between women, art and ideology.’ (p.xix)

Chapter one begins with questioning what women have created and why; in particular, what factors affected them, for example, discrimination. The writers emphasise that there have always been women artists; they were recognised until the 19th Century but from there on their existence has been denied. Works on women artists began to decline in a period where women’s social emancipation and education should have made people more aware of women’s issues. However 20th Century writers such as E.H Gombrich, in his ‘Story of Art,’ completely ignore women artists. Parker and Pollock go on to explain how women’s art was thought to be inferior to men’s; as men were responsible for cultural creativity whereas women were only associated with procreation, their characteristics thought of to be the antithesis of creativeness. This thought was based on the Bible, as it, ‘associated the divine right of creativity with men alone.’ (p. 1) This thought began in the 19th Century as bourgeois ideology began to instigate ideas of women being domestic and could only produce ‘tasteful art,’ whereas men held true genius. Parker and Pollock explain how this period is where the idea of ‘sexual difference’ became conscious.

The authors state that they want to discover why women have been ignored and the ideologies that allowed this to take place. In chapter two the writers explore the fact that the sex of the artist affects the way the art is seen. They use the example of flower painting in Holland in the 16th Century, which some women artists were involved in. They were dismissed as merely extensions of the ‘nature’ aspect of women, and not real art. They go on to discuss crafts, such as embroidery and quilt making, which are associated with being ‘feminine’ and therefore rejected as not being art. When craft items are displayed in galleries the role of the maker is diminished and they become nameless. Parker and Pollock explain how this is the only way this type of art can become recognised, if it is removed from its feminine connotations. They also discuss the nature to culture scale, where humans turn raw materials into cultural objects. Women symbolise nature and are therefore at the lower end of the scale.

The chapter finishes with a dialogue explaining how the need for a feminine stereotype in art is to provide an opposite to maleness, to supply something to be dominated by masculinity. Masculine ideology is only productive with a negative.

Chapter three looks at the way women artists see themselves and their identity as artists. Modern thought sees male attributes associated with the term ‘artist,’ which is a culmination of ideological transformations, from artist being a craft worker to artist being a bohemian, a ‘Creator.’ Parker and Pollock explore the changing definition of ‘women artist’ and look at several self portraits from artists such as Anguissola and Vigee Lebrun. They discuss how women artists struggle with duelling identities of being a woman, and also an artist, and how this is represented in their artwork.

The idea of language and representation is approached in chapter four: entry to society is marked by access to language and language embodies culture. A person’s knowledge of sexual difference is marked by their awareness of words such as ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Parker and Pollock explain how women’s struggle takes place in the field of language, the way they represent themselves and how they are represented by culture. Representation can restrict views of the world, as they come from a subjective point of view. Representations can reflect one group’s power over the other, such as patriarchal ideology over women. Parker and Pollock talk about representations of the female nude in art and how women are represented as being submissive and sexual objects for the voyeuristic enjoyment of men. Feminist artists have tried to reappropriate the female body by using images of female genitals. The authors point out that male artists never represent the female genitals in art, and this may highlight their fears of sexual difference and castration anxiety, referring to Freudian ideology.

With the advent of the modern art movement, new meanings could now be produced in art as new relations had formed between the spectator and the artwork. However as the authors discover in chapter five, there were still restrictions placed on women from the ‘feminine’ stereotypes still present. They discuss the American abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler, whose work the critics said was natural and timeless, still reverting back to 18th Century thought. For an artist that was trying to be innovative and current, she is still being hindered by patriarchal ideas of femininity. Parker and Pollock also talk about the second Hayward Annual exhibition, where the works of art were chosen by women, and resulted in numerous works by women artists also being shown. The critics however called some of the works ‘political art’ and therefore not real art. The writers point out this is because women’s art is traditionally thought of as not intelligent, yet when it becomes so it is rejected. They say that ‘when women’s art fails to conform with stereotypical expectations... it is dismissed as simply not art’ (p. 161).

Parker and Pollock conclude by emphasising again that women’s art has always been present. To criticise women artists, they have to be acknowledged. Women’s art plays a role in the creation of standards of male dominance as it provides a negative for masculine dominance. The authors wanted to break open the female stereotype and recognise it as a product of masculine discourse. They explain that women artists have made a varying progress into art, as opposed to steady, the way historians portray it. However they do admit that this text is not a conclusive history; there are many gaps and generalisations. They wanted to provide a framework for the analysis of women, art and ideology. By looking at the historical process which has formed the changing ideologies and contradictions of the history of women’s art, it helps us to understand the current situations of women artists today.