But I would argue that the figure of the ‘great artist’ is still gendered as male in majy ways.

What is this process of ‘gendering’? How does it relate to how artists proceed? The figure of the Great Artist is gendered ’cause, um, most of ‘em were boys. Camille Paglia denies that there’ve been any great female artists (I disagree here’s one and here’s another. I think Paglia’s remark is provocation: inspiring young aspiring women to say: fuck you! And prove her wrong.

It’s usually along the lines of the ‘maverick’, the drinkin’, fuckin’ rule-breakin’ scourge of polite society, the apotheosis of whom is probably Pollock.

Well I myself have very little affection for American Abstract Expressionism. This Romantic notion of the Artist is not compulsory and again I don’t see how it affects artists doing their thing, except insofar as they’re too busy getting wasted to do there thing. In my opinion if you want a Bad Boy Artist Caravaggio is how its done. Or Courbet. Was Warhol a Bad Boy? Church on Sunday with Mum etc? I reckon he just took footage of bad boys myself.
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In the Arts there are many female rulebreakers: Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Wollostencraft, her daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, Dorothy Porter, Anais Nin I could take up metres of space here. The names roll out…

Women tend not to fit so comfortably into this tradition as we have had far less wriggle room when it came to this sort of behaviour.

And you say I need to get out more. Sister, my personal experience of Australian Bohemia at the Turn of the Third Millenium says it’s the reverse that’s true. Most definitely. I put it to you that a hundred years hence this idea that women are marginalized in the Arts will be for historical interest only. And as for Bad Behaviour as they say in the Tom Tom Club: the girls can do it too y’all.
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I wouldn’t call this ‘maverick’ attitude (ie get pissed a lot) - tradition, more like standard bad behaviour. It’s just as an artist you tend to get away with it. If you’re successful.

Art, as Eliot said of poetry, is a mug’s game. There’s all sorts of ways to play your hand. J.M. Whistler was a fop who signed his letters with a swirly butterfly drawing instead of his name; no ’sexy primitive’ there. On the other hand, the dude also had talent. Women certainly have tropes of their own that they employ; if they aren’t the same tropes that men use, it might be because women and men aren’t the same. The world is full of middling art and ‘pretty good’ artists; great ones of either gender are pretty hard to find, and apparently, even harder to produce. Nobody’s chapter in Janson comes pre-reserved.

Wonder if any of her stuff is held in collections in Australia, I’m sure there must be some. Worth the hunt if there is.

Well, tea-break’s over, back on me ‘ead.

Can I also just point out (if it is indeed she you mean, or even if it isn’t) that she has paid in spades for her maverickishness over the years, including being lampooned by Rolling Stone in the early 1970s as ‘Old Lady of the Year’ because she’d actually had the appalling gall to go to bed with *gasp* more than one bloke? A lesser woman would have given up right there. And countless thousands did, and do.

This is one example among many of the kind of non-material obstructions faced by women not just in art but in any field of endeavour apart from motherhood itself: persistent humiliation and sneering, particularly over their/our sex lives, love lives, reproductive lives, and fuckability levels as judged by Teh Boyz. And being good-looking often makes it worse, so you can’t win. Anyone who happened to watch Hannibal on the teeve last night will have been reminded of how this works.

“It’s usually along the lines of the ‘maverick’, the drinkin’, fuckin’ rule-breakin’ scourge of polite society, the apotheosis of whom is probably Pollock.”

All I can say right now is (with respect), if you were to take the time to develop a careful consideration of Pollock, you’d discover that this remark won’t hold up against the complexity of the subject, both in the art and the biography. Many people have a hard time really “seeing” what is going on in Pollock; in fairness that’s not at all surprising, because the cobwebs of mythos are so thick. But it’s a subject that rewards study, because afterwards, if you can get to where you really “see” the paintings clearly, you’ll, well… be glad you did. (Also worth a look is Frank O’Hara’s great poem written at Pollock’s grave, “Ode on Causality”, which touches on some of this business, albeit opaquely.) Also, if you think this ‘maverick’ business is a masculine touchstone, then I have two words for you: Joan Mitchell.

As an irrelevant aside, it’s the wee hours here, and I’m up to my ears in work, trying to solve a very tricky technical problem; there’s a sculpture in my living room, done by a Vietnamese woman artist, (no, not the monument lady), that’s really been helping me think. Hmm, maybe the sculpture will get the answer before I do.

Just sayin’.

But I would argue that the figure of the ‘great artist’ is still gendered as male in majy ways. It’s usually along the lines of the ‘maverick’, the drinkin’, fuckin’ rule-breakin’ scourge of polite society, the apotheosis of whom is probably Pollock. Women tend not to fit so comfortably into this tradition as we have had far less wriggle room when it came to this sort of behaviour. Virginia Woolf’s essay about Shakespeare’s sister is still apt here. Many male artists don’t feel comforatble within this tradition either, but it’s one that they can use if they choose.

Maternity as a physical state isn’t created by social structures. But the way it’s dealt with on a day to day, pragmatic level is very much governed by social structures.

It’s still women who who perform the bulk of work in looking after children. Of course there’s child care available but that availability is patchy. It can be expensive and difficult to access. We as a culture can choose to make it more easily available, but we’ve chosen not to, to a large extent.

Artists need time time and space to work. It’s much more difficult to find that time and space if you have kids. We’re talking about societal expectations here and work is still very gendered. Women earn less money, have patchier careers, and generally keep the kids if the relationship breaks up. I’m sure you relaise all this Adrien and I’m sure you can see how these structures make it more difficult for women to keep slogging away to develop their practice.

One really interesting expample of this is Jane Campion. She gave up her career for a few years because she felt she couldn’t so justice to being a mother and an artist at the same time. She’s someone who’s in a very privileged position, so imagine what it’s like if you’re not as rich and successful as she is. I’ve never heard a male director say he was giving up to look after the kids for a while.

There are other examples such as this. It’s also a question of who’s in a position to make or break an artist’s career. I’d contend that the majority of those descison makers are still men. Power structures have changed, but there are still issues there.

No-one is claiming that that you’re you’e being some sort of a pig over this and there’s no point in getting all sulky about it. Neither is anyone claiming that progess hasn’t been made, but to claim that that it’s all over red rover, simply isn’t so.

Could it be because the majority of buyers are men?

Buyers of what? I would bet green money now that the majority of consumers buying objects depicting the female form as aesthetically pleasing are women. Certain dynamics in human sexuality underpin the proliferation of, say, strip clubs; these dyanmics also underpin the phenomena of contemporary sexual culture where women may enjoy aspects of strip-tease by women.
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The tangle of facts and myths that might explain this is too vast to deal with here but I would wager that they’d have a lot less to do with patriarchal power structures than you might imagine. In fact in the 17th century when there was a patriarchy - that is a political system that systematically discriminated against women - you will find that it is the male body upon which viewers are invited to gaze. Women are covered up.

>As for the idea that there’s no structural impediments to women artists and that the patriarchy is dead; you just need to get out more, Adrien.

I respectfully suggest that it is you who need to do so. Please be so kind as to name a structural impediment to women artists. Please also indicate where society structurally subjects women to penalties that men will not incur. I understand if by patriarchy people also mean ‘male dominated’. In that sense we do live in a patriarchy. I just don’t think that that is accurate.

Start thinking about the links between maternity and impediments to work for a start. And that’s just one issue.

Please note (again) that I am not saying feminism is irrellevant or that it’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds as far as women or are concerned. Most women, worldwide, for example do live in a patriarchal society. I merely note that progress has been made. Why is it so difficult for some feminsists to admit this? Don’t you realize it means you’ve won stuff?
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Maternity is an impediment to careers - absolutely true. But maternity is not something created by social structures. Yes - dealing with a society in which women take equal part in public life means that the management of maternity will have to change. Actually it has been.
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I am not arguing that everything’s hunky dory so much as saying that the problems women face can’t all be laid at the patriarchy’s door. And that politics may open doors but it’s up to us to go thru them.

Certainly art works and photographs are re-seen in a new light in each era. He was certainly a complex fellow. I wasn’t suggesting that being a reverend made him immune to sexual impulses [how might one make such a case, this week? ]. Cheers

He was a reluctant cleric and only took orders at all so that he could keep his job.

I try to avoid citing Wikipedia as a rule but this one is pretty good.

about the Rev Charles Dodgson [Lewis Carroll]

He wrote about you, the book was for you as a gift. He photographed you and your friends, dressed up. He liked the child-female form.

But I think he was in all likelihood virgo intacto at death. In other words, that crucial aspect of paedophilia (sexual intercourse with a child) was probably repugnant to him. He was a clergyman as well as a mathematics lecturer.

An eccentric, creative man; but not, I think, a “dirty old man” in the modern sense. Perhaps asexual??

Melinda Tankard Reist:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7645

Binoy Kampmark:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7646

Geoff, I think that’s part of the point in this response to his work. Papapetrou’s photographs aren’t ‘copies’: they are supposed to be in dialogue with Carroll’s images, not replicating them (or his intentions, or his desires etc) but speaking back to them.

I’m happy to be corrected, I haven’t spent a lot of time with Papapterou’s work.