Is Art Sexist?

Is art sexist? As Oscar Wilde said: “Everything in the world is about sex. Sex is about power.” Art is sexist especially about female and LGBT groups. When we look at history of art, we hardly find female artists not to say great female artists.

The exclusion of woman in history of art results from two main aspects. On the one hand, women were restricted in education and social expectations towards women have nothing to do with “great” artists. On the other hand, the term “great” is defined by male who is dominant in history and the definition is not applicable to the kind of accomplishments achieved by women. It is obvious that someone who is preoccupied with household chores and children and can hardly leave the home is unlikely to be a great artist. There may be rare wonder but that will not change the male dominant history.

Also,the scarcity of biographical information and anonymity contributed to the difficulties of the remaining of female artists. After marriage, women changed their names following their husbands. Besides, the male master of workshop and some traditional and conservative rules of some artistic profession prevented outstanding female artists.

Art is never as pure as it hopes. Individual in society should be impacted by media, culture, history, education and many other aspects consciously or unconsciously and forms own cognitive system which is likely to contain prejudice and even discrimination. People who are vulnerable in social system like female, LGBT groups and people of color are easy to lose discourse. It is very difficult for them to break through social discipline. In Desmond’s Ideas about Art, Wendy Williams, a law professor, explained that we tend to notice the people we identify with the most, and because white men have written Western history, white men are noted in those histories. (Jacobs 2007). The reason why minorities’ voice is seldom heard is not that they are not willing to explain or really do not understand how to express. Instead, it is because their voice is ignored by the mainstream– white male. As Desmond said: “Traditional critics and art historians claimed art by women or people of color didn’t meet their ‘impartial’ criteria for‘quality,’ which place a high value on art that expresses white male experiences and a low value on everything else.” It is commonly thought, an artwork is so wonderful that it should not come from female hands.

Of course, nowadays this phenomenon has greatly improved since the Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione published The Book of the Courtier in 1528. But as the Guerrilla Girls said: “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections of the Metropolitan Museum are women,but 85% of the nudes are female”. Naked female body is an important observing target from male perspective while women seldom created or directly observe naked male body. Art is always sexist. With development of feminism, there can be more new expression about gender issues.

【沙发】

实在不好意思，本来今天想发另一篇的，但是写到现在还没好，而且我也希望那篇作业能好好写，所以临时抓了一篇艺术方面的作业来顶，我争取下次交那篇……

其实关于艺术和性别的关系，后来我做女性凝视的策展设计时，了解到了一些比较前卫的艺术作品和女性艺术家，关于女性视角的艺术表达真的已经很不一样了，不过我当时写这篇的时候是对着阅读材料半懂不懂写的，所以可能有点混乱而且肤浅……见谅见谅

感谢阅读。虽然我用的都是简单词汇和简单句，但是英文阅读可能会造成一定困扰，先对战友说抱歉了。

Ps.开头王尔德那句话我是对着中文翻回去的，我没找到英文原文……意会一下即可。