Why Does the Art World Hate Mothers?
In our supposedly enlightened times, the myth that mothers cannot be great artists still persists
Here is a bonus piece I wrote for Mother’s Day. This exhibition is still on and will go on tour.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Madonna and Child (c. 1613) CREDIT: Album / Alamy Stock Photo
Some of the most regressive people I’ve ever met have been from the art world. Whatever shocking stuff is hung on the walls, this is a milieu that is like something from the 1950s. The hierarchy of artists and their power brokers – curators, collectors, dealers, “taste-makers” – is propped up by a gaggle of wives and gallerinas who lubricate this world because they have a reverential love for “the work”. That work often declares its radical politics, but I have yet to see this reflected in how the business around it is conducted. And art is, above all, big business.
Our belief in artistic genius remains when that artist is female. A recent show at Tate Modern celebrates Yoko Ono as a major artist in her own right. But Ono is now 91. Why did it take so long?
Women outnumber men at art school – yet this is effectively reversed in later professional life: 67 per cent of artists represented at major commercial galleries in London are men. The art world pays lip service to every notion of equality and diversity yet seems reluctant to actually change anything to make it possible for mothers to thrive. Private views that stretch into the late evening, rowdy gallery dinners, and other faux bohemian lifestyles don’t sit well with bath and bedtime routines. Tales of artists’ uncompromising dedication do not recognise the reality of being up all night with a vomiting child. Pregnant women are advised not to go near toxic materials like turpentine. Just stick to the watercolours, dear! The question still remains: can you be a great artist and a mother?
It’s a question that has inspired the curator and critic Hettie Judah to stage a new exhibition, Acts of Creation, at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol, which makes the case for “the artist mother as an important – if rarely visible – cultural figure”.
The blind spot in art history is exactly this, isn’t it? The show’s artists (which include Tracey Emin, Celia Paul and Paula Rego) have made films, paintings and sculptures which delve into the experience of pregnancy, and the day-to-day work of caring for a family – as well as miscarriage and childlessness.
Paula Rego, Untitled 2 (1999) CREDIT: Paula Rego/ Cristea Roberts Gallery
Judah herself has spoken about what the art world needs to change to help artist mothers, and has even written a manifesto. This includes a lot of practical steps, from galleries holding private views in the daytime to providing budget for childcare. An artist should not have to “confess” to being a parent. Do not ask about the gaps in a CV or place age limits on prizes and residencies.
Such demands are welcome – yet undermining them all are deeply held myths about who gets to be an artist. It is as hard to imagine a female Warhol as it is a female Van Gogh. We allow a few women to step through the portal of greatness, but they tend to embody an idea of greatness that is so unbending, children could never be part of it. No one would bother talking about children holding back the careers of men, yet female artists have often publicly struggled with following their passion, and the demands of parenthood.
Emin, who’s never had children, is a great artist. At the centre of her work are complicated feelings about abortion, motherhood, and recently, illness. Her drawings are like embodied screams and the bodies in them are resolutely female, never feminine. This is blood and guts stuff. “I start early, at about eight, and I work until 11.30 at night,” she’s said of her routine. “I hate being interrupted.” It’s why she’s no longer invited to baby showers. “I don’t know anything about that world.” She once proclaimed: “There are good artists that have children. Of course, there are. They are called men.” Emin would know. The Young British Artists scene from which she emerged was unrelentingly laddish.
Tracey Emin, Something's Wrong (2002) CREDIT: Stephen White Courtesy White Cube
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