(An Appropriate Distance)

 

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP

Oct 23, 2010 3:02 PM EDT

I read and enjoyed every word of this. Thank you so much. As a female retired from a profession (nothing to do with art) where I believe I performed at an above-average level, I've experienced both problems you allude to. Certainly women have been discriminated against or disregarded when they've actually performed better than men. On the other hand, it definitely hurts competent women when inferior work by women is unreasonably praised. It is perhaps useful to know whether the work was inferior because of lack of opportunity or lack of talent but this question has little to do with art criticism. Why do you think there were so few good female AbEx's, which happens to be one of my favorite if not favorite kind of art?

- PeggySu

Oct 23, 2010 7:24 PM EDT

Thanks for your kind words, Peggy Su. I think Krasner could have been better represented in this show, and certainly (as I indicated) Frankenthaler, too. The MoMA show also includes a number of women artists whom I'm not that enthusiastic about, including Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeois. All of them have many admirers, and I think the admiration is sincere (in the sense that it's the art that's admired, not the person who made it). I'm just awfully picky, I'm afraid. I think part of the reason that there aren't more women abstract expressionists whom I admire is admittedly a male chauvinist bias in the 40s, 50s & 60s upon the part of dealers, critics, curators & collectors, but a bias not without a certain rationale. By this I mean that not really until the '70s did many women commit themselves to abstract expressionist painting on a long-term basis. Far commoner were women who took up painting in their youth, but ceased trying to compete professionally after they got married & started raising families. Nothing atypical in this, either -- just what most women did during that time frame. Given such attitudes, however, it's perhaps understandable that dealers, critics, curators & collectors alike became wary of encouraging or investing in women artists' early efforts, thus creating a self-perpetuating problem. Also, to the extent that women did stay with their art, during that period they were maybe more likely to opt for representational painting (of which there was plenty in the galleries during the 40s and '50s, regardless of the mystique that ab-ex enjoyed). In terms of politics, we tend to forget that a majority of women voted Republican right up through the '60s; they didn't get radicalized until the '70s, and if they were conservative in politics, they may have been conservative in art, as well. That said, the percentage of good abstract expressionist painters in the 40s, 50s & 60s is only a fraction of would-be abstract expressionists, male as well as female. It's a fiendishly difficult style to distinguish oneself in, and plenty of male artists failed to distinguish themselves with it, too (Guston, most notably, but also a number of second-generation ab-exers who are blessedly absent from this show).

- Piri Halasz