My first year art history subject, ARHT1001 Style and Substance: Introducing Art History, discussed “women artists’ as a ‘theme’ in week 9. The unit introduced Linda Nochlin’s 1970s essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, and the lecturer argued not much progress had been made since. The irony was clear, here the course reified these institutional hurdles by locating ‘women artists’ as a ‘theme’ far down the curriculum, in the ninth week. Yet he was right, feminist art historiography hasn’t progressed much past Nochlin–a reflection of an impenetrable art world wrapped up in wealth, concepts of male genius and clout.
Modern Western art institutions are rooted in the early modern notions of the academy and salon, and steeped in the linear trajectory of the ‘western canon’. Galleries promise us the quintessence of greatness. This concept of progress has tricked us into thinking we are Enlightened. But Nochlin’s ideas have only really just hit the mainstream.
Nochlin’s essay stated, “the feminists’ first reaction is to swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker and to attempt to answer the questions as it is put: that is, to dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artist throughout history: to rehabilitate rather modest, if interesting and provocative careers: to ‘rediscover’ forgotten flower painters or David followers and make a case for them.”
Katy Hessel is one of the art historians taking up Nochlin’s mantle. Her 2022 book, The Story of Art Without Men, seeks to resurrect women in the Western canon of art history. The glossy-paged, hard-covered, heavy compendium traverses the interstices of 500 years of art history in just over 500 pages.
Between two quotation mark lights, on two white circular couches, upon a blue and purple lit stage, Katy Hessel sat down with Art Gallery of NSW senior curator Beatrice Gralton at Sydney Writers’ Festival for an 850-person crowd.
As Gralton explained, Hessel is somewhat of an art history celebrity. Hessel started an Instagram ‘@greatwomenartists’ 10 years ago, inspired by Nochlin, and her multi-platform presence has since extended to a popular podcast, various exhibitions and namely her book. The theatre had to be upgraded to an 850 seater due to popular demand, and the book was sold out at the Festival’s bookstore. While this appetite and Hessel’s enthusiasm were refreshing, the talk missed the mark. Why are we still sitting on Nochlin’s first point?
Maintaining illusions
The Story of Art Without Men is a gift shop book. It’s a deliberately simple narrative history, curling up five centuries of art in basic prose, images with a brief reference list. This revisionist history serves as a “concertina” to E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art––a foundational and accessible introduction to art history. Hessel picked up Gombrich’s compendium to replicate its timeline for an exhibition in 2019, realised there were no women and was invigorated to write a reconsideration.
The Story of Art Without Men is that text––unapologetically a reformist tome subscribing to the western canon. Women have always been in art as partners, muses or daughters, defined in opposition to men. Hessel brings women front and centre, but still in relation to men and men’s history. 50 years on, Nochlin’s ideas have hit the mainstream. Hessel is popularising extant scholarship, but failed to engage with this, painting herself as groundbreaking. A brief scan of library and bookstore shelves uncovers a transnational pantheon of Nochlin followers. But now these ideas can sell $40 tickets. Once radical notions are now commonplace and reverberate out beyond activist communities.
Hessel provided an insufficient response to Gralton’s query about her accession to the western canon, noting that these conversions are valuable and that this body is “a way in”. But how can you talk about galleries without speaking of their colonial and privileged history? Can you resurrect women as both objects and subjects? Can you define women’s art in opposition to men’s art? It’s remiss The Story of Art Without Men is neither intersectional nor decolonised. Hessel’s curation is often similar, locating women in big blockbuster exhibitions and projects in major national galleries. This curatorial practice is akin to liberal feminism, still feeding some of the latent knowledge that encourages such high entry to the art world. This style of revisionist, reformist history excels because it is palatable to the bourgeois types–Hessel enjoys friendships with Victoria Beckham, Marina Abramovic and Tracey Emin.
This is a broad brush history, inevitably taking victims for the sake of ‘accessibility’ and ‘comprehensivity’. Hessel’s work plainly takes gender as the organising factor, and ignores other aspects of oppression. I wonder if it fits Hessel’s aim of “making people feel seen”, ignoring the coinciding oppressive forces stopping art’s accessibility both as practitioner and enjoyer.
This rather individualistic history neglects community––feminist art isn’t made in siloes. It’s not made in the ‘regular’ processes. A full revolution of women in art requires understanding these processes and the structural transformations necessary.
However, Hessel must be credited for her enthusiasm. Her feeling and emotion were palpable. While still evoking the classic liberal feminist sentiments—’yes you can do that’–Hessel expressed an excitement that was encouraging. Her rise to art history authorship was unorthodox, she didn’t pursue an academic route and learnt new media herself. Hessel said we “have to keep going” because representation is “only going to get better” and so the next generation “doesn’t see it as distinct”. Hessel encouraged the audience to stage exhibitions and foster artistic communities.
The uniquely Australian situation
But the art history situation is very different in the antipodes. Hessel was embarrassed by her lack of knowledge. Hessel said her time spent in Australia thus far “completely overturned her vision of the world” so much so that it “called for a second book”. While this enthusiasm may be simply an exaggeration, it indicates the ‘tyranny of distance’ that ignores Australia’s very unique art history situation. Emily Kame Kngwarreye is the only Australian and one of the only Indigenous artists in The Story of Art Without Men, delegated a single page, and problematically included within ‘political artists’.
Moreso, Hessel admitted that she was seeing First Nations work for the first time. She drew attention to past Australian artists, photographers Olive Cotton and Destiny Deacon, sculptor Bronwyn Oliver, painter Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and practicing artists Rosemary Lang, Tracey Moffatt, and Sally Smart. Over the recent weeks in Australia, Hessel has been using her Instagram to capture the ephemerality of viewing such works.
Hessel mentioned Know My Name, the National Gallery of Australia’s initiative to celebrate women artists and achieve gender equality in collections, comparing it to the recent Tate Gallery exhibition “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920”. The recent release of the 2022 Countess Report, an artist-led research project, showed women exhibiting artists to be at 33.6% in publicly funded state galleries or 30.5% in major museums. This report found that gender equality had actually stagnated. Gender representation is a matter of policy, education, and discussion.
Hessel is right to be embarrassed; she knows very little about Australian art history, and it’s a shame that local feminist art historiography is overlooked. Radical thinkers often existed together; as the Sydney Women’s Art Movement emerged, alongside Adelaide’s Progressive Art Movement, many of these artists tackled the question of history and the archive. Activists established the Women’s Art Register in 1975 which now serves as the world’s longest-living archive of women’s art, alongside the women’s art magazine Lip which ran 1976 to 1984. Australian academics Joan Kerr and Jeanine Burke have led the way in locating women in Australia’s canon. Recently, Anne Marsh’s 2021 publication Doing Feminisms offered a compendium of these feminist artists.
It’s a shame that Sydney Writers’ Festival engages with the palatable, popular types of feminism, instead of showcasing local talent. Hessel’s popular work must be accredited with bringing art back to bigger crowds and leaping some elitist hurdles.
So what next?
The talk promised it would “overturn art history as you know it”. The truth of the matter is, she’s largely simplifying academic scholarship into an accessible gift-shop book. And so, I’ve been unfair, the book should probably be adjudicated on those merits.
There’s no denying gender is an important organiser for museums, but what about other prisms of oppression? Are we living in an age of post-political art? The room felt enthused but disconnected. As Gralton stated, art and life aren’t one and the same in Australia. Art is out there in pillar-surrounded galleries and institutions, and in Carriageworks with $40 tickets. Art is in ticketed blockbuster exhibitions–mainstays on the bourgeois social calendar. While there’s no doubt those exhibitions are good, I loved AGNSW’s recent Louise Bourgeois exhibition, but it reminds us of the success female artists have to wait until the end of their careers to enjoy.
The revolution won’t be at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. It won’t be at the AGNSW. It won’t be in a museum gift-shop book. The canon can’t die, there’s too much money tied up in it. But the revolution might be somewhere in between.
