By smakgent / YouTube
If parity in museum collections is still far from being achieved, exhibitions dedicated to women artists are multiplying. Just like those dedicated to mature artists like Rose Wylie and Jacqueline de Jong, who found the success they deserve later in their lives.
If parity in museum collections is still far from being achieved, exhibitions dedicated to women artists are multiplying. Just like those dedicated to mature artists like Rose Wylie and Jacqueline de Jong, who found the success they deserve later in their lives.
Rose Wylie is proof that talent has no age. This octogenarian has been painting for more than 40 years in Kent, in the south of England, but she has only enjoyed international recognition as a figurative artist for the last 10 years. It was not until 2010 that the general public discovered her lively and colorful paintings in a group exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. This was followed by exhibitions at the Tate in 2013, at the Aspen Art Museum in 2020, and now at the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent (SMAK), Belgium.
"picky people notice…" is Rose Wylie's first solo exhibition in Belgium. It is not a retrospective, but a selection of recent paintings and drawings never before exhibited. They play with pictorial conventions, especially in terms of perspective, which makes them look like huge children's doodles. But this apparent simplicity hints at a deeper concern for much more serious subjects, such as war, global warming or the stereotypical representation of women. The exhibition at the SMAK is not linear, and nor was Rose Wylie's career. The artist gave up painting for years to devote herself to her family. She enrolled in the Royal College of Art in the 1970s, graduating in 1981. Since then, she has never stopped making the lively and colorful paintings that made her famous.
Many other women artists have enjoyed success late in their careers. The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo paid tribute to them last year in an exhibition titled "Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging - 16 Women Artists from around the World." Visitors to the Japanese museum were introduced to the artistic practices of such often-overlooked artists as Britain's Phyllida Barlow, Egypt's Anna Boghiguian, Brazil's Anna Bella Geiger, and the Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera. Carmen Herrera died in February at the age of 106, after finding success later in life with her geometric and colorful abstract works.
Working in the shadow of men
Although Carmen Herrera painted structured and minimalist canvases for eight decades, her work has rarely been exhibited in public. It was not until 2004 that she sold her first painting. She was then 89 years old. As a result, Carmen Herrera was finally able to enjoy the success she deserved as a major figure of geometric abstraction and minimalism in the second half of the 20th century. Major international museums have dedicated retrospectives to her career, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016, and her works are now in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, MoMA in New York and the Tate Modern in London.
During her lifetime, Carmen Herrera was always critical of the invisibilization of women in art history. Especially for those who, like her, freed themselves from the pictorial canons and refused to be pigeonholed in any genre. "I knew [the American artist] Ad Reinhardt, and he was terribly obsessed with Georgia O’Keeffe and her success. He hated her. Hated her! Georgia was strong, and her paintings were exhibited everywhere, and he was jealous," Carmen Herrera told The Guardian in 2016.
The ascent of women in the art world has always been hindered by misogynistic and pro-male prejudices, according to which only men were worthy of reaching the status of professional artist. "The large-scale intrusion of women in the realm of art would be a disaster beyond remedy," wrote the 19th-century French painter, Gustave Moreau, about his colleague Marie Bashkirtseff. "What will become of us, when creatures whose minds are as practical and down-to-earth as women’s minds are, when creatures so lacking in the true gifts of the imagination, proffer their horrible artistic common sense, supported by claims?"
Yet women have never waited for the approval of their male counterparts to contribute to art history. Women curators are increasingly trying to bring these artists out of museum reserves by staging exhibitions focusing specifically on the work of women artists. A phenomenon that is benefitting -- posthumously or otherwise -- artists such as Etel Adnan, Zilia Sánchez, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Luchita Hurtado and Jacqueline de Jong. Not to mention all those who are still waiting to be discovered, or rediscovered.
