Women, Art and The Real

The Independent is having a hissy-fit over someone telling the blunt truth about the absurdities of the contemporary art world. But he should have been a little broader with that brush. Women do make up the majority of students in contemporary art schools, but what are they being taught?

Because it's mostly females entering the "contemporary art scene," and therefore producing the crap that contemporary art is, it does not follow that the women-artists are producing crappy art because they're women. It might have something to do with the crappy teaching, and the valuing of crap that is the singular earmark of the contemporary art world.

The Indie's Nick Clarke whines that he has "has dismissed centuries of female artists at a stroke – from Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo to Bridget Riley and Paula Rego..."

Mmmm... let's take a look, shall we?


"Judith" Artemisia Gentileschi


"Frida Kahlo" Frida Kahlo (whom Wikipedia described as "self-portrait artist and feminist icon...)


Bridget Riley (I think I see where we're going here...)

Paula Rego (definitely getting the pattern...)

I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark and say that when he talks about women artists not passing "the market test, the value test”, that he isn't thinking of Gentileschi, but more the likes of Tracey Emin who once admitted that some of her "best" drawings were done while she was blind drunk.

Ah, yeah honey, we could tell.

But that is what the "contemporary art world" wants. Crap.

But it's not Real.

There still are real artists, and plenty of them are women.

Only the Real counts. And it always wins.



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