The art world, for all its beauty and thought-provoking ideas, tends to be stale, pale and male.
Despite women outnumbering men studying at art schools, a 2017 report found that just 28% of artists represented by major commercial galleries in London were women, only 22% of solo shows were by female artists and just 41% of the best-paid art academics in the UK were women. Clearly, women are still more valued when stripped for the male gaze on canvas than they are in person.
To highlight these discrepancies, an unlikely activist has been photobombing her way into galleries with thought-provoking placards.
ArtActivistBarbie is the brainchild of Sarah Williamson, senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. An ‘iconic instrument of female oppression’, Sarah has chosen Barbie in her various forms to challenge the status quo.
‘Barbie is instantly recognised, she’s a cultural icon with the persona of an international celebrity, and I’ve recreated her as a fearless feminist activist,’ Sarah tells Metro.co.uk.
‘I’ve deployed her in a subversive way – the work of ArtActivistBarbie is playful and creatively disruptive. Controversy surrounds Barbie with her impossible figure, but she is now a political force who is a positive influence rather than a symbol of female oppression! She makes comments and questions cultural institutions about their visibly obvious and not-so-visibly-obvious patriarchal history, visuals and narratives.’
Sexism in the art world is still rife. You’re more likely to see a nude woman than a work by a female artist. In London’s National Gallery, there are 2,300 works by men and just 21 by women. The Pompidou Centre in Paris has fewer than 10 per cent of the works by women and even fewer by non-white artists. Sarah points to a large-scale study in the United States last year that found that 87 per cent of artists in major art museums were men.
‘The male bias, sexism and discrimination of the art world is reflected in wider society,’ she says – a fact echoed by ArtActivistBarbie, who recently tweeted about male-centrism and male bias in medicine, saying ‘there’s such a lot of work to be done. Everywhere you turn. Not just art, it’s the whole of society’.
Sarah goes on: ‘With regard to art galleries, women are highly visible in the collections – as the subject matter, but their representation can be problematic. In many historical collections, women are portrayed as silently beautiful muses with no name, languorously sleeping or posing in various stages of undress.
‘They can be found endlessly bathing or charmingly engaged in the joys of domesticity, reading and sewing. They also drift dreamily through gardens – an acceptable extension of the home for women – or dutifully kneel in prayer and contemplation.
‘Women are portrayed as the fashionable and beautiful trophies of society and marriage and examples of tender motherhood, whether rich or poor. Women are portrayed as dedicated wives and daughters, or maids and servants, delicately preparing fruit or pouring water, or assisting other women with toilette.’
Other women (including ‘fallen women’) romantically await or grieve for male lovers, with heroines eternally being rescued by men or being portrayed as dangerous seductresses, luring men into ‘danger, dangerous waters, temptation, and death’.
It’s no wonder, given the number of boobs and bums on show, that historians like Mary Beard have called fine art ‘soft porn for the elite’.
‘When you look at some art, particularly some historical works, you should ask yourself who it has been painted for, and why,’ says Sarah.
‘There are so many naked females in our art galleries who have obviously been painted for the male gaze. Such works, commissioned by wealthy male patrons and painted on the pretext of a great scholarly interest in antiquity and myth, are really just the sexual objectification of women.’
Because of that, female muses tend to have less control than the all-powerful male artist…even if female muses have been brilliant artists and thinkers themselves.
ArtActivistBarbie is all about inspiring conversations about how women are portrayed and represented in art and how their invisibility as artists is reflected in wider society.
She began life as an experiment for Sarah’s students.
‘I’d been working in galleries and museums to engage my students with social justice issues in society and one day had the idea of using Barbie dolls,’ Sarah explains.
‘So, I raided my daughter’s toy box, collected some more Barbies from charity shops, and gave each student a doll and miniature placard made with a lollipop stick. I took my students into our local art gallery in Huddersfield and I asked them to intervene and comment with their Barbies about gender stereotyping, exclusion and representation. Of course, this intersects with race and class too.’
The experiment was a great success – and not only in regards to the impact it had on Sarah’s students.
‘One visitor said to me that looking at the Barbies’ placard commentaries made her “realise just how much women are judged by what’s on the outside and not on the inside”.’
She took photos of the experiment and found that everyone in her office – from the cleaners to the professors – were interested in what Barbie was doing in an art gallery. Today, ArtActivistBarbie is still going, challenging people to think about gender, exlusion and representation.
So what needs to change in order for gallery spaces to present a more equal world to visitors, and what role can our Barbie play in that?
‘Some galleries are starting to address the gender gap and the lack of female artists in their collections, but there’s a lot of work to be done. Promising steps are being taken – for example, the National Portrait Gallery in London has recently advertised for a curator whose role will be specifically to address the gender gap in their collection, the missing women.
‘Obviously galleries can’t just buy a lot of historical artworks by women as they simply don’t exist, but they can visibly explain the societal and cultural reasons for this absence to their visitors. Not many do…’
You can check out ArtActivistBarbie’s adventures and musings on Twitter.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/13/art-activist-barbie-taking-white-male-art-world-dont-have-12846284/
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