Madmoizelle’s BookClub (re)writes the history of women’s art, tonight at 7pm on Twitch!

For a long time, ” Art history by Ernst Gombrich, a fundamental work of art history published for the first time in 1950, there were no female artists. And for a long time it shocked no one. Until, finally, researchers and activists ask the question: where is the history of women’s art? Women have never created?

The history of art, especially the history of a boys’ club

Actually the history of art, like the history of (too many) areas of our society, yes been that of the boys’ club for a long time : men, critics, historians, who write exclusively on the work of other men, artists, often also their friends.

Women artists were present in the landscape, but it took several centuries to gain access to art schools, and when they finally did, they have long been confined to arts considered secondary, such as weaving. Socially, the opening of art schools to women was seen mostly as a means of providing them with a hobby, the moment they find a husband and start a family.

While this may have been the case for some, many others actually aspired to become professional artists. And when they succeeded, male critics tried in vain to push them into the background, their art less interesting. Those who had the misfortune to marry an artist became “woman of”as in the case of Sonia Delaunay-Terk, already known long before her marriage to Robert Delaunay.

The representation of women in art, the prerogative of men

But the way in which art history has been written also poses another problem: the gaze that has long focused on women’s bodies, their representation. When we take the time to take stock, the works depicting naked women are extremely numerous in museums.

THE Guerrilla girlsa group of feminist artists founded in New York in 1985, wondered, for example, about giant posters: ” Women must be naked to enter the Met. Museum?” . And when they are not naked, they are often represented in situations of submission, violence, or dressed up in arbitrarily assigned roles: temptresses, witches, hysterics, sick people…

In short, for a very long time it was not just a question of keeping women out of artistic production, art has also and especially been used to validate sexist representations of women in society. The famous ” male gauze it has flooded artistic production for centuries.

In Madmoizelle’s BookClub: “(Re)-write the history of women’s art” tonight at 19!

Today, many voices are raised and want to set the record straight. Both by promoting the stories of forgotten artists who still had great importance in the history of art, but also writing a critical, decolonial, anti-sexist and more inclusive history of art.

To talk about it, the BookClub will be happy to welcome Matilda TaszyckaHead of Science Programs for the AWARE Association e Ludivine Gaillardindependent cultural mediator, founder of the Instagram page “Better late than never” and author of “ Imperfect, representing “the woman” in Western art“.