Week III

Ideas Development and Pitch Presentation

The presentation day went quite well for everyone. All the topics were incredibly interesting and I think everyone enjoyed listening to the rest of the pitches. In my case, I was very excited to tell my ideas to the class, and hear their opinions on them. I spent -not very productively enough- a day making the slides, enjoying the process while developing the ideas further.

Path I: In Their Own Words

Path II: Genius or plagiarism?

Path III: Great Contributions Deserve to Be Studied Too

The History of Art has been a topic close to my heart since I remember, and I have already done some quick projects in relation to it. But I’ve recently been more interested in Gender Perspective and the female gaze when talking about Art and Photography, so I wanted to use this Major Project to dive in and learn all I can about it.

First of all, I would like to give space to female historians who specialized in this area of the History of Arts to talk about it, since nowadays museum boards and academics don’t really accept gender perspective theories and fall on misogynist terminology or jump to wrong conclusions. I’ve also considered exploring the controversial question of differentiating the artist from the artwork, and how male artists have not given enough recognition to the women’s paintings from which they have found inspiration. Finally, I would also love to research how learning about female artists and their artwork can influence young women creatives and offer role models for them.

After Fiona’s feedback on Monday, I’m currently working on combining the second and third ideas. She thought my topics were all very interesting and academic. In her opinion, the second and third paths didn’t really exclude each other and could be mixed, if I could frame well the perspective and actually prove everything along the way.

Bex was the next tutor I talked to. She seemed very engaged in what I was telling her, but my lack of detailed research up until that day was obvious. Something she said really stuck with me: “Don’t make assumptions. There is clearly a personal experience here, yours, but you can’t take the topic too personally. It may or may not be true what you are explaining, and you have to find facts and statistics to back you up”. I think that was a key learning that I will take with me in the next weeks of research.

Wednesday’s and Thursday’s feedback were all very helpful too. Isobel introduced me to the Guerilla Girls, an organization that has a big presence today and is known for its fight for female representation in art. I have to find out how exactly have they influenced the art world, but only by looking at their posts, pictures, workshops, etc, I can tell that they are going to bring me very valuable insight into my topic. Isobel also mentioned the idea of exploring the design industry especially: statistics on women in design, how many are working and how many of them have exhibitions, etc. I have found that a lot of women designers I follow have talked about not having that many female references in their careers, and how they have to invest their own time and resources to find them. Design is just another branch of the same problem, so I will definitely look into that -as is my work field-.

Between Isobel and Vivienne, I was able to gather an idea of how to actually write the problem statement. I had been having some difficulties with that, not only because my project seems very broad right now, but also because I’m not familiar with writing a self-directed brief. Thankfully, I end up this week understanding better how to do it, which is great since I have to send Fiona today an update on the ideas. After some hours trying to narrow down everything to a couple of sentences, Vivienne’s guide questions helped me to write what follows:

Problem Statement

When we think of women in the History of Art, we first picture them as subjects on the canvas rather than behind it. The underrepresentation of female artists in exhibitions, museums, and academic agendas result in a general misinformation and ignorance of a significant part in the History of Art.

This problem comes from centuries of different systems of oppression deciding what deserves to survive the passing of time or not, setting a double standard between male and female artists in the analysis of the History of Art. As a result, female artists before the 21st century have been pushed to the utmost ignorance. 

And yet, nowadays there’s a majority of women in class studying a degree related to arts. As art students, how would knowing about all the female artists contributions to History affect their own work? Would they found role models in them? 

Exploring topics like

• male attribution to famous pieces made by a woman

• the gender-influenced double standards applied to the artists 

• the female gaze in the History of Art

• the outdated agendas set by museums and historians,

I want to aim at the very root of the problem: education. Why aren’t we studying women artists in schools if there are many examples of quality women with great contributions to Art? As a creative woman myself, learning about all these artists inspired me and they changed my perspective on art. Would other young girls feel the same? 

All the information is there, but how can I bring it to the board and give their names the space they deserve in our History?

Feel free to read my other blog posts! You can find them here.