“Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts”

Pollock and Parker

ABQ Chapter 4, pp. 44-55

“The sex of the artist matters. It conditions the way art is seen and discussed. This is indisputable. But how does it matter?” p. 44

Some important artists like William Morris have also criticized the distinction between “high” and “low” or decorative art.

Key Examples of “Women’s Arts”

Medieval and Later Embroidery

• Not always done by women
• Associated with higher classes and power
• Later became associated with leisure and good taste
• Seen by some as ‘natural’ to women
• Samplers, etc. teach submissiveness, modesty, obedience

Flower Painting

• Seen as an extension of womanliness
• Seen as natural
• Seen as feminine (painters are like flowers)

Navajo Blankets

• Domestic arts are lower than art done outside the home
• They are put in a museum and praised for abstract qualities
• They are attributed to ‘nameless masters’

Patchwork Quilts

• Same points as above for blankets
• Social role is important but ignored
• Meaning of quilts is important but ignored

Falsifications of History

• Women painters are forgotten
• Role of social class is forgotten
• Some art forms are mistakenly seen to be ‘natural’ to women
• Contemporary women artists mistakenly champion crafts as high art

“Women artists have always existed. The important questions concern women artists’ relationship to an ideology of sexual difference in which the notions of masculine and feminine are meaningful only in relation to each other.” (54-5)

“Ideology is not a conscious process, its effects are manifest but it works unconsciously, reproducing the values and systems of belief of the dominant group it serves. As we have shown the current ideology of male dominance has a history.” (55)