Art For The Sake Of... What

To ordinary workaday folk the average Guardian article may seem remote from their concerns; tosh even (picture: Evgeni Zubko)

Helen Gørrill in the Guardian, on women artists not getting snarfed up wholesale by the Tate:

Today, when men’s artwork is signed, it goes up in value; conversely when work by women is signed, it goes down in value, and the addition of a woman’s signature can devalue artwork to the extent that female artists are more likely to leave their work unsigned.

Does anyone buy unsigned work, at all? And how would a suitably artsy signature give away the artist's sex? Intriguing.

Hysteria, the female-specific Victorian malady, has returned to the UK, with women accused of being mad and out of control if they don’t conform to gallerists’ often unreasonable demands.

Will she go on to give examples of the alleged "often unreasonable demands"? Nope, just have to take that as given.

We cringe at the voices of famous male artists and critics declaring their disdain for artists who happen to have been born female: women can’t paint! There’s no such thing as a great woman artist!

In the relentlessly PC world of the Arts, such a declaration would surely be instant professional death. Who then is doing the disdainful chorusing?

And Tate appears to align with these views by collecting only a token proportion of work by women, who form the 74% majority of our fine art graduates... its allocation of annual budget is even worse, with as little as 13% spent on works by female artists.

Oh my! How can that be?

Tate fails to mention gender or equality in its collection policy, seeking only to collect works of art of outstanding quality as well as works of distinctive aesthetic character or importance.

Aha. So what should an art gallery be about?

Tate should make urgent efforts to reflect the diversity of the population in its collections and allow female graduates the same life chances as men.

Never mind the quality, feel the quotas, o Welfare Galleries!

Tate’s support of the activist art collective Guerrilla Girls is a clever tactic that gives the illusion of equality, yet politically correct press releases from the likes of Tate championing female artists could actually be doing more harm than good.

b b b b but

It could be argued that museums raise the question of whether female artists are worthy of collection at all, because no similar promotional material or articles discuss the worthiness of male artists.

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Can't win any ways no how no sir.

74% of fine art graduates are women?