Fame and Fortune Only When Women Artists Are Old? Wrong!
It may never be too late, but why should we have to wait?
Are you among the fortunate few who managed to catch the Alice Neel show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it closed last August? We went in the late spring –fully vaccinated and with an advance reservation– and relished the extensive retrospective. As we neared the end of the exhibit, we were stopped in our tracks by Neel’s self-portrait painted in her seventies. Smiling, Idelisse took a photo of the defiant, bespectacled, white-haired, plump nude sitting in an armchair with a brush in her hand. We couldn’t resist sharing it with friends on social media with the caption “Portrait of the Artist As …An Old Woman.” Neel painted all her life but it wasn’t till she was in her sixties that she garnered the recognition in the art world and prices in the art market that she merited.
There are others. Now famous painter, Carmen Herrera, was 89-years old when she sold her first painting. Did her talent and work undergo a seismic transformation that suddenly rendered her marketable so late in life? No! Neither did Luchita Hurtado, Lorraine O’Grady, Cecilia Vicuña or Betye Saar’s work. Saar greeted her first exhibit at MOMA at 93 with a simple, “It’s about time.” A few of these artists enjoyed some visibility and sold work when they were younger, but they didn’t make the bigtime till they were old.
While celebrating their long-in-coming success, we also protest the structural constraints limiting the opportunities for women artists of all ages. We don’t want to wait till women are in their 60s, 70s, 80s and older to see their work for the first time, or for them to be justly compensated. Just “11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists.” Only 2 percent of the almost $197 billion spent on art at auction between 2008 and 2019 went toward works by women. 84% of women artists in the U.S. earn less than $10,000 a year from their art, and that was before the pandemic and lockdown. It takes a healthy dose of bitchcraft for them to persevere and challenge a system that still makes it virtually impossible for them to sustain themselves through their art.
In the face of this reality, it’s no wonder that after more than 35 years, the Guerrilla Girls can’t abandon their masked crusade. And, that resourceful groups like Women & Their Work in Austin, Women Make Movies, NYWIFT and Women’s Studio Workshop have supported women artists, showcased their work and advocated for gender equity in the arts since the seventies. And they manage to do it despite inadequate and inequitable funding compared to “men’s groups.”
Not too long ago, the New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, wrote a review of “three gallery shows of new work by veteran artists who happen to be women.” All three are fairly well-known — Michalene Thomas, Lisa Yusavage and Alison Elizabeth Taylor– and in their 40s and 50s. The framing of the review is one of few intermittent glimmers of hope. Still, we continue to wonder just what it will take for women artists to routinely achieve fame and fortune before aging into being “honorary men?”*
[Two Old Bitches delight in seeing artists and other creators’ spaces, whether separate studios or nestled in their homes. Check out this article on Alice Neel’s Upper Westside apartment where she painted and showed her art till her death in 1984.]
And listen to our conversations with accomplished visual artist Sharon Louden, editor of an upcoming book, Last Artist Standing that focuses on artists over 50, mostly women.
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*Commenting on society’s persistent difficulty in accepting women as artists until they are old in the documentary Pat Steir: Artist, Ms. Steir quipped, “Now that I’m over 70, I’m like an honorary man.” Galerie Magazine, June 5, 2020.
Credits: Alice Neel self-portrait, photo taken by Idelisse Malavé.
