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Inequality Among the Arts
Inequality Among the Arts
Focused Inquiry 112
Eric Ngo
Virginia Commonwealth University
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Imagine you have a skill that took years to hone and perfect. Now imagine
your skill that you worked hard to develop, suddenly be bested by some other
person. Naturally you would thrive off the competition and seek to improve your
ability, but sometimes you just sit back and give up. Men undoubtedly participated
in a large majority of the visual world’s upbringing and development, so much so
that a large quantity of artists considered masters are men. This trend remained
true until recently near the mid 20th century, women began to shine in the arts,
outperforming the men. Rather then continue to develop the visual world; men have
decided that art is for women, the “weaker” gender. Women have been and still are
viewed as inferior to men in many occasions and although art is one of the most
liberal forms of media it is no different. The man drops the art-making process
because if a woman can do it, and do it better than it’s obviously something that’s
not masculine. Art doesn’t really take extreme manual labor like working in an autobody shop right? Despite the large amounts of hypocrisy found, men will easily
abandon whatever it is they’re doing if a woman can do it because it’s no longer
masculine, this alone can cause huge issues.
As Vigneault stated, the art discipline, the process of making the art rather
than the art itself was a trade that originally was popular among educated and
wealthy men. From the early 15th century until the mid 20th century, creating
artwork was something to be proud of by men and even some of the best artwork in
the world was created by men who were proud in their profession. In the last twothree centuries, Vigneault noted that the visual world began noticing a shift in
genders among the artists citing that “The current majority of students enrolled in
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fine art MFA-programs in the United States are women, btu this shift is only recent.”
(Vigneault 891) With the rise of the Avant-Garde artists and expressionists who
challenged the traditional ways, the art world began to have some of the world’s
best artists who happen to be women. Women began picking up the arts and
becoming very well known and unfortunately men began to abandon the trade and
eventually began mocking women. Although Vigneault explains how the painting
practice or the practice of art was tied to a masculine connotation “as if a painting
itself could be gendered), it’s worth noting that slowly as women began to rise in
fame, men began to speak about how un-masculine creating art was (Vigneault 893).
It’s incredibly ironic considering the art discipline itself was a male dominated trade
for so long, and not just that but the fact that the establishment of what made an
artist was determined by men. Now we see images of men on Google ridiculing
artists with sarcastic phrases talking about how “You’ll make a lot of money being
an artist,” or even going as far as assuming most artists are not intelligent.
The issue at hand is that it discourages younger males from attempting to
enter the arts simply because of their gender. A majority of men view art as a form
of expression where emotions and no extreme manual labor is involved, rather they
are encouraged to work in something that requires excessive amounts of force and
strength. In contrast, mothers and daughters according to gender roles explained by
Gina Dandrow, are supposed to embrace and seek a “hobby” or passion in the art
world (Dandrow 28). Dandrow explains that daughters are raised and encouraged
to take part in more art-related activities as opposed to boys due to the lack of
physical labor required. Naturally in order to appear more masculine or “manly”
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younger males are told to avoid being an artist, as it will provide nothing because
the man must always provide. It makes literally no sense for a male to mock women
who create art considering Vigneault explains how much fame and fortune men
garnered as artists compared to women and how only recently have women begun
to outnumber men in the visual world.
It’s also obvious to the public that men view art as a joke or feminine subject
due to the nature of the content analysis I performed on how Google views the
phrase “art major” meaning art student. A lot of images came up of women who had
ridiculing texts on the images mocking their choice of profession and trade.
Interestingly enough however, whenever a male was present in an image, often
times it was the male who was the one giving out or creating the ridicule rather than
having it labeled on their image. Example, a female would be present saying “I’m an
art major, that’s right an art major” and the image was obviously meant to have a
negative tone towards it. A male’s image would include a male laughing and giving
some sort of joke towards artists saying “Oh you’re an art major? You’ll definitely
get a job.” Men felt threatened when knowing their trade was going away as
Vigneault noted when saying
“The dismissal of women painters in the 1980s was not due
solely to an unwillingness to focus critical discourse on their creative
output. It was that the expectations surrounding the activity of painting by
women artists remained contentious during the1980s, facing an internal
division that oscillated between the rejection of painterly practice as tied to a
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traditionally masculine definition, and of the advancement of painting as a
reclamation offeminist space foreclosed upon by institutional discourse”
(Vigneault 895).
It all leads back to the idea that men abandoned and ridicule art simply because the
population of women who are becoming successful in the field are growing.
It is quite saddening to see that the visual world may see a lack in new art and
innovation because it’ll slowly see a decline in male participation due to the art
discipline itself not being considered manly enough anymore. Some of the masters
of the visual world include both women and men but when we think of visual
masters, easily, artists like Picasso, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo are some of the first
to come up. Not trying to say only men can become masters of the arts because the
world has seen the likes of Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’keeffe and Yoko Ono. The visual
world already was starved of the hidden talents of the female artists throughout
history, now that women are rising in the arts; men are declining thus bringing the
art world back to a one-side entity. Instead of progressing, we’ve haven’t really
shifted negatively but eventually we will.
Female artists only recently began popping up all over the place because men
have lost control of the trade and no longer have the ability to determine who
becomes famous in the art world. In fact some of the world’s best female artists are
still alive to this day while a lot of famous male artists no longer live and that alone
provides context as to why men have abandoned the arts. Perhaps men are no
longer in the arts because women are outperforming them? As Dandrow explained
women had “Their artistic abilities . . . undermined by the men who overshadowed
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them” (Dandrow 27). The same idea goes for any art form besides just visual, when
we think of singers and famous musicians a lot of females come up especially in
today’s age. Vigneault notes that while men dominated the field, women had not
“achieved a level of art world fame accorded their male peers” (Vigneault 895). Now
that men are no longer able to dominate the field, they have no control over who
becomes famous or gets recognition. The notion that art is for females due to gender
roles explained by Dandrow is not aiding the visual world either because the role
implies that men should take no part in the arts.
A counter-argument that could easily be made is that the arts are dying and
function is becoming more prevalent over beauty, engineering is rising and there
has to be strong men at the forefront. While it is true that engineering and
innovation are taking the world by storm that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been doing that
the entire time the world has had people. During the industrial revolutions of
several European nations and the U.S. prior to the 21st century, males still were
artists and only male artists were popular. Also notice how in the engineering and
industrial worlds there are fewer women involved who become popular or well
known. Some of the world’s best architectural buildings were created by men and
very few by women, which only further proves that men will only stick with
something they are the best in. I guarantee that if women saw the same success in
engineering as they see in art now, men would simply deny it saying that
engineering is an easy feet, that it’s just a bunch of numbers and nothing too
difficult.
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All of the issues with the lack of men in art are simply due to the nature of
pride within males. Men are so proud in what they do that men simply cannot allow
themselves to be bested by women in what they do. Instead a majority of men would
rather abandon the trade instead of thriving off of that competition in order to
produce more and bring more into the visual world. Rather than work hard or work
with women in the field, it seems as if we have adopted this “First or last” mentality
that will only be detrimental in the long run. It sparks worries of what is to happen if
women begin to succeed in other fields that men are so proud to succeed in, will the
world see a decline in men continuing to work unless it quite literally requires bone
breaking labor?
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References
Inequality: Social Class, Gender, and the Creation of Cultural Capitol in the Visual
Arts. College Of St. Elizabeth Journal Of The Behavioral Sciences, 2(Fall2008), 25-30.
Vigneault, M. (2012). Are You Qualified?. Women's Studies, 41(8), 891-903.
doi:10.1080/00497878.2012.718622 Dandrow, G. (2008). Painting Social
Content Analysis