PRODUCE THE GOODS

Why did I find myself becoming so angry at the Tate Modern gallery yesterday?  We were on  a tour and saw works by the Guerilla Girls in the new wing.  These would ask why men dominated the art scene so much and say that American bus companies were more enlightened than its art galleries because they employed a greater percentage of female drivers than art galleries displayed the work of female artists.

The attitude of the Guerilla Girls assumes that equality is a top down rather than a bottom up phenomenon – that galleries decide not to show the work of women artists rather than that women artists are not producing works worthy of display.  Yet in the cut throat art world it is surely up to the artist, male or female, to produce the goods which are shown.  I took my daughter to see Top Girls by Caryl Churchill a few years ago as part of her feminist education.  It was written and performed entirely by women and was revived at a time when there were complaints that not enough plays by women were being performed.  Want more works by female writers on the stage?  Write another Top Girls, I thought.   

Our guide took us to a room where we could see a Jackson Pollock next to a Lee Krasner.  These two were married and Krasner pretty much gave up her career to support Pollock who drank and then drove himself to death when the creative fires began to dim.  Having the support of a devoted and talented wife did not prevent Pollock’s self-destruction.  He had the attitude of men of his day and referred to his wife as talented for ‘a woman artist’.  (Look up Ed Harris’s Pollock film for more about them.)

We also saw one of the Tate’s most notorious works ‘Equivalent Eight’ by Carl Andre’, better known as ‘the pile of bricks’, a neatly arranged stack of household bricks which the Tate paid £2,000 forty five years ago in what became known in the popular media as the biggest waste of money in art history (a crowded field).  Andre might have been considered a hero to progressives if he was not judged to be at least partially responsible for the death of his first wife by suicide.  (His enemies would say ‘murder’ for which he was tried and acquitted.)  Both Andre and Pollock had the standard attitude of the day to women – they were pretty much like cars, there to boost the ego and image of a man and to be disposed of if they ceased to function properly – especially when a younger newer model became available.

If Krasner were alive today she would probably give her husband a good run for his money and maintain her own career in the overpriced art market where people spend absurd sums.  Most of these ‘people’ are male, men like Andrew Cohen the hedge fund manager who spent over 140 million dollars on a Giamcometti sculpture after escaping a prison sentence for insider trading – his way of saying that he was still in the game. 

Cohen makes his money not by producing anything of value but by being good at buying and selling stocks and shares, backing hunches and spotting trends in the market, maybe using information gained before others have access to it to stay ahead of the competition.  If you said to Cohen that it was outrageous that the vast majority of people who succeed in his business are male and that steps should be taken to correct this gender imbalance, he would probably laugh in your face.  Get real, he might say.  If women learn to trade like he does then they can have a share of the spoils.  Until then they have to bring up the kids and act as arm candy.  If it is dog eat dog, you have to be a mean bitch to survive.

State run socialism, in which equality would be imposed from above, failed as communism collapsed because people did not enjoy living in a system which denied them freedom in order to grant them equality.  Under capitalism you have to achieve status from below by producing work which commands the respect, admiration and prices of the (generally male) established achievers.  Producing a work which sarcastically says that bus companies are more enlightened than art galleries because they make more use of female abilities is a socialist response to a capitalist problem.  Driving buses is easier than creating art.

I work in a profession (tourist guiding) in which gender is of little or no importance.  If anything, it is an advantage to be a woman in our business because people might find you less threatening and more symathetic than if you act the alpha male and are obviously trying to impress.  There were certainly more women in our study group yesterday than men but this has never bothered me.  If I have to get in touch with my inner female and become less dominating and assertive in order to succeed as a tour guide, so be it.   Like most guides I will do what is necessary to get a job and earn a living.    

The Guerilla Girls seemed to be saying that it was the art establishment which had to change, not the artists.  Yet I cannot imagine that any artist has been deliberately excluded from showing their work specifically because they were female.  The conventions and assumptions of society and family may have hindered them from achieving their aims but so too would the competition in the shape of fellow artists who, being mainly male, might be more aggressive/talented/connected/lucky (delete as applicable) than they were.  That did not prevent Jane Austen, Marie Curie or a bunch of other women from succeeding.  They produced the goods and so must the Guerilla Girls.

It should be easier now for women to win space at one of the four Tate galleries as they are now supervised by a woman, Maria Balshaw, while Tate Modern appointed a female director last year, Frances Morris.  About time too, I hear you say. 

For more on the Guerilla Girls go to guerrillagirls.com  
For more on the Tate go to: tate.org.uk  My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com  

EDWIN LERNER