Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Women and art

In the current crafty DIY revolution I see loads of art .Lots of very innocent, delicate, whimsical creatures with big eyes, often looking sad.Or otherwise lots of cute animals (often bunnies) looking rather cute and sad . It's not that I dislike them (on the contrary)!
But I would really like to see some strong happy women doing happy things. Women that are not childlike or melancholy. I spend enough time being melancholy as it is to not want to look at it on my walls....

I really like social realism and communist china propaganda for this reason, as it shows strong/industrious/happy women. Yes, I realise they are not necessarily authentic pictures of women (not all were happy under poverty and enforced labour) and no one looks radiant doing hard labour, but at least they look like women, albeit state sanctioned women!








Yes, the whole innocent art is quite a phenomenon inspired in part I suspect, by Blythe dolls. It's interesting that it seems to be very much art by women for women, and is aligned with women 'taking back' traditional 'female' activities such as baking cupcakes, knitting and such, activities which require time, something which I suspect many women do not possess, thus in a sense it is a luxury to be part of the DIY movement. Interestingly, time is the biggest issue bemoaned by women desirous to make the move from employee to self sufficient creative women.

There is something wrong in that women's art work (usually prescribed with the lesser title of 'craft') is undervalued in any commercial realm as most women with any desire for payment for their time, labour and creativity are subject to consignment payments which work out less than the minimum wage.I discussed this with a male friend recently. His response was that, surely it was enough to create things and have them out there? I wonder if a male artist would receive this response? (Quite possibly).


At any rate, I am inspired to do some art of women. I have a vague idea involving fabric patchwork or mosaic from recycled goods. I would like to create authentic women but I am cognisant that any such attempts are invariably considered 'feminist' and relegated to a different category again, often suggestive of discomfort rather than the whimsical ways of innocent art. .

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