On being a woman artist
Behind the Scenes
"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer"
– Albert Camus, “Return to Tipasa”, The Summer (1953)
Around this time last year I wrote “The future of art fraud” and submitted it to Griffith Review. The essay was included in Counterfeit Culture, published in February.
I thought I was writing about the past.
This year, alongside writing and working on major paintings, I began to reconnect with the artworld. I missed my peers. I miss creating and exhibiting bodies of work. And I am reaching the limit of what I can DIY, so I’m considering who I might work with in the future.
As part of this process, I examined the artworld as it is now. This was made easier by the mass migration online during the pandemic. In addition to private conversations, I have – as everyone does these days – reviewed the digital footprints of my peers, including their social media activity and online connections.
I discovered that my essay was not about the past, after all. The same people are doing the same things. And a new generation – from whom I expected better – have adopted old ways.
Among other things, I heard from two separate and reliable sources that the casting couch system still exists. Men talk about it bluntly while women use euphemisms, which reminds me of Joan Didion’s line in The White Album: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
On Instagram stories, I shared a conversation with a man outside the artworld. I had asked him if exchanging sex for career opportunities could ever be a good strategy, explaining that I have always refused and was struggling to understand. Maybe we all have different morals, maybe I was missing something. His response was blunt. He said it could barely be considered a strategy; it spoke to a woman's lack of confidence in herself and her work; and made her vulnerable to blackmail in the future.
His words were not well received. My Instagram account – the primary social media platform to connect with others in the arts – was reported so many times it was restricted. Direct messages from women included claims that exchanging sex for career opportunities was empowering as long it was the woman's choice. But they were overwhelmed in number by disclosures of sexual harassment and assault.
The situation is further complicated because many women participate willingly. I was told that for some it’s the cost of opportunities otherwise unavailable.
Recently, a woman artist told me her academic advisor, a respected and accomplished woman in the arts, told her that to be successful she'd need to find a gallerist or curator to have an intimate relationship with.
Imagine this conversation in another industry, within the last decade. Imagine that a woman earned – and paid for – tertiary qualifications, proved her skills and commitment then was told, "So the next step in your career is to find a man in a position of power and have regular sex with him, preferably with emotional involvement to maximise your opportunities."
Of course, most women in the arts have achieved accomplishments on the merit of their work alone, despite sexism. Yet in the arts sexism is still normalised, even though it is an attitude twenty years behind the rest of out society. Sadly, a number of women I spoke with who had devoted years to developing their accomplishments in the arts left for other industries that were less sexist.
It was discomfiting to discover, this year, that many in the arts still do not comprehend – or are, perhaps, in denial – that artificially inflating value is a financial crime; and harassment and assault of women are sex crimes.
As I wrote in my essay, The future of art fraud, “In the past, information travelled slowly. It was guarded. Online, it flows organically in ways no one can accurately predict. It cannot be gatekept, hidden, obstructed or controlled. Lies come undone when information from multiple sources is compared. The future of art fraud is the same as the future of everything else: truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner.”
Several women in the arts have offered to tell me their stories in detail. I declined, which they graciously understood.
I have already contributed to this cause: alone, long before everyone else, and at significant personal cost. It is now up to others to either change what is accepted within the system or create alternative paths for themselves. While the process is inevitably painful, it is safer in a group and at a time of broader cultural change. As Andy Warhol stated, “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
I intend to continue reconnecting with the artworld, albeit carefully.
However, I will take a break from writing here. To write online requires ‘reading the room’. Which requires reading the news as well as an overview of grassroots conversations including those on social media. I have found it depressing and don't want to see either, for a while.
I want to live fully in the world I inhabit now. A world I fought hard to create.
These days my life is good. Soon I will complete my current major portrait commission, which I’ll share here. A few weeks later I’ll begin my third.
My relationships with women and men, both personal and professional, are mutually respectful. There’s enough trust that they can also, at times, be fun. It is a great joy of life to not be a recluse to protect myself; to share dinner at a restaurant or dance at a party with people with whom I work, confident it’s companionable socialising, not a sinister set-up. I want to enjoy living like this without constant reminders of troubles which are, for me, in the past.
Regardless of problems within the artworld, art people are still my people. I won’t be there as changes are either made internally or forced upon the arts by a rapidly changing world. But I’ll be waiting on the other side.