anatanotanpopo

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#paper #painting #cutout #strokes #collage

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ヨシへ

collage /mixed media

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“The underlying form in my work has been the system of the universe.” Alexander Calder, born today in 1898. 

[Installation view of Alexander Calder’s Gibraltar. 1936. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

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Diptych

collage /mixed media

14,7 x 20 cm

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「夢で見た庭」

collage /mixed media

42 x 29,7 cm

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untitled

collage /mixed media

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collage /mixed media

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collage /mixed media

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INDEPENDENT WOMEN

‘World’s most popular artist’: Japan’s Yayoi Kusama. Source

Marina Abramović, Looking at the Mountains, 2010, colour pigment print, 160 x 200 cm, Lisson Gallery, London. Source

The relationship between women and the artistic canon is not exactly a new topic to consider, as anyone who has ever been to a national museum or studied art history will know. But this recent article, featured on The Guardian online, was filled with some really interesting statistics concerning the global popularity of single-artist exhibitions in 2014. Last year, the work of Japan’s Yayoi Kusama attracted over 2 million people, granting her the prestigious title of ‘world’s most popular artist’ - I was gutted to have missed her ‘Bronze Pumpkins’ exhibition at Victoria Miro in the autumn. Her overwhelming popularity surprised me somewhat, but then seeing as this is a global study, not a western-centric one, perhaps it is not so shocking to see her name at the top of the list. Her traveling retrospective ‘Infinite Obsessions’, which showed across South and Central America, was a particularly impressive success story.

However, reading this article, it is disappointing to see that American museums and galleries still prioritise male artists, despite evidence revealing that audiences aren’t as preoccupied with big canonical names as institutions might think. Yes, an exhibition of Berthe Morisot is not going to pull in the crowds that an Edouard Manet show would. The traditional artistic canon, pre-mid-20th century, is male-dominated, meaning that there aren’t as many well-known female painters and sculptors to choose from in the first place. But in the case of contemporary artists, that is hardly a valid argument: think of Kusama, Marina Abramovic, Paula Rego, Tracey Emin, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Barbara Kruger, Mona Hatoum, etc. It’s shocking to consider how ‘male artists represented by the world’s major art dealers were over seven times more likely to be given a solo exhibition than female artists signed to the same top gallerists’ when there is statistical proof that audiences are really not fussed about the artist-in-question’s gender.

And this all got me thinking about the museums and galleries I regularly visit and where they seem to stand on the issue. I thought of the Tate Modern and how, in 2015, three of their six single-artist exhibitions or displays are based on women - Marlene Dumas, Sonia Delaunay and Agnes Martin. The pretty well-balanced mix of male and female artists scheduled for exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery, Grimaldi Gavin, Victoria Miro and the ICA also came straight to mind. As a dramatic comparison, the Royal Academy’s 2015 programme looks something like this: Giovanni Battista Moroni, Allen Jones, Charles Stewart, Peter Paul Rubens, Stanley Anderson, Richard Diebenkorn, Joseph Cornell, Ai Weiwei and Jean-Etienne Liotard. The women? Eileen Cooper. I’m not saying all galleries should have a strict 50/50 division, but when the unnecessary masculine dominance is that obvious - 90%! - there’s definitely a problem. A historically sexist institution - out of its initial 34 members in 1768, just two were women - it is incredibly disappointing to still see such a lack of female artists exhibiting at the Academy, nearly 250 years after its establishment.

I will be very interested to see how Kusama’s popularity and the statistics uncovered in the Art Newspaper’s study affects the museum schedules for next year; if at all. In London, upcoming female-artist shows include Barbara Hepworth at Tate Britain, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Serpentine Gallery and Julia Margaret Cameron at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

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「お誕生日おめでとう〜」 collage /mixed media

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「窓*･空と星」

collage /mixed media

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Column Building

© Miles Gertler 2015

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March To Elsewhere  2014 Calvin BRett

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We are not alone  'Cause when you cut down to the bone  We’re really not so different after all  After all we’re not alone 

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collage /mixed media

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Blossom (by ルーク.チャン.チャン)