Katy Deepwell
What is, in the context of contemporary art, your vision of a future / yet unknown art?
What is, in the context of contemporary art, your vision of a future / yet unknown art?
Well my first idea for the future was simply to say "the future is female!". But before you stop reading because you think this is "predictable", or "just what you'd expect a feminist to say", let me explain that this is a far from simple proposition and one with both negative and positive implications, depending on how quite different scenarios play out over the course of the twenty-first century. The late twentieth century has been marked by two trends: first, a steady and substantial growth in the numbers of women artists as a proportion of contemporary artists - especially when compared with the first half of the twentieth century - and secondly, by a characterisation of a global consumer capitalism marked by the "feminisation" of labour. With regard to the first idea, the growth in the number of women artists has been assessed and measured by several European, American, Canadian and Australian studies in the last twenty years, and taken together a general shared assessment has emerged in which the number of women artists has risen from around 10-25% to a current position of 38% - 48% of artists living and working today. America, Canada and Australia and some European states have actively sought to introduce changes into the system either as the result of government-driven initiatives at the level of state funding or because of feminist pressure at a curatorial level or by the founding of women's art organisations to increase the visibility of women artists and to promote their work. In contemporary art biennials, whether curated by men or women, the number of women artists included still varies, but generally the levels have risen from 5 - 10% pre-1960 to 20% - 40% today. Amongst curators, while many more men than women still hold posts as museum directors (or international biennial curators) across the developed world, such numbers are, interestingly, generally reversed in the developing world, while, in junior positions everywhere, women dominate the sector numerically. Although it is a dearly held belief of many liberal feminists that the position of women artists will just continue to improve over time, perhaps the very fact that I am highlighting this reality will propel the cultural industry into a typical backlash against this situation - a most conservative reaction against what is an unstoppable social tide. This might be triggered because of a generally held belief in the art world that "equality" and "quality" do not go together, and that the selective processes of the art world which are supposed to secure "quality" cannot be held to ransom by any form of enlightened question of "equal access" or what are considered "politically correct" quota systems. The only determinant instead should be art critic's characterisations of "emergent trends", subject to the vagaries of fashion, commercial viability and the processes of ruthless selection into "major" and "minor" players. This is where attention to the general processes of the labour market in a globalised economy, with both male- and female-dominated professions and the flow of global capital, provides a very interesting part of the equation, and why, if "the future is female", it will have consequences for the status of art itself in a number of interesting ways. Historically, all male-dominated professions (since the late nineteenth century) have sought to protect themselves from the entry of women for fear that their entry will "downgrade" their professional status and devalue the profession as a whole. This fear has led to the creation of many legally enforced barriers to women's entry into the professions and these underpin the rationale for continuing inequalities in pay and access to top jobs - amongst doctors and University professors. Male artists who formed avantgarde groups in the course of the twentieth century also behaved in this neurotic and defensive way, especially with regard to women artists who were wives, colleagues or "muses". Only when the profession as a whole is expanding is the threat posed by women diminished. Female-dominated professions - like nursing or child care – have since their inception always been regarded as having a secondary status in their field - and it is significant that it is only in economic depressions that they become increasingly attractive to men as a source of income. The art world has only seen one female-dominated art movement, the feminist art movement, and for a long time, precisely on the grounds of "quality", tried to marginalise, silence and devalue its activities, especially its claim to represent a new perspective - a valued and critical female perspective - and a new social and political relationship between the subjects of art and the experiences of women in the world. It failed because feminism built a new audience for art! While the romantic view of "Art" and "artist" has lovingly held on to the idea that art is not a profession but a vocation, entry to the status of "contemporary artist" has become increasingly uniform across the international art world and marked by clear processes of professionalisation: training in higher education; recognised points of access in a student and young artist's exhibitions and by the care-taking activities of commercial galleries with regard to "marketing", business and presentation strategies in the CV, the artist's catalogue and portfolio. If the art world – in the sense of a cultural industry – continues to regard itself as an inflexible male-dominated profession, then the inevitable consequence will be strict limitations - a "quality" rationale for a negative quota system on the numbers of women "allowed" entry - coupled with a necessary disavowal of feminism as a marker of a woman artist's entry into the profession. The fear of this cultural industry becoming a female-dominated profession would be that the status of "Art" in society will itself drop away and that contemporary art will become a (still more) marginalised activity in the world of politics and commerce. This, for me, is the most negative scenario, and probably describes the views of those who still support a very sexist and patriarchal version of the status quo. The marginalisation of "Art" relative to the other cultural and entertainment industries, however, has other economic and social pressures upon it other than the entry of more women into what is still an expanding sector. However, there is another scenario. The "feminisation" of labour in global capitalism has been characterised in other ways: firstly, for employees in trans-national companies, by the downgrading of "work" itself into increasingly routine, unskilled and menial tasks with commensurately low wages, insecure job conditions due to shifts in the global economy and by an accompanying diminution of social benefits provided by the state. Amongst professionals, long-term insecurity in the job market, lack of permanent contracts and an increasingly freelance "flexible" activity has supposedly given birth to a new generation of highly mobile, well-educated, technologically-savvy, well-equipped professionals who work across continents and across markets. Perhaps this describes more precisely the contemporary artist and their curators - and this description applies to both men and women in the contemporary art world globally and accounts for the major shift towards art from other cultures and continents. In this role, women are able to compete on equal terms with men, becoming personalities in the media, marketed and commodified, like everybody else, but there remains the danger the old sexist model will still hold. The question remains who controls the markets and whether a long-term value in art produced by large numbers of women artists is sustained. Women's work has often been seen as just a mirror to contemporary trends and rarely is it lionised as having "asting" rather than a cyclical novelty value. Given the legacy of feminist art, my own concern is whether this market is really interested in works of art which actually have a critical perspective and expose the contradictions of social, political and economic life today. Both of these scenarios tend to underestimate the important role that the state still plays in the investment and creation of ´"contemporary" artists, through government provision of Universities, systems of grants, bursaries and tax benefits, and the purchase of work for government and government-owned museum collections. The role of the state in providing a liberal and enlightened education as well as a basic art education means that the processes of democratisation and a strongly anti-sexist, anti-racist bias will continue to increase in the art world as a cultural industry because it continues to have a close, even symbiotic, relationship to the state. The idea that "art is for everyone" and "everyone can be an artist" sits uncomfortably with the reality of the highly professionalised contemporary artist with increasing specialisations or USP's (unique selling points). Concerning who controls art as a cultural industry, there remains the very complex equation between the vested interests of the modern democratic state and those of the private companies who increasingly sponsor the visual arts and may do so precisely because they wish their own "male" corporate interests to be reflected in the "quality" art they subsidise. So, my vision remains that "the future is female" but the implications of this for the future of art remain unknown as we have still to see how these larger forces will work their way through to determining the kind of art that is made and who its ultimate supporters will be politically and economically. Katy Deepwell London |
