Feature Reviews
Women, Art and Gender
sara m dodd
unnecessary, though. Let me concentrate on a fresh
The Obstacle Race
reading of the text, which is irresistible to quote from.
germaine greer
For a start, Greer's ironic tone is still incisive, and
can make one laugh out loud. `The advantages of
Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2001 Ł14.95
marrying a pupil are obvious, even when she is not an
373 pp. 32 col/326 mono illus
isbn 1-86064-677-8
heiress'; `It does not require either a vivid imagina-
US dist St Martin's Press
tion, or an excessively soured one, to picture the
master encouraging slight emotional attachments . . .
Manifestations of Venus: Art and
and using his only too willing worshippers as
Sexuality
drudges' (of Sickert); `Like Greuze's, Prud'hon's life
was complicated by the existence of a wife . . .'.
caroline ascott and katie scott (eds)
She not only hilariously deflates male motivations;
Manchester University Press 2000 Ł48.50 $74.95 (h) Ł17.99
women can be the target of her irrepressible wit, too: `. . .
$32.00 (p)
the tradition is that Suor Plautilla, in search of a model
233 pp. 74 mono illus
for the figure of Christ, availed herself of the corpse of a
isbn 0-7190-5521-0 (h) 0-7190-5522-9 (p)
defunct sister . . . the figure of Christ is a pewter dummy
Gendering Landscape Art with plucked eyebrows . . .'; `Her [Labille-Guiard's] long
association with Francois-Andre Vincent was certainly a
steven adams and anna gruetzner
love affair, but the term was more varied in its
robins
application before the age of suburbia'; Elisabetta
Sirani's `uneven work' was `dutifully praised by chivalry
Manchester University Press 2000 Ł45.00 (h) Ł16.99 (p)
38 mono illus
and then as dutifully by feminism . . .'.
isbn 0-7190-5627-6 (h) 0-7190-5628-4 (p)
US Rutgers University Press
picked up Germaine Greer's classic with some
trepidation, having found it enormously stimulat-
Iing 20 years ago, but with a fear that, as women's
art history had moved so fast since then, the `obstacles'
would seem hopelessly outdated, or that a revision
would either be inadequate or lose the freshness and
verve of the original. I need not have worried. The wit
and fluency with which Greer aroused us in the late
1970s, and which is always in evidence, whether she is
playing the role of TV critic or opening a conference on
gender and history with a deftly delivered keynote
address, are still there. Her unmistakable tone is
consistently in evidence, and remains invigorating.
The decision not to update or rewrite is justifiable in
the light of the status that a classic such as this has
acquired. It can be read with the same enjoyment if not
exactly the same wonder as when first encountered,
and also as a historical text that suggested avenues of
research and mapped out areas of investigation which
have since been followed (cf. her lyrical account of
Angelica Kauffman, who has been thoroughly ex-
hibited and explored, since Greer's impassioned
pleas, by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, for one). Recent
projects such as the comprehensive Dictionary of Women
Artists (ed. Delia Gaze, 1997) have taken up many of the
gauntlets thrown down by Greer, though the myster-
ious figures she floats intriguingly before the reader,
such as the shadowy Margarette van Eyck, remain just
that ą shadowy. To rehearse the reasons why The
Obstacle Race was a pioneering work would be
volume 9 issue 1 january 2002 � bpl/aah The Art Book 9
Feature Reviews
Greer's judgements are not skewed by the desire to the position of women and how the role of the woman
rescue forgotten women artists and their art at all costs: artist was affected by her cultural context, finding cross-
connections and illuminating both past and present
In painting as she did, Henrietta Rae was unconsciously
feminist study. Her conclusions still hold, of course.
parodying her teacher Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the
Victorians' favourite purveyor of sex objects . . . She was too
It is for feminist critics to puzzle their brains about whether
lady-like to grasp the real nature of Alma-Tadema's appeal;
there is a female imagery or not, to examine in depth the
at her hands the marvellous orchestration of surfaces and
relations between male and female artists, to decide
tactile values became a romantic veiling over a vacuous idyll
whether the characteristics of masculine art are
of smirking damsels and hothouse flowers . . .'.
characteristics of all good art and the like . . .
However, there is scorn for the `twaddlers' who ą and we are still doing so.
judged women's art inferior without considering its A footnote: the only disappointment is that the
worth with Greer's own clarity and fairness (she reprint has resulted in inferior reproduction of many
quotes a contemporary critic on Laura Alma-Tadema's of the illustrations, though it is useful that the page
`similarity of technique' to that of her husband being numbers coincide with the original hardback edition.
seen as `one of the happy chances of her life' or Manchester University Press has developed a
Margaret Dicksee's leaving behind `evidence of a most comprehensive catalogue in both feminist art history
lovable nature'). Her biting ire is kept for the and gender studies. Arscott and Scott's Manifestations
assumptions about women's capabilities within the of Venus: Art and Sexuality and Adams and Gruetzner
discourses of gender roles throughout the centuries Robins' Gendering Landscape Art are finely produced
(`Male self-interest, spelled out in humanist discus- books in the `Barber Institute's Critical Perspectives in
sions of marriage and education, prompted the con- Art History' series, which do not disappoint.
tinuing subjection of women as wives and mothers. Art and Sexuality seems to have grown out of the RAE-
The realities of most women's lives were as brutal as driven collaborations in university departments of
they ever had been . . .'). Here Greer, the author of the recent years, when research assessors seem to have
equally ground-breaking The Female Eunuch (1971), is decreed that kudos would be gained by a demonstration
staking her claim to the realm of women in art as well of consistency in departmental `research narratives',
as in society. In the world of art (here, Victorian): but it is none the worse for that. The separate
specialisms of the contributors coincide fortuitously
The fact that so many gifted women strangled themselves
but convincingly to create a coherent book, if only
in arch-conservatism is not some sort of secondary
thanks to the heroic work of the editors, whose lucid,
characteristic working its way out, as if women are of
necessity born with corsets on the mind. It comes out of the
synthesising introduction whets the appetite for what is
very insecurity that these women felt upon entering into
to follow in all its variety ą Venus in all her guises.
competition with men who seemed to have made all the
Thus conjunctions, oppositions and categorisa-
running so far . . .
tions recur throughout the book, whether the balance
Of course, male power and prejudice are shown to is between high and low, fragment and whole, god-
be responsible for many of the obstacles, including dess and coquette. Venus as sign, as allegory, as
the trepidation and timidity experienced by many biblical icon or mythological symbol, as Mary, Eve,
would-be women artists, but Greer is not niggardly in Susannah, Andromeda or Pygmalion's statue ą all
her praise for supportive men: Antonio Zucchi was not manifestations are explored in various ways in the
only a `distinguished painter' but a `remarkable separate essays, making fruitful cross-fertilisations.
husband' (to Angelica Kauffman). The claim that The subversion of gender difference, Venus as Cupid
men are the masters and women are the followers has, (and vice versa), is an interesting off-shoot of such
she admits, often been borne out by what feminist art discussions (though not always convincing).
historians have discovered; however, when denied by Patricia Rubin links Botticelli's Venus in the Venus
male artists who know the truth of their particular and Mars panel very convincingly to notions of licit and
cooperative relationship with a female colleague it has illicit desire, to the familiar neo-Platonic manifesta-
often been disbelieved. The concept of `greatness' as tions of the sacred and profane, to Mary and Eve, and
`heroic maleness' in terms of scale as well as assump- argues for the instability of finite definitions. Joanna
tion, she argues, has dominated definitions of the Woodall, however, takes as her starting point Joachim
artist, and her careful researches unearth a mass of Wtewael's Perseus and Andromeda (1611), placing it in its
lesser known women, working in less regarded genres context with references to Ovid, van Mander's Schilder-
or media, who have been unjustly ignored, many of boeck, the significance of shells, St George, a political
whom have since been taken up by later art historians. reading in relation to the seventeenth-century
Greer's painstaking consultations of archives and Netherlands, Danae, `the material fertility of nature'
her immense erudition are still impressive in someone and `the material site of human culture', realism,
who would not necessarily have called herself an art idealism, Medusa and, of course, Venus. She explores
historian (digressions on fresco or watercolour, on the implications of the Derridean `frame', balancing
Bolognese society in the sixteenth century or convent the ideas of separation, connection, the divine and
life in the twelfth century, for example). She moves erotic, continuity and difference, the domestic sphere
effortlessly between the centuries to make points about of display and the sacred space of the altar. She goes
10 The Art Book volume 9 issue 1 january 2002 � bpl/aah
Feature Reviews
on to discuss Marian iconography and the contem-
porary definition of Pictura, St Sebastian, imitations
of Christ's sacrifice, and the link between human
virtue and divine power as expressed in Andromeda's
simultaneous role of `victim and dominatrix'. Icono-
clasm and the counter-revolutionary context are
crucial to this stage of her argument, and she takes
us through a series of connections very persuasively.
The emphasis of Katie Scott's discussion of
Bouchardon's L'Amour is on Cupid, but as a mani-
festation of Venus, as she puts it `a mask for her and an
extension of her: an active phallic Venus'. How
convincing her argument is depends on the interests
of the reader, and on the references she draws upon,
Sean Keeting,The
but the links with other writers in the book ą on the
Aran Fisherman with
Pygmalion myth, the opposition between the divine
his Wife. Collection,
and erotic, ideal and real, etc. ą coincide with other Hugh Lane Municipal
Gallery of Modern Art,
definitions and discussions of the attributes of Venus.
Dublin. Illustration
Like other contributors, she sets the work in its cul-
taken from Gendering
Landscape Art, Edited
tural context, stylistically in the opposition between
by Steven Adams and
rococo and `the revival of a chaste and masculine
Anna Gruetzner
Robins. Manchester
classicism', and politically in relation to contemporary
University Press.
attitudes to Louis XV, love, peace and the feminine.
Jennifer Shaw's essay on the Salon of 1863, adapted `Deco Venus' is the title of Tag Gronberg's essay,
from an MA thesis and published in 1991, is perhaps the so the context is self-explanatory. She takes as a case
least new in terms of gender studies, but is nonetheless study the work of Sonia Delaunay (one of the women
convincingly argued. Avoiding the familiar contrasts Greer would see as over-shadowed by a male pres-
between Cabanel's Venus and Manet's Olympia, she ence) reconciling the timeless with the fashionable,
juxtaposes instead Baudry's The Pearl and the Wave with fine art and craft. Commodification is an obvious
the Cabanel, moving on to a discussion of Amaury- theme here, with the Eiffel Tower looming in the
Duval's representation of Venus. This means that well- background of her analysis, and she particularises the
trodden ground such as the `unregulated female body', imagery with discussions of the role of collage or the
associations with the sea and its connotations, significance of fur in Delaunay's work. Apart from the
eroticism, fecundity, the ideal, female sexuality and references to Robert Delaunay's inclusion of nudes in
masculine control are given a direction and impetus his Parisian scenes, however, the link with the Venus
that makes for interesting reading, despite the theme of the book is more tenuous ą perhaps
familiarity of the themes. Contemporary critical inevitable in discussions of twentieth-century art.
reaction to the Salon and the writings of Michelet and Finally, Sarah Wilson's account of the work of Michel
Blanc set the cultural scene appropriately. Journiac (`Monsieur Venus') provides an apt and
The theme of Venus as dominatrix again arises in fascinating conclusion, both chronologically and in
Caroline Arscott's discussion of another nineteenth- terms of gender ambiguity or difference. Journiac's
century work and its contextual significance. Burne- explorations of the implications of myth, kitsch and
Jones's Pygmalion series, contemporary and later performance, and his realisation of the bisexual Venus,
critical reaction, and the Tinted Venus of John Gibson follow such constructions as the Madonna with an erect
as a counter to the painting are the stimuli for discus- penis, playing on the similarity in French between vierge
sion. Contraries are again balanced against each other, (virgin) and verge (rod or penis). This harks back to the
such as the themes of masochism and domination, life discarded sword in Botticelli's Mars and Venus or the bent
and death and the ambivalences of gender in the works bow in Bouchardon's L'Amour, the significance of which
under investigation. have been pointed out by earlier contributors. The organ-
Shulamith Behr takes the subject of `gender and ising structures of the whole book prevail here too, with a
painterly abstraction in early German modernism' as her balance between the masculine and the feminine, the
context for a consideration of the Venus myth, focusing erotic and ideal, life and death, life and art, throughout.
naturally on the study of the nude, naturism, and Like Manifestations of Venus, the collection of essays
Nietszchean vitalism as a context but, instead of the Gendering Landscape Art deals with issues of gender and
obvious explorations of the Brucke and Blaue Reiter groups cultural construction from a variety of specialist
�
in general, she concentrates on Werefkin, Kandinsky, viewpoints. The editors wisely explain their focus in
Jawlensky and discourses on the body, whether `veiled', the excellent introduction, defining their use of gen-
abstracted or objectified. It is a fascinating study, but der, surveying recent writings on landscape as ideo-
more difficult to reconcile with the focus explicitly on logical construct, and explaining how each subject fits
Venus suggested by the book's title. into the scheme. Together with the editorial policy of
volume 9 issue 1 january 2002 � bpl/aah The Art Book 11
Feature Reviews
asking each author to provide a clear introduction and construction of national identity is investigated.
summary to their essay, this means that clarity and Pat Simpson's `Soviet superwoman in the land-
coherence is achieved in the book. scape of liberty: Alexandr Deineka's Razdol'e, 1944' is
The tendency in the past to treat gender as synony- perhaps the least clearly related to landscape as a
mous with feminist discourse is skilfully avoided here. subject, but she argues convincingly for the metaphor
There is a balance of investigation into the masculine of nature and the open air in conjunction with sporting
and the feminine, from Monet to the Garbage Girls, activities for women. The associations with freedom
though of necessity the chronological scope is limited and space connoted by the Russian title are seen as
to the acceptance of landscape as a canonical genre. particularly significant after 1942, as German troops
The trope of the masculine landscape artist `as retreated from Soviet soil. Mukhina's theories of the
celibate but virile child' is investigated by Steven Adams monumental and physiognomic stereotyping are
in `Signs of recovery: landscape painting and argued to be compatible with the theory of landscape
masculinity in nineteenth-century France', and analysis ą or the `Motherland' ą implicit in this work too. The
of associations with nationhood and cultural identity patriotic demands of Socialist Realism after 1934 and
proves enlightening. Anthea Callen's emphasis is on the construction of the `New Soviet Person' are
technique, however, and as always she keeps a close eye balanced against continuing patriarchal discourses
on painterly strategies (`Technique and gender: land- such as the demands of the masculine `gaze'.
scape, ideology and the art of Monet in the 1890s'). How Shifting the focus back to the masculine as subject,
the dangers of femininity were averted in later in `Landscape, masculinity and interior space between
Impressionist painting, through gendered associations the wars' David Peters Corbett takes the issues sur-
with colour, light and shade, viewpoint and sight itself, rounding Vorticism, and in particular Wyndham
apart from the obvious brushwork, is carefully explored. Lewis, in relation to both landscape and war. The
Using the Grainstacks and Poplars series, Callen argues debates about modernity and masculinity, and the
persuasively for a deliberate counter to the fear of the retreat from public to private sphere are brought into
feminine on the one hand and urban disorder on the the discussion. Providing a different emphasis,
other, citing the contemporary emphasis on Monet's `Cezanne's maternal landscape and its gender' is a
`premeditation' and `scientific' investigation. fascinating study by Paul Smith of the psychological
Discourses on national identity are also discussed background to such obsessive subjects as the Mont
in Anne Helmreich's essay on `The marketing of Sainte-Victoire. Using Freud and Klein, Smith makes a
Helen Allingham: the English cottage and national firm case for infantile experience as constructing
identity'. Here, tropes of rural life in general (in the attitudes and associations in Cezanne's subject matter.
tradition of Gainsborough or Constable) are traced in Denise Blake Oleksijczuk's `Gender in perspective:
relation to the political rhetoric of the time, and the the king and queen's visit to the Panorama in 1793' is
construction of rural England as a simulacrum is about George III and Queen's Charlotte's respectively
interestingly traced. Water-colour and its implica- gendered reactions to the Panorama and, as such
tions are discussed in her analysis of gender and seems to fit less happily into the theme of landscape
technique. With the idea of the female sphere and itself though interestingly discussed in terms of
Ruskin's `Of Queen's Gardens', we are on well- contemporary gender assumptions.
trodden ground, of course. Bringing the discussion into the later twentieth
Jane Beckett's `In the bleaching fields: gender, century, Caroline A Jones investigates the work of
landscape and modernity in The Netherlands 1880ą Smithson (`Robert Smithson's technological sublime:
1920' also investigates constructions of the rural at a alterities and the ``female earth'' ') and Anna Gruetzner
time of disruption through industrialisation, and also Robins takes on Long (`Ain't Going Nowhere': Richard
links them with the national ideal, in this case, Long: global explorer') as more recent exponents or
`Dutchness' and the `Dutch maid'. From the Hague explorers of the landscape genre. Male metaphors of
School to the work of Mondrian and van Doesburg, the sublime and discourses of colonialism (Araeen's
she analyses the `Dutchness' asserted though `visual critiques of Long are cited) are considered, and the way
invocations of the land', and adds an intriguing nature is worked on as well as worked in or invaded is
discussion of Mondrian's `bleaching' pictures, investigated. Finally, the role of detritus or trash, as
`cleaning up' the realities of nature. She shows that collected and constructed by the `Garbage girls', is
in the period she discusses, as W J T Mitchell puts it, wittily described and perceptively analysed in relation
`the history of landscape is the history of landscape to gender in Jo Anna Isaak's `Trash: public art by the
painting' ą an assertion relevant to much of this book. Garbage Girls'. The main themes of the book as
Women and national identity again create a focus outlined in the introduction are fittingly concluded.
for Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch's `Landscape, space Gender in art has often been interpreted as a thin
and gender: their role in the construction of female guise for what is actually women's art, but these three
identity in newly independent Ireland'. Associations books pull no punches and openly follow through the
with the land as feminine, the Gael as masculine, and promise of their titles.
shrines to the Madonna as political are discussed. As
with other writers, the simulacrum of such a Sara M Dodd, Arts Faculty Co-ordinator, Open University
12 The Art Book volume 9 issue 1 january 2002 � bpl/aah