Art Misogyny against female sculptors with a focus on Carmen Herrera
Men still dominate the art field because there is still sexism accepted in our country. What is sad is that even though America glorifies itself as a free nation that accepts all, there are still questionable acts not replicating what they preach. Other countries in our world are way worse when it comes to misogyny. At the same time, us American women have to continue to fight for the liberation in which we stand for and not accept what the white misogynists call “normal”. The most problematic issue pertaining to this is that our country is rooted in white male misogyny, birthed from slave owning white men.
People fail to realize that indirect sexism is incredibly problematic. Men making jokes about women on their period, making sandwiches, etc, and people laughing at it is promoting it to be ok to make those jokes and continue on. One can ask why we never have had a woman for president, but there are a billion reasons why.
Misogynistic men, I have to deal with all of the time personally, and other female artists have to deal with them too. Women have been depicted as frail and delicate over the past millennia. Female sculptors had to prove themselves in the field, especially Camille Claudel. Men make more money, and there are more white men at the top 2% calling the worlds decisions, then women in whole. If I was a gallery owner trying to sell to a rich white male audience, perhaps I would be promoting white male art, and only giving white males the opportunities that everyone else has to fight for. Also men could easily attend art schools if they had money, but for women, it was much harder to attend school up until the 20th century.
One artist that had a hard time breaking the art scene is Carmen Herrara. She is a contemporary Cuban born artist, and she is a sculptor and a painter. She sold her first painting at 89 even though she was trying to participate in the New York art scene since the 1950s. I would say her art is very minimalist but her sculptures have massive shapes with sharp edges. She is open about talking about how she could not make it into galleries as a woman and was not given the same opportunities as men because of underlying sexism in art culture. Now, some of her sculptures are actually in the City Town hall park funded by the Public Art Fund. This opportunity happened for her at 104 years of age! This series is called “Estructuras Monumentales” and I have actually seen them before. It is fun to go and watch how people interact with the sculptures in the park.
I would say that it is easier for women to break through the glass ceiling but there are still glass shards that cut you along the way. I say this because, sometimes you have to go through painful measures to prove yourself and swallow your pride, especially dealing with horrible men.
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