Article On Women, Art and Gender

An interesting article by Jeannie Shubitz, Woman, Art and Gender: A History:

"An old New Yorker cartoon depicts a group of prehistoric women painting images on the wall of a cave. One of the women suddenly pauses in her work and asks: “Does it strike anyone as weird that none of the great painters have ever been men?” (Heller, 1987) This, of course is a parody of the long-held assumption that all prehistoric art was created by men. Why should we assume this, when we don’t even know why this art was created, much less by whom? It is because for many centuries, we have been taught that all great art was the product of men, and that art created by women was merely an attempt to copy the masters that came before."

Click the title above to read the rest. Good points about some faulty assumptions and the difficulty female artists face having artistic identity that is not gender linked.