Women in Art

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kobaltkween's avatar
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I just read through the new dA article "Authentic Citizenship: Part 2," and I was really kind of dismayed.  I mean, cool artists and advice and all, but.... You know, I'm a decent comic buff, a sci fi and fantasy fan since I could read my father's books, and fell in love with art at least half from the illustrations on the covers of said books (thank you Michael Whelan!).  But I'm still analytical and honest to a fault, and I have to say that my love of comic and fantastic art requires a huge tolerance for lots of objectifying images of women.  More even than average, and most figurative art is about the female form.  Still, I follow a lot of incredibly talented artists, in illustration as well as other fields, and many of them are women.  So I thought, maybe the field is opening up.  But in that article, which mentions 23 separate professionals, not including the 2 spotlighted, the only woman mentioned was a model, not an artist.  With a "but" between acknowledging her looks and her talent.   Considering we're more than half the population of the world and a pretty good percentage of artists on this site, I get the impression that this advice is not for those of us who aren't guys.  Not because the advice isn't generally useful, but because when absolutely no women artists come to mind when two professionals talk about the industry and list people at length, there's obviously a huge barrier for women that isn't being discussed at all.  Getting over it obviously involves something they didn't talk about, because I follow quite a few women artists, both professional and otherwise, who follow all those rules on top of having skills that are off the charts.  I can't believe that neither artist has come across one outstanding female artist that follows their advice, yet neither artist felt any woman artist was worth mentioning, while having the space to spotlight a model.  Being a good model takes a huge amount of talent, and talented models are necessary for a lot of great visual art, but in an article focused on illustrators and animators whose work is more stylized than realistic, modeling is hugely out of place.  It's like an article about boxing listing notable boxers in the field, not mentioning Lucia Rjiker, and talking about a how a random ring card girl really handles her career well.  

So what does it take to get noticed, and get established, _beyond_ just doing the same things guys do?  What advice do we need in addition to what those two guys wrote?  Especially those of us in fields that are used to catering to males, but are opening up to girls and women as customers (gaming, animation, comics, etc.)?  Those fields need our ability to create content that appeals to both genders (or,to be more blunt, doesn't alienate either gender).  How do we make ourselves visible to people who don't even register our existence right now?  

Not that I'm expecting answers here, but the absence of women in that article struck me so strongly, I just had to express some of that reaction.
© 2012 - 2024 kobaltkween
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AlexanderLee1's avatar
Let me just add that not all men love art that objectifies women. I am disgusted by anything that makes the human body look undeserving of respect.