Women artists
The absence of women from the canon of Western art has been a subject of inquiry and reconsideration since the early 1970s. Linda Nochlin's influential 1971 essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", examined the social and institutional barriers that blocked most women from entering artistic professions throughout history, prompted a new focus on women artists, their art and experiences, and contributed inspiration to the Feminist art movement. Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. The Western canon has historically valued men's work over women's and attached gendered stereotypes to certain media, such as textile or fiber arts, to be primarily associated with women.
Women artists have been challenged by a lack of access to artistic education, professional networks, and exhibition opportunities. Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians involved in the Feminist art movement have addressed the role of women especially in the Western art world, how world art is perceived, evaluated or appropriated according to gender.
Prehistoric era
There are no records of who the artists of the prehistoric eras were, but studies of many early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists indicate that women often were the principal artisans in Neolithic cultures, in which they created pottery, textiles, baskets, painted surfaces and jewellery. Collaboration on large projects was common if not typical. Extrapolation to the artwork and skills of the Paleolithic era suggests that these cultures followed similar patterns. Cave paintings of this era often have human hand prints, 75% of which are identifiable as women's.Ceramic art
There is a long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok culture in Africa over 3,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures. There is evidence that pottery was independently invented in several regions of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The Near East, and the Americas. It is unknown who the artisans were.Ancient historical era
Classical Europe and the Middle East
The earliest records of western cultures rarely mention specific individuals, although women are depicted in all of the art and some are shown laboring as artists. Ancient references by Homer, Cicero, and Virgil mention the prominent roles of women in textiles, poetry, music, and other cultural activities, without discussion of individual artists. Among the earliest European historical records concerning individual artists is that of Pliny the Elder, who wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt, Some modern critics posit that Alexander Mosaic might not have been the work of Philoxenus, but of Helena of Egypt. One of the few named women painters who might have worked in Ancient Greece, she was reputed to have produced a painting of the battle of Issus which hung in the Temple of Peace during the time of Vespasian. Other women include Timarete, Eirene, Kalypso, Aristarete, Iaia, and Olympias. While only some of their work survives, in Ancient Greek pottery there is a caputi hydria in the Torno Collection in Milan. It is attributed to the Leningrad painter from BCE and shows women working alongside men in a workshop where both painted vases.India
"For about three thousand years, the women – and only the women – of Mithila have been making devotional paintings of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that this art is the expression of the most genuine aspect of Indian civilization."African continent
The geometric Imigongo art originated from Rwanda in East Africa, and is associated with the centuries-old sacred status of the cow. It evolved from mixing cow dung with ash and clay and the use of natural dyes. The palette is limited to the bold colour of the earth. The art is traditionally associated with women artists, as is the elaborate art of basket weaving of the area, with its own regular friezes.Europe
Medieval period
Artists from the Medieval period include Claricia, Diemudus, Ende, Guda, Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen. In the early medieval period, women often worked alongside men. Manuscript illuminations, embroideries, and carved capitals from the period clearly demonstrate examples of women at work in these arts. Documents show that they also were brewers, butchers, wool merchants, and iron mongers. Artists of the time period, including women, were from a small subset of society whose status allowed them freedom from these more strenuous types of work. Women artists often were of two literate classes, either wealthy aristocratic women or nuns. Women in the former category often created embroideries and textiles; those in the later category often produced illuminations.There were a number of embroidery workshops in England at the time, particularly at Canterbury and Winchester; Opus Anglicanum or English embroidery was already famous across Europe – a 13th-century papal inventory counted over two hundred pieces. It is presumed that women were almost entirely responsible for this production.
The Bayeux Tapestry
One of the most famous embroideries of the medieval period is the Bayeux Tapestry, which was embroidered with wool on nine linen panels and is 230 feet long. Its c. seventy scenes narrate the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England. The Bayeux Tapestry may have been created in either a commercial workshop by a royal or an aristocratic lady and her retinue, or in a workshop in a nunnery. Sylvette Lemagnen, conservator of the tapestry, in her 2005 book La Tapisserie de Bayeux states:The High Middle Ages
In the 14th century, a royal workshop is documented, based at the Tower of London, and there may have been other earlier arrangements. Manuscript illumination affords us many of the named artists of the Medieval Period including Ende, a 10th-century Spanish nun; Guda, a 12th-century German nun; and Claricia, a 12th-century laywoman in a Bavarian scriptorium. These women, and many more unnamed illuminators, benefited from the nature of convents as the major loci of learning for women in the period and the most tenable option for intellectuals among them.In many parts of Europe, with the Gregorian Reforms of the 11th century and the rise in feudalism, women faced many strictures that they did not face in the early medieval period. With these societal changes, the status of the convent changed. In the British Isles, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the gradual decline of the convent as a seat of learning and a place where women could gain power. Convents were made subsidiary to male abbots, rather than being headed by an abbess, as they had been previously. In pagan Scandinavia the only historically confirmed female runemaster, Gunnborga, worked in the 11th century.
File:07angels-hildegard von bingen.jpg|thumb|Hildegard of Bingen Scivias I.6: The Choirs of Angels. From , fol. 38r.
In Germany, however, under the Ottonian dynasty, convents retained their position as institutions of learning. This might be partially because convents were often headed and populated by unmarried women from royal and aristocratic families. Therefore, the greatest late medieval period work by women originates in Germany, as exemplified by that of Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard of Bingen is a particularly fine example of a German medieval intellectual and artist. She wrote The Divine Works of a Simple Man, The Meritorious Life, sixty-five hymns, a miracle play, and a long treatise of nine books on the different natures of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, minerals, and metals. From an early age, she claimed to have visions. When the Papacy supported these claims by the headmistress, her position as an important intellectual was galvanized. The visions became part of one of her seminal works in 1142, Scivias '''', which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias, as exemplified in the first illustration, depict Hildegard experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen. They differ greatly from others created in Germany during the same period, as they are characterized by bright colours, emphasis on line, and simplified forms. While Hildegard likely did not pen the images, their idiosyncratic nature leads one to believe they were created under her close supervision.
The 12th century saw the rise of the city in Europe, along with the rise in trade, travel, and universities. These changes in society also engendered changes in the lives of women. Women were allowed to head their husbands' businesses if they were widowed. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is one such case. During this time, women also were allowed to be part of some artisan guilds. Guild records show that women were particularly active in the textile industries in Flanders and Northern France. Medieval manuscripts have many marginalia depicting women with spindles. In England, women were responsible for creating Opus Anglicanum, or rich embroideries for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothes and various types of hangings. Women also became more active in illumination. A number of women likely worked alongside their husbands or fathers, including the daughter of Maître Honoré and the daughter of Jean le Noir. By the 13th century most illuminated manuscripts were being produced by commercial workshops, and by the end of the Middle Ages, when production of manuscripts had become an important industry in certain centres, women seem to have represented a majority of the artists and scribes employed, especially in Paris. The movement to printing, and book illustration to the printmaking techniques of woodcut and engraving, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists.
Meanwhile, Jefimija a Serbian, noblewoman, widow and orthodox nun became known not only as a poet who wrote a lament for her dead son, Uglješa, but also as a skilled needlewoman and engraver. Her lament for her beloved son which immortalized the sorrow of all mothers mourning their deceased children, was carved on the back of the diptych, which Teodosije, Bishop of Serres, had presented as a gift to the infant Uglješa at his baptism. The piece of art, already valuable because of the gold, precious stones, and beautiful carving on its wooden panels, became priceless after Jefemija's lament was engraved on its back.
In 15th-century Venice the daughter of the glass artist, Angelo Barovièr, was known to have been the artist behind a particular glass design from Venetian Murano. She was Marietta Barovier, a Venetian glass artist. Of fourteen specialist glass painters documented between 1443 and 1516, she and Elena de Laudo were the only women.
Seemingly several centuries had to elapse before women were able to pursue the medium in Glass art.