One day in 2015, Katy Hessel visited an art fair in London that featured no women artists. Seven years later in 2022, ‘The Story of Art Without Men’ was born – a sprawling history of women artists who remained unseen for over 500 years. Before discussing this story of art with a man in her debut session at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the hungry art curator talked to Sharmila Ganesan Ram about Amrita Sher-Gil and other essential rabbit holes:What’s the story behind the title The Story of Art Without Men?The title is really meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I think the best way to get people’s attention is to use humour. When people say, ‘how can you possibly leave out men?’ I often bring up how EH Gombrich’s The Story of Art could just have easily been named ‘The Story of Art without Women’. The so-called art history bible featured no women in its original edition and only one in its present 16th edition – the phenomenal German expressionist Käthe Kollwitz, the first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts.The history of art is so often the history of patriarchy and if you’re not seeing art by a wide range of people, then you’re not seeing society as a whole.Your podcast has featured Amrita Sher-Gil. What do we not know about her?What’s incredible about Amrita Sher-Gil was how ground-breaking she was not only in terms of style but also her fearlessness to merge what she had known from her upbringing in Hungary, her education in Paris and the time she spent in India. Her work is brilliantly complex. When we think about her painting ‘Self Portrait as a Tahitian’ (a 1934 oil-on-canvas she painted at age 21), she’s really commenting on white male artists’ viewpoint of women and artists of colour, at the time, in such a poignant way. She paints the shadow of a man behind her figure to bring to light the oppression that women face from men. medium nocaption97178326A recent glowing review of your book also noted that it is “not fully decoupled from traditional Western gallery” and that the celebrated non-white artists featured – such as Zanele Muholi, Shahzia Sikander, Wangechi Mutu, Yayoi Kusama and Shirin Neshat – have all shown or been reviewed in leading London, Paris, or New York outlets.The Story of Art without Men is not a definitive art history. I wrote the book when I was 26 and 27. I have so much learning to do, and I have learnt so much in the past year since. What’s amazing about art history is that it’s constantly being written day by day and the more I travel and see the world the more I discover incredible new artists.Was the art world more unequal for women of colour?Yes, the art world is still very unequal for women of colour, as documented in the Burns Halperin report recently. They revealed that despite Black women representing 6.6% of the US population, Black American women artists take up 0.5% of US Museum acquisitions. It’s truly shocking, but we also have people like Augusta Savage who was part of the Harlem Renaissance and advocated arts education, teaching the likes of Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence. She also opened a gallery and a school. So, these women don’t just create art, but they actually paved the way for the future generations through their practices.In 1971, feminist Linda Nochlin wrote the ground-breaking essay, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ Has the answer to that question changed?Linda Nochlin questioned the idea of greatness and what that means. In the last 52 years, much has progressed. Scholars have dedicated their lives to unearthing the work of especially historic women artists. More than ever, we have women in powerful positions such as at the helm of the Tate, the Louvre, the National Gallery of Art in DC, and actually having women at the top has made a huge difference. But there is still so much work to do. Just 1% of the National Gallery in London’s collection is by women, it’s shocking. Museums need to look at their collections and really question what sort of art history they are promoting to younger generations of artists and art lovers – representation matters.How can those within and outside the art world in India attempt to restore the gender imbalance in global art history? It starts with a conversation and recognising that there is a problem. Then, if you discover a woman artist or question yourself about not knowing a woman artist, then tell your friend about that and suggest that maybe we should go and support that art exhibition, or we should learn more about that woman artist through reading more about them. The issue is that there is not enough of a spotlight on them and it’s about having these conversations and doing whatever you can within your parameters to make that change, no matter how big or how small.
