Revising History (February 2023)

Dear Friends

One of the reasons why I love history is that there is so much more of it to discover. Currently, I’m making endless discoveries about a subject very dear to me; art. I’m being guided by the art historian Katy Hessel. The journey she is taking me on began with her own shock. She puts it like this in her book that is my guide at the moment, The Story of Art Without Men (published in 2022 by Hutchinson Heinemann): “In October 2015, I walked into an art fair and realised that, out of the thousands of artworks before me, not a single one was by a woman. This sparked a series of questions: could I name twenty women artists off the top of my head? Ten pre-1950? Any pre-1850? The answer was no. Had I essentially been looking at the history of art from a male perspective? The answer was yes.”

She offers some of the statistics about major collections of art around the world which highlight ways in which male artists tend to have the monopoly. In 2019, a study of 18 major art museums in the US found that 87% of the works were by men, and 85% by white men. In London’s National Gallery, works by women artists make up 1% of the total.

Of course, as soon as these sorts of questions are asked and these sorts of statistics are offered, a whole range of responses come along. Hessel explores some of these in her book. Perhaps we just need to stop this WOKE worrying about who gets left out in history or if history is only partial and biased. Really? Perhaps women create less art. Really? Perhaps women’s art is simply not as good as art done by men? This, it turns out, is a perspective offered by some of the great male artists of history! Rather more likely, Hessel writes, women had a far harder time becoming and surviving as artists in the first place. And, particularly in the great story of western art, the contribution of female artists has been dramatically played down if not entirely ignored. On my shelf I have E.H. Gombrich’s magisterial The Story of Art, first published in 1950. The first edition names no women artists. The sixteenth edition names just one. Hessel’s book is a deliberate companion to Gombrich, seeking not to deny or obliterate the glorious work of male artists, but simply longing to complete a picture only partially sketched up until now.

Thus, I am discovering a constellation of artists only very few of whom I’ve met before. There’s Caterina de’Vigri (1413-63), writer, musician, nun and painter of manuscripts. Or Properzia de’Rossi (1490-1530), acclaimed for her meticulous carving in wood, marble and cherry stones (cherry stones!!). Like Caterina, she thrived in Bologna, home to Europe’s oldest university and a city famous for its appreciation and support of female artists. Skip forward and I find Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803), delighting the French court with incredibly life-like portraits and making a name as a teacher of painting. Or there is the intensely observed print-making of the German, Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), whose work depicts the struggles of ordinary people. I am only now discovering Marlow Moss (1889-1958) who worked in St. Ives alongside the likes of Barbara Hepworth. Moss is now seen as an influence upon the much more famous Piet Mondrian, working with him in Paris as they both developed their style of painting using blocks of colour and parallel lines. But it is only Mondrian who makes it to the museums and history books. There are hundreds of women from all over the world in Hessel’s survey; a wonderful company of creativity.

Revising history is a tricky business. It raises plenty of issues. But I think it matters that we try to be truthful, and we can be truthful about the past as we discover more about it. Some of us will have been helped to reimagine the early US space programme thanks to the 2016 film Hidden Figures. This told the story I had never heard about three African American women mathematicians: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. As America rushed to get its first astronauts into space in the 1960s, they were key workers on the calculations of orbits and much more that made it possible.

Truth-telling matters when it comes to faith as well, doesn’t it? We worship the God whose truth we treasure. We live as the followers of Jesus who is divine truth made flesh. John’s Gospel reflects much upon truth. As Jesus talks with his followers he tells them and us: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (8: 31b-32). Later, closer to his arrest, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” (16: 12-13a). Truth is a dangerous, obstinate, sometimes hidden, sometimes betrayed, beautiful thing.

Neil