Celebrating Women's History Month

How many women artists can you name?

If you are a regular or if you have landed on Tarantula: Authors and Art welcome. This year, we hope that our stories and the artists that we present will inspire you to start your own creative journey, and our house team of writers will join you on this ride. Our contributor, Karen Grace, an art teacher, historian, and book lover has a new book for you to take a look at! If a friend forwarded you this article, welcome; if you like it, share it or why not subscribe?

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In honor of Women’s History month, I have an amazing new book to share with you. Katy Hessel, a British art historian, who runs @thegreatwomenartists, a podcast by the same name, and a newsletter here on Substack, has published her first book. It is a gorgeously illustrated, lush and sweeping rewrite of the canon of art history: The Story of Art without Men.

Women are having a bit of a moment in the art world, finally! Recent years have seen an expansion of museum shows dedicated to now well-known women artists and in 2022 even the Venice Biennale was both curated by a woman and its artists were majority women and gender non-conforming for the first time in its hundred-year history.  We here at Tarantula are (so far) all female writers and we do seem to choose to focus on female artists (mostly, but not all) so perhaps you are wondering why the world might even need such a book?  Perhaps the ladies are doing ok?  Except there is a much greater gender (and race!) bias in the art world than you may be aware of.  Hessel explains:

A study published in 2019 found that in the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 per cent of artworks were by men, and 85 per cent by white artists. Currently women make up just 1 per cent of London’s National Gallery collection. This same museum only staged their first ever major solo exhibition by a historic female artist, Artemesia Gentileschi, in 2020.

With this book, Hessel offers art lovers such a glorious and enthusiastic way to help turn the tides.  Contained within are most of the historical women artists I can think of (outside the Nordics, my new obsession) and still more from both past and present that I confess I had no idea about.  I adore the sensation in my brain of learning new things or especially re-learning things I thought I knew, and for me this happens on page after page.  This book is like a tonic – I must take it in small doses!

In these pages you will learn (or re-learn) about so many wonderful artists and their work! Consider Sofonisba Anguissola, an Italian Renaissance painter who was praised in her time for portraits ‘so lifelike that they lack only speech’ (p.25) and Mary Delaney, a British botanical artist who invented a new technique for collage work in the 1700’s (p.50).  

Perhaps you’ll be reminded of Ukrainian born painter Sonia Delaunay, the Harlem Renaissance sculptor Selma Burke, and the story quilts of Faith Ringgold.  There are plenty of wives-of and daughters-of more famous artists who are equally if not more talented and also plenty of struggle, stolen ideas, and subterfuge.  (The story of the queer couple Cahun and Moore who hid in plain sight from the Nazis and almost, but not quite, succeeded comes to mind.) 

You’ll also find a chapter on Spiritualism that includes Georgiana Houghton and, of course, Hilma af Klint.  In the end you will also learn about some exciting emerging artists like Jade Fadojutimi and Flora Yukhnovich.  Of course this book won’t teach you all there is to know about any of these artists, it’s a survey, a smorgasbord, a delicious introduction to an incredible range of under-appreciated artwork.

I adore Hessel’s tone throughout – she is an authority to be sure but she sounds more like an enthusiast or a teacher – offering encouragement to her readers and helping them understand as she goes.  She does not go on about this or that movement and its hallmarks but instead, unlike most art history, avoids haughtiness in favor of approachability.  Hessel also somehow manages to avoid being angst-ridden or preachy – she allows the artists to rage against all that is while she is our kind and generous tour guide, an art lover who just can’t get enough.  Her sole argument? These artists deserve their place in the story of art, and we will be nothing but richer for broadening the field and experiencing their work.

Just a last note about the gorgeous edition of the book I am shamelessly showing off in these pictures… This is a special one, only available at Waterstones in the UK I believe, a hardback in a slipcase covered in a painting by Lee Krasner.

Other editions are available all over Europe. The American edition is coming very soon- May 2nd!

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