Искусствоведческие По́лины sorrows

I’ve written about the problems of the ‘hidden heroes’ trope or ‘forgotten’ women. These women artists were never hidden. They were members of families and artistic communities, they had relationships with patrons, collectors, curators and others. Visual culture theorist Ariella Azoulay has also pointed out that a major problem of alternative histories is that they propose ‘some things as “hidden histories” in need of discovery, [which are not] hidden things or histories but rather open secrets known far beyond the archive and the grammar invented as guardian of its orderly uses’.

As far as I can tell, Hessel’s book is not one of original research and scholarship, but a combination of facts cribbed from other academic and popular texts and blog-post casual reflections on her favourite artworks. Despite a brief, generic acknowledgement in the introduction, the work of these (mostly) women has been completely sidelined. Yes, there are limited notes and bibliography at the back of the book, but this is token in comparison to the general erasure and complete absence of those who have done the intellectual work which underpins this book.

To get big audiences through the doors, and help pay for the expensive solo exhibition, museums hawk their exhibitions of women artists as being about ‘rediscovered rebels’ rather than as artists. <...> And in a book like this, where women artists are flattened into a single entity, there are some alarming instances where uncritically celebrating artists for their sole virtue of being women is more important than taking an informed, critical approach to their output.