Have you heard of Surrealist photographer Lee Miller? Or the highly political Dada photo-montagist Hannah Höch? 19th-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis achieved fame and recognition in her lifetime, as did 20th-century sculptor Barbara Hepworth, but none of these women artists have achieved “household name” status, akin to Dali or Duchamp or Henry Moore. That is not, however, because they are not as important, pioneering, or ground-breaking.
The Story of Art Without Men springboards from two seminal texts. The first is clearly signalled in the title: Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art has been an introductory manual for generations of fine art students. Women are almost completely absent from its pages.
Only 1% of London’s National Gallery collection is by female artists. (More precisely: 21 out of 2,300.) The first major solo exhibition of a female artist — Artemisia Gentileschi — was not staged there until 2020 (it only took Gentileschi 400 years).
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the highest record price for a female artist’s work is only 12% of the equivalent male record (Jenny Saville and David Hockney, respectively). Hessel quotes these statistics in the book.
Three common themes emerge in Hessel’s accounts of women artists from 1500 to today.
A male artist in Renaissance Italy might get himself apprenticed to a master artist; a female artist needed the protective umbrella of a father to harbour beneath.
Another is a recurring pattern of success and oblivion: again and again, Hessel tells us of women artists famed and celebrated in their lifetimes who faded into obscurity after death.
Another constant is the astonishing frequency with which male artists have been credited with women artists’ conceptual and aesthetic breakthroughs.