Women's Work What is art Is it a painting a sculpture a stained-glass window or also a quilt a pot a carpet if it is beautifully made For thousands of years anonymous makers have created beautiful objects with great skill and artistry In the West weaving sewing embroidery and painting on crockery were considered women’s work domestic art and craft they were not fine art like paintings or sculpture Instead they were known as decorative arts and their makers were not usually considered great artists This was not true everywhere In China decorative arts such as embroidery and calligraphy have for centuries been considered as precious as any painting or sculpture Islamic art has always highly prized garden design architecture and carpet-making But despite this the names of most female makers have been lost in history 8
Appreciation of what is great art is changing across the world thanks to many of the artists in this book Anni Albers Judy Chicago and Tacita Dean have used traditional craft techniques to express their ideas in ways that are wonderful and new Their work makes us see the world differently which is what all great art can do Now you might find a beautiful Albers woven textile on a gallery wall or a museum room dedicated to Chicago’s painted plates or Dean’s finely edited films Look out for sewing in the work of Louise Bourgeois Tracey Emin Anthea Hamilton or Doris Salcedo Are Simryn Gill’s book-page necklaces art or craft or both And what about the mobile museums Dayanita Singh makes to display her photographs Today even the internet can be art Cao Fei made an interactive project called RMB City on the online platform Second Life The nature of art is always changing as new artists come along to challenge what was there before What will women make in the future We can’t wait to find out 9
1899 1991 Eileen Agar could spark your imagination by taking a familiar object and turning it into something strange and new In addition to painting and making collages she created sculpture from materials around her such as a plaster cast of her husband’s head which she wrapped in silk feathers beads and seashells Is the head masculine or feminine blindfolded or given a silken skin How you interpret it is up to you Agar was born in Argentina at the very end of the nineteenth century She described her wealthy childhood in Buenos Aires as full of balloons hope and St Bernard dogs When she was eleven her parents moved to England where her glamorous American mother encouraged her talent for art as long as she only painted for fun Agar however was determined to become a professional artist After art school in London she went to Paris to paint Here she discovered the surrealists They believed art and literature should be inspired by subconscious ideas and dreams Eileen did not entirely agree but she liked the idea of daydreaming and painting what was inside her head From then on she combined her love of color with subjects inspired by nature and mythology
Back in London Agar was the only British woman chosen for the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 This led to her work being exhibited around the world She became friends with Pablo Picasso Man Ray Lee Miller and many other artists and poets who all inspired and influenced each other You can still see her ideas echoed in fashion magazines today Agar’s playful approach to life and art can be seen in her famous 1936 Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse a type of fish soup She made it from an upside-down cork dish featuring an orange plastic flower two starfish and a piece from a jigsaw puzzle among other things It was typical of Agar witty elegant and rebellious I’ve lived a good life and it shows through Angel of Anarchy 1936 40 11
