Life, they say, is replete with paradoxes. At one level we like to believe that there should be gender equality, but when that happens, we lament that finer sensibilities are the martyr. In the visual arts, where gender differences are generally blurred, there are areas where these Mars and Venus situations combust like meteorites in a starry sky. The point is, at what point do they go their separate ways, chasing their own patch of sky, or are they destined to be intertwined like the moon and the earth or the sun and its planets?
Art is an arena where sensibilities are paramount and so is success. Do women get free rolls of the dice just on the account of their gender? Far from it. In fact, they have to work twice as hard to get there. If they work, they do so in spite of everything and not because of something. A man can go off to his studio at any time and start painting. Can an Indian woman do the same? She has to first ensure that her family is looked after and then think about her work.
As women, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for a mood to come. Mood has to come when we can paint. If she emerges a good painter it’s great, but if she is able to sustain it, it is a miracle. One hand wields the saucepan and the other a paintbrush. Thankfully, there is no gender discrimination at the artistic or social level among the artist fraternity, but if the work is rejected by viewers at some point, artists do not think that it is on the basis of gender. And if artists put gender tags on themselves, discrimination begins at that level itself.
Clearly, some of the scales are tilted in the favour of men as they are more opportunistic, have fewer responsibilities, are more outgoing, able to promote themselves by socialising with buyers and building public relations with people who matter, and are consequently perceived as bigger and better. Women, on the other hand, are expressing themselves differently. They are aware of their femininity, but not necessarily in a self-conscious manner, and tend to be more sensitive to situations and reacting as a group biologically, emotionally and socially.
It is said that the male “gaze” is different. Their obsession is with the form and, to an extent, even objectification. Men don’t necessarily echo feminine concerns, while women tend to see things differently. They’d see the tenderness, fertility, sensuality. Nurturing comes naturally, women are more multi-dimensional, they go into details; in fact, some of it is semi-autobiographical as well. This is especially true when women paint nudes. While men paint nudes as rather to-die-for perfection bordering on glorification, women see and acknowledge the warts, the rolls of extra flesh and other imperfections. We have come a long way from a situation where women were branded mad merely if they opted to depict female nudes.
The passion women bring to their work, thanks to the resistance they have to face, is what sets them apart. How else do you get your reference points to trigger your creativity? The contentment that we experience in our work gives us the energy to carry on with the mundane. For, unlike men, we women can’t ignore the life around us. Sensibility is a very subtle thing, difficult to describe, yet easy to perceive, for the execution makes it apparent. For instance, emotionality can be used both as an advantage and a disadvantage.
Given the fact that art has come a long way from being only for its own sake to a point where commercial success plays an extensive role in it, do works of women artists fare better or are they perceived to be better than their male counterparts? It is dependent on the level of excellence that they have arrived at. The tough part is to get there — what the compulsions of the journey were, how much they were able to apply themselves to getting to that excellence. These are the factors that determine an artist’s salability.
However, in terms of sheer numbers, there are fewer women artists. And even fewer women who paint abstracts.
Women are more sensitive and are able to show what they go through more poignantly than men, who don’t experience the things we women do — like post partum blues, like middle age loneliness, like the pain of menstruation or childbirth.
It is tough being a woman, and top of it, if you want to be an artist as well.
All I can say is good luck! Touché!