The Dizzying Revolving Door of Authoritarian Gender Restriction in Art Education.
Women's modeling class with cow in Pennsylvania Academy studio - Circle of Eakins 1882
Bologna, during the 13th century, celebrated women artists. The city's progressive and liberal atmosphere granted women greater autonomy and opportunities for education and participation in various fields, including the arts, compared to most other European cities.
Bologna had a tradition of commissioning artworks from both male and female artists, with wealthy noble families and the Church often supporting artists financially, regardless of gender. The city's guild system, which regulated and supported various crafts, including painting and sculpture, provided opportunities for women to receive training and apprenticeships in artistic workshops, fostering an environment where women were encouraged to pursue artistic endeavors. Women not only displayed their talents but gained recognition for their work.
Jump to the late 1800s. In 1893, women rarely had the opportunity to be members of any Art Academy. The Royal Academy of London forbade any woman from attending a figurative drawing class. At this point in academic art education, the study and mastery of the nude figure were considered mandatory to be regarded as "great" in any capacity, leaving women no options for participation, other than as the model. An oil painting from 1772, “The Academicians of The Royal Academy” by Johann Zoffany, depicts a studio in the Academy itself with distinguished representation of all its members, except one—Angelica Kauffmann. The singular female member, not allowed to enter this room, is referenced only by her framed portrait hung on the back wall.
In 1885, a photograph by Thomas Eakins portrays a life drawing class with both women and men attending. The model for this class was a cow.
The academicians of the Royal Academy - 1773 Richard Earlom
When I attended the School of Visual Arts 100 years later in the late 1980s, figure drawing was a required first-year course. The students were all genders, as were the models. We were there to study, academically, and build our knowledge and skills in representing the human figure. If you have taken part in a class with a nude human figure, you can attest to the fact that an inclination toward sexuality is nowhere to be found. What exists is often an intense drive to make your hand create what your mind is seeing with your medium of choice. This is occasionally followed by frustration due to the difficulty of this skill and the need for repeated hours of practice, failure, critique, repeat. My husband of 26 years, whom I met at this time, thrived at this. Education of drawing became his life work. Force Drawing, his theory on drawing the figure, and his many books on the subject, have now become a globally standard curriculum of study in college art education.
Recently, wanting to reconnect with students in person at the college level, he agreed to teach some classes at a well known university in San Francisco. He very quickly learned that the revolving door is continuing to spin. In “respectful consideration” of the “sensitivities” of women in other cultures, the models were once again required to cover their genitals by wearing undergarments. In the year of 2024, adult women students of the arts, the same women paying the tuition for this education, are being treated as if they are children lacking the emotional maturity to approach an area of study from an intellectual perspective. Incapable of handling the apparently overwhelming shame that women are expected to experience through this encounter, men, and religiously oppressive women have taken it upon themselves to “respect” our aforementioned “sensitivities” for our own protection.
It is fairly obvious that we are once again experiencing a moment in time where women’s autonomy is being chiseled away at a furious pace by those who are covertly manipulating the narrative that art education, through the viewing of a human body, is morally corrupt.
Nearly 800 years have passed between the progressive culture of Bologna and the patriarchal oppression which still exists in the art world today. Still, here we are, exhaustively struggling, manipulated, and gaslit into believing that we are being “respected” through a veil of “politically correct” policy. These restrictive and constraining policies cannot be allowed to become a slippery slope in the regression of women artists and the themes, opportunities, and successes they achieve in the art world. Despite the substantial number of strong female artists who have crossed over the culturally acceptable boundaries in my lifetime alone…the Tracy Emin’s, the Gorilla Girls, the Juanita McNeely’s, and so on…the struggle continues.
Women artists must continue to defend their own, voice their disapproval, and work as a community to remove these policies and hold accountable those institutions that enforce them. We fund our education, therefore we hold the power to dictate its path.