Georgie O'Keefe!

Jenny Saville!

Ugh, what a moron. Clearly, he can't know all that much about art.

My favourite painter is Tamara de Lempicka. Her paintings are gorgeous, the use of colour blows me away every time I see the originals. My gift to myself when I move into my new apartment will be to put a poster of one of her paintings up on one entire wall. It'll rock.

Jenny fucking Saville

Louise Bourgeois is her OWN rank. She is so brilliant, long running and singular. Artist who are female tend to work alone and come into their own latter in life because of this sort of thing. Therefore a lot of female artist don't fit into tidy categories, schools or waves of art. That doesn't mean they aren't brilliant artist. I'm hoping that this sort of disgusting mentality will die with Brian Sewell's generation. He'll join the ever increasing ranks of art critics who look foolish and dated as the genius that is Bourgeois, Hesse, Dumas, Saville, Smith live on.

gross.

Artemisia! Georgia O'Keefe! Rosa Bonheur! Dorothea Lange!

Arrg! What a fucker. Does he not know that Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Moser were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London?

Dorthea Lange, Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman (photographers), Kate Kollwitz (printmaker), Georgia O'Keeffe (painter), Judy Chicago (acclaimed feminist artist) Paula Scher, Marian Banjtes, Debbie Millman, Ellen Lupton(graphic designers)

I just finished writing a paper on Toyen. She's an amazing Czech Surrealist painter. I would suggest checking her out.

GEE were do I begin
Eva Gonzalès
Dorothea Lange
KAT Von D
Georgia O'Keeffe
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
Tamara de Lempicka

Wow. What about the mindblowing Kara Walker?

Remedios Varo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedios_Varo

Maybe it's something to do with bearing children."

So that means that either the uterus, in it's ever steady quest to be filled with teh babeez, sucks talent energy, or, that once women have children they lose talent. Either way it's stupid and if misogynists didn't have the uterus to blame for all of women's "failings" what would they blame? the boobeez?

I'd also like to see this critic create something in the caliber of the female artists mentioned.

Nah, it's that men have WIVES to take care of the home and all that shit, but women don't have anyone to take care of their kids and their home so they can paint. Or write. Or sculpt. Or whatever.

Jo Chen.

I agree withe verything you said, UltraMagnus, up to the last line. I really, really hate the argument about critics being able to create art, music, etc. That's not their job. The man is clearly a total nitwit, but being an artist isn't in his job description. It's just not a sound argument.

If it's any consolation there's practically no one in the art world who takes this guy seriously at this point. He's a running joke for many curators, critics, and professors of art and art history.

Rodin thought Camille Claudel was pretty talented, but what did he know?

Tina Frank, Hannah Höch, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Yoko Ono, Pipilotti Rist, Mimiyo Tomozawa, Rachel Whiteread, Andrea Zittel... all of the artists already mentioned... and about a million more. :/

Definitely Remedios Varo and Artemisia Gentileschi.

"Maybe it's something to do with bearing children."

Or maybe, just maybe it has something to do with the way we have mythologized the role of the artist so that women are systematically excluded from what we have learned to consider artistic "genius." Apparently this moron hasn't picked up an art history text since before the 1960s.

Diane Arbus
Molly Crabapple
Sarah Maple

I cannot begin to say how much his remarks piss me off.
The sheer number of documentable EXCELLENT women from the dark ages on who painted is huge. How dare he presume to dismiss us.

Adminassistant already mentioned Artemisia Gentileschi, but since we're on the subject, it's worth noting that not only was she a great first rate artist who many suspect helped on a number of her father's paintings, she's in that category of women who suffered from the horrible patriarchal society of her time. She risked losing her fingers, or the use of them, undergoing torture to satisfy the court that she was the victim of a rape. And she wasn't some mindless product of her time, either. Her paintings and attitudes were distinctly feminist, given the context.

But that's the academic community for you. Centuries of erasing women and their contributions from history. I'm glad this guy isn't taken seriously by his community.

As an art history major, this seriously pisses me off. For one thing, Louise Bourgeois is amazing. And what about the likes of Artemisia Gentileschi, Tracey Emin, the Guerrilla Girls? There are so many fabulous female artists! Maybe a lot of them drop out of the art scene at an early age because they get exhausted trying to claw their way into some form of success. Sad, but true.

Louise Bourgeois was the first person to put an installation in the Tate Modern's unilever series. She had a retrospective their last fall... I doubt the curators there would agree she was "second rate." Nor would all the galleries that showcased her work in conjunction with the retrospective, or the buyers, or those like myself who are madly in love with her work.

What a douchenozzle.

One thing I like about pop-surrealism (the genre of art/galleries that I'm part of) is that there are so many women in it selling for high prices. Audrey Kawasaki, Amy Sol, Tara McPherson, Lori Early, Sas Christian... the list goes on and on. It's the closest I've seen to gender parity in any genre of art.

Let's see...

Georgia O'Keefe. Louise Nevelson. Artemisia Gentileschi. Sophonisba Anguisola. Judith Leyster. Camille Claudel. Rosa Bonheur. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun. The anonymous nuns who illuminated Hortus Deliciarum for Herrad von Landesburg. Frida Kahlo. The needleworkers who produced the Baltimore Album quilts.

This critic is not only a bigot, he's an idiot.

There certainly are great women artists - but the question is: Why are they consistently listed as secondary throughout (art) history? There's a great article by Linda Nochlin called "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists" - you can find copies online - I'd highly recommend it.

disgusting. anyways...
my favorites are:
Alison Bechdel, Marta Minjun (who did a huuge dismantling the patriachy piece called "Obelisk of Sweet Rolls"), GEGO, Lygia Clark...

The man is clearly a total nitwit, but being an artist isn't in his job description. It's just not a sound argument.

While I get what you're saying Moxie this dingle berry is saying that men, by definition of being MEN,(only men are capable of artistic greatness) are better artists than women will ever be because women have babies. He's not critiquing a woman's piece of art, he's criticizing an entire gender, so yeah, he thinks men can do it better, lets see him try.

Hannah Höch, Tamara de Lempicka, Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Sofonisba Anguissola, Berthe Morisot, Suzanne Valadon, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lee Krasner, Sally Mann, Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Gabriele Münter, to name just a few. All of which I know about from one art history class... so what kind of art critic doesn't know about these women?

I don't know enough about art history to add any specific artists to the list here, but I did want to apply the ever-eye opening "race test" to this ridiculous statement.

Can you imagine what would have happened if this guy had said something like "Only white people are capable of aesthetic greatness." I'm glad to hear that he isn't taken seriously.

I'd like to see him critique a group of new paintings, etc, which he hasn't seen before and of which he does not know the provenance. It seems extremely unlikely that he would be able to "rate" men's work higher than women's without knowing which is which.

francesa woodman i love love.

Oh fuck him. And the art business! I get so much BS-- I've actually had a prof tell me outright "I don't believe that women can paint, but you're an exception to that rule." Talk about double-edged compliments. Maybe there's another reason there aren't many widely-known female painters, and it's not just because people are ignorant.

Anyway...

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun! Cecilia Beaux! Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, and Jessie Willcox Smith (oh excuse ME, establishment, illustration is not ART)! Sofonisba Anguissola! Caterina Hemessen! Judith Leyster! ARTEMISIA, ARTEMISIA, ARTEMISIA, who was seventeen (!!!) and completely kickass when she painted her first Susanna- http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/images/WBsusanna.jpg

And oh man-- how could I forget Marie-Denise Villers, Angelica Kauffman, Rosa Bonheur, Camille Claudel, and Berthe Morisot?

And then I could list the entirety of my links page from my gallery. But I won't.

Imogen Cunningham!

Hopefully the misogynistic old farts who have a platform to say this kind of baloney will die off before their ideas have sunk in to the next generation.

okay. i know it's like 3am, but didn't nobody mention coco fusco or dem guerrilla girls... all those female artists who had to go by mens' names up into the late 20th century... dang. let's get real, though, sewell hasn't had something relevant to say since his 20s, old boy's been regurgitating some bullshit in order to play down the fact that he covers up his lack of understanding for contemporary art by claiming that he's too high class to follow modern ish... i mean, didn't someone once claim that sewell made "the queen sound common"? what a douche.

Wow, Louise Bourgeois is one of the most talented artists ever. This douchebag likely isn't too keen on her critique of phallic power (see my alltime fave "La Filette"). Francesca Woodman was also brilliant.

Not to mention that Lee Krasner was doing what Jackson Pollack was years before him...and was his partner! Damn thief.

Someone needs to read Linda Nochlin's brilliant "Why are there no great women artists?"

I think it's bc those hysterical floating uteri just strangle the paintbrush right out of womens' hands. Must be kind of like being possessed.

My fave female artists? Hum, Alison Bechdel and Mary Cassatt spring to mind...

If there is the perception (and it is a perception, not the reality) that women artists are not of the same "rank" as men, it is entirely due to the fact that most art critics, historians, gallery owners and curators are men - and they have attempted to create the kind of art world that reflects their biases.

I run up against this regularly on a Classical Music forum at nytimes.com where some of the worst examples of sexism are expressed.

Alice Neel
Helen Frankenthaler
Elaine Fried de Kooning
Sonia Delaunay
Karen Finley
Joan Mitchell
Margaret Bourke-White
Betty Parsons

I don't know how I could forget Marjane Satrapi, who wrote and illustrated the amazing graphic novel "Persepolis".

As per this douche's quote about women drivers, I bet I (as a woman) could relate the volume of a bullet to the empty space where his brain should be.

I think there's something to the notion that childbearing changes women in daunting and often permanent ways, and that women with children are less likely than women without children (or men with children, for that matter) to achieve great things. Evidence bears this out, and any sensible feminist would agree that children can be a burden - especially in a culture that expects women not only to physically bear them but to bear the greater part of the responsibility of raising them. Exactly how this leads to the logical conclusion that "only men are capable of aesthetic greatness" is what I don't know.

Also, it's interesting that his mother was a painter and responsible for his appreciation of art at an early age. Goes to show how much thanks a lot of mothers get for their "noble sacrifice."
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1641132,00.html

Grandma Moses. She didn't even begin painting until her early 70s! Maybe menopause reversed the damage from her child bearing years.

The only ones on my list that have not been mentioned yet are:

Kate Greenaway -- children's book illustrator

Hildegard of Bingen -- illustrated her own manuscripts. In addition to being an artist, she was also a composer, poet, physician, herbalist, philosopher, linguist, scientist, and mystic. Whew!

Also, this guy? Is an ass. If he's like most critics, it's all sour grapes.

O'Keefe was a painter whose works I liked before I could really appreciate painting.

Elizabeth Murray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Murray_%28artist%29

If you've passed through the 59th St. BMT/NRW456 station, you've seen her mosaic.

How many male art students fade away after graduating? All but a handful? It's incredibly difficult to succeed in the art world, even if you have innate talent, and, to be completely frank, most wannabe artists in art schools (male and female) have little to no innate talent. In my experience, maybe ten percent of art students have real talent. The rest are under the mistaken impression that creating art is easy.

Marina Abromovic
Maya Deren
Sarah Lucas
Eva Hesse
Rebecca Horn
Ursula Hodel
Fiona Tan

to name a few artist who have been making work their whole lives...

please don't forget zaha hadid, denise scott brown, april greiman, julia morgan.....

god, i love art and design SO DAMN MUCH. only a total mental reject would even try to assert that there aren't great women painters, designers, illustrators, sculptors, architects....

Ana Mendieta

tina modotti, zaha hadid, denise scott brown, may stevens, julia morgan....

How about Emily Carr?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Carr

If you don't know Carr or work, do yourself a favour and check her out. She is not only a Canadian art icon but she was also a pioneer of her day and her work is remarkable. If it weren't for the sexism of her contemporaries she would hold a rightful place in the Canadian Group of Seven as the eighth deserving member.

As much as I like A.Y. Jackson or Tom Thomson, I'll take Emily Carr any day.

and let us not forget annie leibowitz.

though this is a good article on women in design...
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=20303

Thank goodness for all of the Art History I was required to take as a Graphic Design major!

One of my favorite paintings has always been “The Horse Fair” by Rosa Bonheur.
I also love the work of Sonia Delaunay and Frida Khalo.

Oh, and Judy Chicago RAWKS! (plus, I haven't seen her name here yet.)

Allow me to reiterate lindabeth's request for this asshat...and pass along the Nochlin essay for everyone else!

http://www.mariabuszek.com/kcai/PoMoSeminar/Readings/NchlinGreat.pdf

(I teach the piece in several of my classes, so have a handy-dandy PDF on my teaching website. Required reading for EVERYONE, IMHO...but definitely for feminists who love art!)

reminds me of this poster by the guerrilla girls (who also happen to be awesome artists!)
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/europe.shtml

tilsa tsuchiya is an amaaazing latin american woman artist i haveta plug here. there are way too many goodies to list besides her though.

adrian piper, kiki smith, dame darcy, jessica abel, yoko ono, margaret keane, margaret kane, kim gordon, fafi, megan kelso, diane dimassa, cristy c. road, leela korman, phoebe gloeckner, the geurrilla girls, nicole j. georges, marjane satrapi, ariel schrag, ariel bordeaux, georgia okeefe, carolee schneeman, judy chicago, diane arbus, cindy sherman, roberta gregory, jenny lens, roberta bayley, annie liebowitz, lynda barry, tara mcpherson, friends of lulu, erika lopez, meret oppenheim...

all the girls self publishing, making zines and comics, throwing up graffitti, filling up flicker, painting babies and flowers and stilllifes as hobbies. my mother.

Trying not to name any doubles:

Lisa Yuskavage, Paula Rego, Berthe Morisot, Lee Krasner (married to Jackson Pollack), Elaine de Kooning (married to Willem d Kooning), Joan Mitchell, Janet Fish, Faith Ringgold, Olga Khokhlova, Françoise Gilot (both of whom were married to Picasso), Eva Hesse...

You'll notice that many of these great artists were married to men who were (or became) much more famous than them. Which is interesting because some art historians will tell you that some of these women were actually better than their husbands! (e.g. Many prefer the work of Lee Krasner to Jackson Pollock). Creative people tend to cling to each other, so that's not surprising. But the fact that only the men go down in history and the women often ignored even when the rival each other is highly suspect. Wikipedia has a fairly decent resource on women artists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_artists

You can also look at my website...cuz I'm a female artist too! (:D

Local artists I love:

Jane Alexander

http://www.artthrob.co.za/99july/artbio.htm

Tracy Payne

http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/artists/payne.htm

The preposterous claim that there are no great women artists has been made ad nauseum. The question was definitively answered in 1979 by Germaine Greer in her brilliant book The Obstacle Race. (I understand that recent reprints do not due the art reproductions justice). My answer to this critic is: Read a book. You bore me with your stupidity. (I've tried being polite and tactful: I'm bored with that, too.)