I visited an exhibition by the Irish Guild of Embroiderers on Friday at the Lexicon library in Dun Laoghaire. The work was superb – layered with insights, packed with technique and aesthetically intriguing – but it made me think of a quote I once read by the 82-year-old, award-winning German artist, Georg Baselitz, who said: “Women simply don’t pass the value test of the [art] market.”

His words echoed in my mind as I viewed the embroiderer’s works, picking out two in particular that I’d love to add to my very small art collection at home. In Baselitz’s mind, what I was viewing was not art, and I couldn’t help but feel that it had been treated as such in the way it was exhibited. The artworks were hung on temporary room dividers (like makeshift notice boards) in what is essentially a lobby space within the library. It had a “pop-up” feel to it, which somehow undermined the value of what was on display. The space felt very limiting compared with the breadth of talent on display and so the show lacked the sense of grandeur which traditional gallery spaces infuse their exhibitions with. There is a formal gallery space in the library just metres from where we stood, which houses a selection of the DLR’s own art collection. Would it not have made sense to temporarily dismantle this exhibition for the period the Embroiderers Guild exhibition was running? Or did it not seem worth the effort for a two-week “craft” show?

I would love to have seen these pieces given the surroundings they deserved (women and their work are often perceived as taking up space rather than deservedly inhabiting it). But craftwork has never been considered as artwork. It’s been derided through the centuries because it’s conventionally been a feminine pursuit, created within a domestic realm and looked on as a hobby to be picked up and dropped at leisure rather than a legitimate artistic pursuit. It’s perceived as decorative, not intellectual, so, therefore, doesn’t qualify as “serious” art. The RHA’s Annual Exhibition, which invites members of the public to submit work for possible inclusion in the summer show, is open to artists working in paint, drawing, print, sculpture, photography and architecture. Why not craft too? Anything that involves textiles appears to have less value within the art world. Hasn’t there been a debate raging for decades about whether fashion can qualify as art?

Which of us didn’t learn to knit, crochet and sew in primary school, but how many of us considered these activities worth pursuing through secondary school, college and beyond? I studied art for my Leaving Certificate and at no time was craft a part of the curriculum. It was subsumed into home economics instead, a subject I deliberately didn’t take – not because I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it – but because at the time it was looked down on as an “easy” subject; one “for girls”. Because I attended a mixed school, I was always trying to rally against the stereotype, but unfortunately, it was often a case of cutting off my nose to spite my face. I would have thrived in home economics had I been self-assured enough to take it. Of course, I also come from a very academic family, and I secretly felt I’d be letting the side down if I studied “home ec”. Art, on the other hand, was considered a serious subject choice that required talent not a throwaway one for less academic students.

While on the surface of it, crafts have always been considered “quiet” hobbies for “good girls”, an exhibition currently on view at The National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne demonstrates beautifully how its benign and gendered nature has been subverted over the centuries for political purposes. She Persists includes an exquisite 19th-century silk purse intricately embroidered with the image of a slave at work and anti-slavery writings on the reverse side. These bags were filled with informative literature and passed around communities in the 1820s by the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. They were a tool of subversion hidden behind the facade of the “harmless” feminine pursuit of embroidery. Similarly, after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, there was a rallying cry from women across the country to protest against his regressive gender politics and they did so wearing pink “pussyhats” (named after his outrageous claims about manhandling women during his presidential campaign) handknitted in bright pink. The impact was so effective that one week later Time magazine featured one of the crafted hats on its cover.

art and politics

Art and politics often collide. A group of activists in America called The Guerilla Girls have been highlighting the discriminatory nature of the art world since the mid-eighties. According to this group of female creatives, who keep their identity a secret by wearing gorilla masks: “Museums are increasingly dependent on super-rich collectors’ donations of money and artworks – and these collectors are usually white men, who predominantly collect art created by white men.” It’s simply another example of institutional sexism. How can craft ever be legitimised within the art world when the “value test” Baselitz refers to is a system devised and judged by men, making it almost impenetrable for women.

In the same interview, Baselitz also emphatically states: “Women can’t paint that well. It’s a fact.” Even if this were true, which it isn’t, why is painting the benchmark of a woman’s contribution to the arts? There’s a wonderful poster created by The Guerilla Girls, which lists (in a tongue-in-cheek fashion) all the “advantages” of being a female artist. They include: “Being reassured that no matter what kind of art you make it will be labelled feminine.” Isn’t this at the heart of the matter? It’s the age-old misconception that men are serious and women are frivolous and that men’s concerns and pursuits have more value to society than women’s. Feminist writer Gloria Steinem explained it perfectly when she said: “the state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that ‘art’ was what men did in a European tradition and ‘crafts’ were what women and natives did. But it’s actually all the same.”

Women have been chipping away at these inequalities and sexist structures across many industries over many years, including the art world. Last year, the National Gallery of Ireland curated [In]Visible Women: Irish Women Artists from the Archives, which tells the stories of several female artists from the early 20th century, including those who specialised in arts and crafts, such as stained glass artist Sarah Purser and embroiderer Susan Mary Yeats. We’ve come a long way since former director of the National Gallery of Ireland Thomas MacGreevy admitted in the 1920s that some members of the RHA, “only titter at the idea of a woman artist.”

Indeed, the first-ever female president of the RHA, Abigail O’Brien, was elected in 2018, and that same year, Annie Fletcher was appointed director of IMMA. The art world is opening up to women, but will these women open up the art world to the rich craft heritage of this country and others? I hope so.

Marie Kelly, July 2020.
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