Is art a man's game?

Posted by markbrown on November 30, 2006 - 16:44

Hello folks.

If you ask most people to think of a practitioner of any art form, be it writing, poetry, painting, pop music, sculpture, scriptwriting, etc etc, I reckon nine times out of ten they'll come up with a man.

Is art a man's game?

Does the gender of a practitioner matter?

Is women's art a separate category?

Should women writers have their own section?

Is rock 'n' roll a crock if if you haven't got a cock?

Is the penis mightier than the sword?

Does a man making an effort to listen, read, view and experience more art by women practitioners make him:

a) Open minded

b) A pretentious poop-pipe

c) A patronising creepy gitface who secretly advances his phallocentric agenda while dressed in the fleece of a caring, sharing post-feminist man

d)None of the above?

Are the Guerilla Girls right?:

http://www.guerillagirls.com/posters/advantages.shtml

Cheers,

Mark

Of course they are, you silly man.

To answer the question above, it would be e) a nice, probably left-wing, overly earnest man in the Chris Martin/Eddie Vedder school of thought.

Not that I'm cynical, or anything. ;-)

Art isn't a man's game. Man may well have had a head start but nah. There's even a theory that women were ultimately responsible for the flourishing of art in the ancient world because they'd open their legs for a man with a well embellished spear! Girls like those guerillas up there don't do much to help.

There's nothing more mind-teasing than the incomprehensible eagerly avowed -
Dennett

Spoken like a true man.

This thread puts me in mind of the single "Endless Art" by A-House from 1992. It's basically just a list of famous artists and the year of birth and death, put to catchy music.
It just so happens that all the famous artists mentioned are men. Rumour has it that this was completely by accident, and when it was pointed out to the band, they wrote a B-Side ("More Endless Art") in which all the artists are female.

You can preview "Endless Art" at the following link if you want to get the idea:

http://www.7digital.com/stores/productDetail.aspx?shop=34&sid=319105&tra...

"e) a nice, probably left-wing, overly earnest man in the Chris Martin/Eddie Vedder school of thought."

Chris Martin, the whiny privately-educated singer from tedious pop-rock yesterday's men, Coldplay. How's he left-wing?

"Is the penis mightier than the sword?"

I imagine this thread was conceived primarily as a home for that pun.

The answer is "no, no it isn't" but I imagine there's only a very small fringe group of people of either gender who would choose to be penetrated with a sword.

"If you ask most people to think of a practitioner of any art form, be it writing, poetry, painting, pop music, sculpture, scriptwriting, etc etc, I reckon nine times out of ten they'll come up with a man."

I used to go out with an American feminist and I've learnt the answer to this. It is that this situation is an inevitable symptom of patriachal society. Thanks for listening.

American feminists certainly know their onions.

Chris Martin is 'overly earnest' about his causes, which generally consist of issues most leftists like. Not that there's anything wrong with being a leftist, mind you. But 'overly earnest' should have been the key words.