In a previous blog I spoke about the realisation of the maleness of the history of aesthetics, the scarce or even absent consideration of gender issues or even thinkers/women in the discussion of aesthetics. Drawing upon the question of “Why there has not been great women artists in Art History”, and revealing the power structures that have segregated “women” to specific realms (home, nature, otherness) to the point of invisibilizing them, one can also ask “Why there has not been great thinkers in the history of Philosophy and Aesthetics”.
My task then was to find them, but where to start?
A quick search on the terms “gender” “feminism” “aesthetics” gets me to a great article by Caroline Kosmeyer and Peg Zeglin Brand, two of my favorite and most respected authors in this exploration. They say that “to refer to feminist aesthetics is to identify a set of perspectives that pursue certain questions about philosophical theories and assumptions regarding art and aesthetic categories.” So far, nothing is really new here, but the appreciation of feminist aesthetics call our attention to realise that “virtually all areas of the discipline bear the mark of gender in their basic conceptual framework.” This is an important consideration and the article goes on to summarise key aspects of the history of aesthetics including a feminist critique, arguing for an interdisciplinary approach and the need of enhancing the view of aesthetics with these approaches. For example, the notion of genius and creativity that has been enshrined as an individual accomplishment, mainly male, which “perpetuates the neglect of joint and communal creativity in favour of a kind of masculine heroism”. Notwithstanding, some other authors disagree by suggesting alternative criteria at work in women’s achievements (Battersby 1989).
Most of the ideas discussed in reference books refer to the old notions of aesthetics as established in the eighteenth century: taste, what is art and who is the artist, the notion of disinterestedness, and the category of beauty. But even the simple act of reviewing the literature becomes a challenging task. As mentioned before, it does not take long to realise that such works have been produced by males whose view of women become either “aesthetic objects” or clearly inferior to men. Take Kant’s view of taste in which “the man develops his own taste while the woman makes herself an object of everybody’s taste” (Kant 1798/1987: 222, cited in Armstrong 1996). Moreover, there is prevalent element of race and colonialism that taints each of these so called “classic” approaches, as exemplified by Burke’s erotic approach to [white] female beauty while considering the female black body as special object of terror (Armstrong, 1996). All of these unacceptable considerations makes it extremely difficult even to read such accounts as to extract such foundational ideas on aesthetics amongst the racism, sexism, colonialism and other abject “isms” of the time.
There is hope: authors like Korsmayer’s edited book on Gender and Aesthetics (2004), presents a wide range of contributors working around ideas on the discipline of aesthetics, discussions about the notion of beauty, its association to the concepts of taste, the sublime, and of course considerations about history of art. This all seems very neutral, but the editor clarifies the nature of a “gendered concept (as) one where there is a hidden skew in connotation or import, such that the idea in question pertains most centrally to males or in certain cases to females.” (p. 3) She however, rejects the notion of a “femenine aesthetic” or type of art that women produce in a particular historical period. In her view – and I must agree with her- this view is reductionist and overlooks the diversity of art or philosophy made/written by women. Similarly: ‘“feminist philosophy” does not comprise a group of theories that agree on every point, so looking for the feminist perspective on anything is always wrongheaded” (p.5).
The difficulties of talking about a “feminist aesthetics” lies on the segregation that western culture -specially in the twentieth century- has made of “women” or “feminine art” or “femenine aesthetics”. As argued by Parker and Pollock (1981) awesome book on Old Mistresses, this approach transforms artists women into an “annex”, an “addendum” that perpetuates the difference. Instead they suggest to question the ways in which the realms of “art history”, “aesthetics” or “philosophy” operate as part of a wider system of institutions, power and knowledge that can obscure, segregate or completely ignore the contributions of certain groups in the creation of culture.
It is tempting to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and some good things can be rescued: The categories created in the development of aesthetics can be used as the basis of enhanced conversations, either by challenging, expanding or rejecting such principles. To talk about aesthetics usually overlaps with notions of art, artistic practice, high art/low art, and critique and judgement. Likewise, beauty and art are intertwined and although conceptually they can be separated, the existing literature tends to bring these issues together. I am not completely convinced of the need of separating them, but I want to note that not everything “beauty” is “art”, neither that the “aesthetic experience” happens in the confines of the gallery or the museum or that the aesthetic is “pleasing”. For me the aesthetic experience is a transformative experience, it is something that touches your heart and can prompt a change in a perception, an awakening or a realisation. This is for me its real power. It can include more comfortable experiences such as the whimsical art of artists such as Mary Fedden, Rose Hilton or Winifred Nicholson, whose interiors and Cornish landscapes can enhance our lives. It can touch on the spiritual aspects of contemplation in the art of Agnes Martin or the defiant plants and flowers in the pavement of mexican artist Perla Krauze. Or it can create a sense of awe and fragility in the case of Marina Abramovic’s “the Artist is Present” in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Other type of debates within feminist aesthetics have concentrated on the definition of who is an “artist”, normally associated to the notion of genius. Here the “heroic male” is celebrated as an individual -sometimes tormented and challenging- but celebrated because of their extraordinary talent. This view is problematic because it takes the genius out of the person, and tends to overlook key traits in the personality of the so-called genius: his misogynia, his alcohol problems, his violence, his disposal of women or people, or his “borrowing” from partners, models and wives. In recent years, exhibitions about the “wives” of so called great artists reveal that certain ideas were developed in the intimacy of their relationship: Jackson Pollock definitively borrowed from the experiments of Lee Krashner (dates of ‘drippings’ in Krashner’s work precede those of her husband, as seen in the Barbican exhibition); and Dora Maar was not only Picasso muse, but her work would change the path of photography and surrealism (Tate Modern made her some justice in their recent exhibition); just to cite some examples. The idea that art emerges in a vacuum is not only incorrect but misleading. Any important art has emerged from an ecosystem of collaboration, conversations and community, a feature acknowledged by women, such as the Gee’s Bend Quilters (currently exhibiting in London), Collagist Women -Mujeres que Cortan y Pegan- from Spain; Cape Town’s iQhiya; Arpilleras from Chile, Guerrilla Girls, amongst many others.
When defining the aesthetic experience, the notion of disinterestedness became angular, to locate aesthetic and beauty as something to be contemplated from a certain distance, without the need of “possessing” it. For example, a sunset can be beautiful but we do not need to “buy” it, it exists there for us to rejoice. Notwithstanding, this neutrality is not necessarily present, especially if we think about the politics of the gaze, who is “looking”, who is being “looked”, revealing that even the act of looking reveals power relationships. A stream of theorists have questioned the representation of women in films, portrayed as objects of attraction observed by a “male gaze” (Mulvey, 1989). This view questions the perception as something passive, but stating that “vision” entails a power exercise: deciding who looks, what is looked and how that looking can be possessing, scrutinising or comomdifying.
However, from all the terms associated with aesthetics, “beauty” is perhaps the one that is most challenged and ever evolving. Beauty is a social construction and it is also a power category that comes in and out of fashion. Mostly, beauty is associated with something physical and of course, the female body is again the repository of those different notions of beauty. Naomi Klein’s The Beauty Myth (2002) reveals the contradictions of the advances of women in western societies and the disciplining regimes that determine how we should look, behave, consume, sound, smell, etc. A number of artists have defied the notions of beauty by revealing the reality of female bodies, our traumas and scars, hence prompting a misleading new label in art as the “aesthetics of disgust”. For others, beauty and pleasure are recognised as integral parts of our lives, acknowledging the political and communitarian aspects of beauty. For example, Janet Wolff (2006) proposes an aesthetics of “uncertainty” that recognises that norms of beauty are grounded in communities. Many others point out at the importance of reclaiming the pleasures of beauty while being alert to its potential dangers, especially in the governing of the human body.
And yet, beauty has a place in our lives, and my whole quest is to reinstate it as something that goes beyond the constraining visions of beauty, or the rejection in contemporary art of the sentimental or quaint. Instead, my proposal is to bring beauty as an ethical consideration, a way of living, thinking, behaving, relating with each other. In this view, beauty is not a “trait” or a “value” to aspire, but a practice, a habit, a way of being. This view is not something new, but it relates with the discussions by art theorists placing beauty between ethics and aesthetics (Danto quoted in Peg Brand Zeglin, 2000. I am not sure if this is the route I want to take, but for me it is important to see what has been said and find my own voice. A whole blog can be dedicated to Peg Brand Zeglin’s Beauty Matters, tracing back the discussions about beauty, art, the sublime from diverse points of views.
This all needs more development, and part of this exercise is to start planting the seeds of such reflection. I just wanted to go to basics, updating and challenging some key categories and paving my own understanding of beauty, merging my academic training, with my artistic practice, and finding a place as a female person, she, her, in a particular social, cultural and economic context. Let’s leave it here by now, but the quest continues…
References
Armstrong, Carol and Catherine de Zhegher, (eds) 21006. Women Artists at the Millenium. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Armstrong, Meg. 1996. The Effects of Blackness: Gender Race and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and Kant. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54: 213-36
Battersby, Christine. 1989. Gender and Genius: toward a Feminist Aestehtics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brand-Weiser, Peg (ed.). 2000. Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2004. Gender and Aesthetics. Taylor and Francis. London.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn and Peg Brand Weiser, “Feminist Aesthetics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/feminism-aesthetics/>.
Klein, Naomi. 2002. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. Harper Perennial. London
Krauze, Perla. 2016. Flor de Asfalto. http://cral.in2p3.fr/artelogie/spip.php?article103
Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures, London: Macmillan.
Parker, Roszika and Pollock Griselda. 1981. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Idoelogy. New York: Pantheon Books
Wolff, Janet. 2006. Groundless beauty: Feminism and the aesthetics of uncertainty. Feminist Theory, 7: 147-58
Bonito Living 
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