Still, artists in the shadow of their male colleagues. One of the reasons that art historians have neglected for a long time. The organization is AWARE of, France has the aim of eradicating faults.
Artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was perceived for decades only as “wife of” Robert Delaunay
It is the year 2009, Camille Morineau, then a curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou, a key experience: The Paris Museum of modern art, so your idea is to get an exhibition in which exclusively art from women, the novelty will be shown – until now. But elles@centre Pompidou, as the title of the Show is, is anything other than easy on the legs: On the artists that the Museum has in its collection, she finds little information. Neither biography, nor to work, nor to the art of flow, the women belong at all.
“A Huge Scandal”
Camille Morineau
“In the preparation of ‘elles’, I realized how much the women of the art historians so far have been underestimated,” says Camille Morineau in the DW-Interview. “A lot of things I don’t, and I knew that, although I an expert on art of the 20th century. Century am. I thought: ‘This is actually a huge scandal.'”
So the idea is to create a tool that would allow anyone – regardless of whether curators like Morineau, art historians or other Interested parties – can easily get inside Information about the artist.
“AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibition” in 2014, this Instrument. Morineau founded the French Non-Profit organization with an international focus, together with six other women, in order to make the art history of the female, or, how to write AWARE puts it, the history of art, even “new”.
The existence and availability of information on the life and work of individual artists play the Central role, to get out of the shadow of their male colleagues, Camille Morineau convinced. “Historians work with archives,” she says, “and if you will find new archives, the history changes.”
Of lack of female artists there can be no question
So AWARE not only with its documentation centre on the Boulevard Saint-Germain-information about artists available – there are around 1600 monographs, exhibition catalogues and Essays on female artists, but also have an Online archive.
Clear processing: The Online archive of AWARE
So far, this includes more than 400 entries to artists from all over the world, and each year 150 to 200 new. The number could definitely rise to a hundred times, believes Hanna Alkema, responsible for scientific programs in AWARE. How many artists are undiscovered, it is difficult to quantify, it is trust in the Research but each Time on a new name.
A prerequisite for inclusion in the Online catalogue is that the women were born between 1860 and 1972, the time of your life already institutional recognition. But it would also have made exceptions, Alkema. Because, of course, also an artist existed who have made a career without being acknowledged.
Goal: more diversity
In addition to big names like Cindy Sherman, Agnès Varda, or Sonia Delaunay – the latter had to wait half a century before it was perceived as an artist and not as a “wife” – many previously neglected or forgotten artists, consequently on the inside. As examples Alkema called the Georgian artist Vera Pagava, the Egyptian Gazbia Sirry or the Romanian-Marion Baruch – all of which are new additions to the AWARE archive.
Currently, 71 percent of the listed artists are just inside of the Western room, so that the organization would like to intensively work on more diversity in the archive. But this is time-consuming and of France can sometimes be difficult to achieve. The idea, therefore, is a world-wide correspondent network, which helps more artists from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America – this is a special focus in 2019 – track and make it available to the Public, explains Alkema.
In addition to the Online archive and the documentation centre AWARE also on guided tours of the Museum, which draw the eye to artists, round tables and colloquia in cooperation with universities, publications, and an annual award to two artists. Donors including the French Ministry of culture and the Fondation Chanel.
“Like a mathematical formula”
“For centuries, art exhibitions, exhibitions of artists. Anyone that’s noticed,” says Camille Morineau, compared to the DW. However, in recent years, the awareness of the deprivation of artists had grown inside the company, the operations of the University, who plays for the history of art finally, a Central role, losing to Machismo.
For the dedicated art historian, it behaves ultimately like a formula: “To become an artist from an inner drive. For me, there is no reason why women should have had this drive less than men. Women have the same brain, the same neurons, and more or less the same biology. Basically, it is like a mathematical formula. And must only be proven once again.” With AWARE Morineau and her Team want to make a decisive contribution to this.