This number is up from about 30% when I last checked a few years ago. The caveat is that my numbers are based on a niche focus of abstract art shows I’ve written about in New York galleries where the gender metrics fall out as an incidental measure.  But for me this raises an interesting question in light of the NPR story - are the constraints for women referenced in the report, those glass ceilings, based on gender alone or does the type of art play into it?  In other words does this apply to all art made by women or just feminist art?

For feminist art, gender and identify politics is crucial for both subject matter and content.  Sometime in the mid to late 80s the Gorilla Girls, a group of feminist artists, put together an exhibition that was a carnival of feminist art world outrage.   In ways often darkly humorous the work documented a variety of metrics for how women were excluded and under-represented in the art world.  If you agreed with the politics or at least the premise for the show, I suppose the art would be seen as good.  However, if you were looking for something else such as an opportunity for drawing your own conclusions and interpretations of what the art meant beyond the confines of the politics, the show came off as one dimensional and strident.  I’ve always found this to be problematic for explicitly political art in that an intrinsic, unhealthy, competition between the art and the politics typically occurs where each tends to diminish the other.  When I look at a work of art I want to be able to draw my own conclusions and interpretations; to, in effect, take possession of the piece as a viewer.  This is the major reason I find abstract art so fulfilling.

There are exceptions of course for combining art and politics. One of those Gorilla Girls, Harmony Hammond, had a New York solo show in May of 1999; the same month and year this publication began. In fact this was one of my first reviews and at the time I wrote how it was an unusual exhibition for having struck an elegant balance between art and politics.  I first met Harmony when she was a visiting artist at the University of North Carolina in the early 80s while I was in graduate school there. I’ve always found her work to successfully mix gender politics and pure esthetics in a way that each embraces the other rather than detracting.

But what of women who are satisfied to make abstract art in which gender is indiscernible?  How do they fit into the feminist agenda?  As based solely on their art, not at all I’d imagine since identity politics are excluded from their imagery.  The hanging question then is what defines a feminist artist?  In other words, for feminist artists can their art coexist but apart from their politics?

This show offers up an array of delightful and sometimes poignant surprises.  When you first enter the gallery it’s not immediately apparent that these are photographs.  At first glance they appear to be reductive abstract paintings.  For example one piece with a yellow textured background, 6 outlined vertical rectangles and a thick white stripe dividing the picture plane right of center recalls the paintings of say, Sean Scully.  Is this a painting that engages the grid with a saucy paint handling in the background?  No, it’s actually a photograph that reveals a partial view of a parking lot in Paris as seen from above.   The implicit magic in these pictures is how the mundane is rendered extraordinary.

Andreas Gefeller’s subject matter ranges from close-distance aerial views of parking lots to decrepit stadium seating to a view of a driving range with golf balls

Andreas Gefeller, Untitled (Parking Lot 1), Paris, 2002, color photograph, 39.2 X 59.1in