Childhood Precursors of Women's Artistic Eminence (original) (raw)

Individual Differences in Artistic Achievement: A Within-Family Case Study

Creativity Research Journal, 2003

High artistic achievement by siblings is rare. The Powys family is distinctive in that 3 brothers achieved eminence in literature, and 7 of the 10 siblings who survived to adulthood had creative accomplishments. Analysis of biographical material suggests that the Powys home provided an intensely stimulating environment and promoted a high level of interdependence that persisted into adulthood, factors that may have influenced the creative interests and unconventional lifestyles of the family members. Nevertheless, the siblings differed in their artistic interests and accomplishments. Temperament, educational experiences, gender roles and availability of social support networks are examined as factors influencing disparities in achievement.

Still a man's art world: The gendered experiences of women artists

Journal of Research on Women and Gender, 2016

The social organization of art and artistic reputation are imperative to one's success as an artist but how does the current art world allow for women? Self-employed women pursuing artistic careers in the U.S. encounter gendered barriers both in the education/work world and from the family. I analyze interviews with 21 women artists, noting how as women became and began working as artists, they had to balance and negotiate constraints in these areas. Thus, gendered expectations appear in both personal and professional sectors of women's lives as they pursue artistic careers in contemporary society.

Becoming an Artist: Life Histories and Visual Images

In this chapter, we consider the experience of an art/research experiment that took place in the context of the annual conference of the British Sociological Association (BSA), held at the University of East London in April 2007. The essay is in four parts: in the first section, the researcher gives the context of the project that underpinned the BSA event, mapping its theoretical directions and methodological moves. In the second section, the artist tells stories of becoming through words and images. The force of the artist's narrative challenges and reconfigures discursively constructed boundaries between the researcher and the artist, initiating a dialogic encounter that unfolds in the third section as a visual/textual interface. This encounter revolves around the quest for meaning, which is after all what oral history is about (Portelli, 2011). Our quest for meaning actually inspired us to write about and problematize the BSA event. In this light, the final section looks critically into some of the questions that have arisen, situating them within wider problematics in the field of oral histories and narrative research in the arts and beyond. Nomadic Lines of Becoming: Narratives as Traces of the Self "In the Fold between Life and Art: A Genealogy of Women Artists" was a research project that looked into the constitution of the female self within the social milieu of art. The project combined archival research of fin-de-siècle women artists' autobiographical documents and life-history interviews of contemporary women artists. The latter were invited to present their work and share their stories of becoming an artist in the context of a sociological conference. Overall, eighteen women were interviewed for this project. Although they were all invited, fourteen accepted to take part in the exhibition, eleven came to the round-table discussion, one declined, and the other two had prior commitments. Convening an exhibition and staging a collective oral history event was conceptualized as an experiment, which attempted to cross-disciplinary boundaries between art, oral history, and sociology, as well as to challenge binarisms between academic and artistic spaces. What has come up as an analytical theme of the overall project is the emergence of multiple and complex paths in becoming an artist. Following Rosi Braidotti's (1994) influential theorization of female subjectivities in transition and move, I have called them nomadic paths since they do not seem to follow predefined trails or carefully designed schedules. It is not easy to locate their point of departure and even more difficult to pin down their final destination. These paths seem to start and end in the middle and what is interesting about them is the journey itself rather than its starting or ending points. Narratives, I have suggested, trace signs of such nomadic passages, charting histories, or rather genealogies of the constitution of the female self in art (Tamboukou, 2010

Historical Studies of the Practice and Profession of Women Artists

This chapter has been conceived as a personal approach to the study of different aspects of gender issues in the history of art. Extensive use has been made of historiographical studies considered essential for an understanding of the themes involved; they are works that, without doubt, constitute the backbone of current artistic historiography on this subject. With this in mind, the author’s contribution is in the interpretation and explanation of different questions relative to the aforementioned studies while not forgetting to mention a number of findings and thoughts of a more personal nature. We are therefore dealing with a personal dissertation on the lines of study and research projects that have been undertaken in recent artistic historiography from the perspective of gender.

Social and Cultural Influences on the Childhood Drawings of Klee, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso

1987

This paper is part of a research project designed to look at questions of giftedness and exceptional ability in the arts through a case study of three world-class artists. Examination of the childhood art of Picasso, Lautrec, and Klee reveals no common subject preferences nor any real anomalies in graphic development. This paper focuses on the social and cultural influences on the artists' lives. Parallels can be drawn between the lives of each of these artists and the three-phase model of social influences on child prodigies proposed by Bloom (1985). In Bloom's model, the first phase is marked by playful learning and an intimate relationship with the first teacher. This phase is followed by more serious, disciplined practice and a switch to a more advanced teacher. High self-motivation and intervention of a master in the field occur during the third phase. Parents and teachers influenced the development of each of these three artists in different ways. Two other sources of social influence considered are the popular and high arts of culture. Each of the artists relied on popular images and popular contemporary styles, such as those found in postcards, calendars, and comic strips, as source materials for their early work. Similarly, each, to varying degreea, was influenced by "high art" cultural traditions. However, the most important social factor influencing the development of these artists was the family. (BN)

How She Becomes Herself: The Artist as the Daughter of the Artist

TCI (Transnational Curriculum Inquiry), 2011

This essay highlights aspects of my childhood in 1970s Toronto, Ontario (Canada), growing up as the daughter of an artist, and the ways in which I came to make ‘thinking’ as an artist and spiritually engaged education researcher. Reflecting on my multiple visits to the recent retrospective, multi-artist exhibition entitled WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Butler, 2007 - exhibited at Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, 2009), I realize how I am embedded within a lineage of women artists –how the tactile stimulus of viewing art embodies whole histories (her-stories) for me. As the daughter of an artist, and being a mother, artist and art educator myself, I cannot, or do not separate artistic praxis from the development of theoretical frameworks emerging within my research and life writing.

Making the Invisible Visible: The Presence of Older Women Artists in Early Modern Artistic Biography

Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture

In the early modern period (i.e. from 1400-1800), professional women artists were greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts‚ given that women were typically deterred from working, training or being educated outside the home. Women were also perceived as lacking the necessary physical strength and the intelligence to succeed as fine artists (Boccaccio 2001, 251). Yet, we do know of successful women artists from this period, such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola, thanks not only to the scholarly efforts of modern-day art historians, but also the writings of early modern artistic biographers. These authors included life stories of selected remarkable women in their collected "lives of the artists"; that is‚ biographical compendia that were published throughout Europe following the popular success of Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (1550). Like their