An interesting read from The New York Times: The X Factor: Is the Art Market Rational or Biased? shows that women are still under-represented and under-priced in the contemporary art market, especially at art auctions.
In the early 1950's Lee Krasner, not yet famous but already a promising Abstract Expressionist painter, asked Hans Hofmann, her former teacher, to help her land a gallery show. He offered her the biggest compliment he could: "This is so good," he said of her work, "you would not believe it was done by a woman." Nonetheless, he declined.
The article goes on to conclude:
Of all the world's markets, the art market is perhaps the most intrinsically subjective. No one calculates the price of a painting by tallying the time it took and multiplying that by the artist's hourly rate. Nor do raw materials count for much: expensive paintings are, more or less, made of the same stuff as cheap paintings. For all the experts and connoisseurs and scholars and analysts, when it comes right down to it, the price of a work of art is based on what buyer and seller agree it's worth, and that's all. And as in almost every other field where money changes hands in society, women's production has been and continues to be valued below that of men, except in this field, the difference is sometimes tenfold or more.
Asking why women's art sells for less than men's elicits a long and complex answer, with endless caveats, entirely germane qualifiers and diverse, sometimes contradictory reasons. But there is also a short and simple, if unpopular, answer that none of those explanations can trump. Women's art sells for less because it is made by women.
My good friend and artist, Laura has some more comments on this. Also check out Lohan's perspective on women and literature in Sri Lanka.
