Camille Morineau: "The unbearable thing is that there is no female equivalent of Picasso"

In the United Kingdom, the Brit Awards, the British equivalent of the Victoires de la Musique, voted the end of gender categories: no more awards for the best female and male solo artists, singers of both sexes will now be mixed.

In the Netherlands, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam created two funds dedicated to the acquisition of works by women after finding that they represented only 4% of its collections.

The trend is confirmed: the process of making women more visible in the artistic field is underway.

Has the end of injustice and discrimination sounded?

A classic hanging at the National Museum of Modern Art, at the Center Georges Pompidou, still presents an average of 13% women artists today!

A glass ceiling that Camille Morineau,

The result of his research, which made it possible to show between 2009 and 2011 more than 300 artists and a thousand works united under the title “elles@centrepompidou”, attracted 2.5 million visitors.

The rest of her career illustrates her commitment: the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition at the Grand Palais, it's her, Kiki Smith at La Monnaie de Paris (where she was artistic director from 2016 to 2019), again her, “Pioneers.

Artists in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties” at the Luxembourg Museum, always her.

Now director of Aware (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions), the association she co-founded in 2014, she works in Marie Vassilieff's former studio in Montparnasse, refurbished by designer Matali Crasset.

She continues her action for the promotion of the work of women artists.

In video, behind the scenes of the cinema portfolio: "Visions of women"

To read also Camille Morineau: "I have been criticized for ghettoizing women artists"

Miss Figaro.

– “Why have there been no great female artists?” is the question posed in 1971 by the American art historian Linda Nochlin.

Forty years later, what do you say to him?

Great women artists, there have been, but history has forgotten them, or rather ignored them.

The question of their visibility was already problematic when they were alive and famous.

Let us take the example of Joséphine Baker, a music-hall star who, in the 1920s, had fees much higher than those of the singers of her time, or the painter Tamara de Lempicka, who, at the time of the Roaring Twenties, sold much better and made much more money than Picasso.

Their work was recognized, but no historian felt it necessary to keep track of them, because they were considered exceptions, and, as such, did not form part of history, which retains only the great men.

Since history is written by men, the work of these female artists has received less attention,

less commented, less studied.

Today, like gymnastics specific to the 21st century, but which were not practiced before, they are systematically reintegrated into all history, not just that of art.

We are living through a historical and almost anthropological revolution, because by dint of discovering the presence of women in the cultural field, we have a much better knowledge of their place.

Not only in its articulation but also in its content, what in cinema is called the

because by dint of discovering the presence of women in the cultural field, we have a much better knowledge of their place.

Not only in its articulation but also in its content, what in cinema is called the

because by dint of discovering the presence of women in the cultural field, we have a much better knowledge of their place.

Not only in its articulation but also in its content, what in cinema is called the

.

In what way is the gaze that directors such as Jane Campion or Nicole Garcia have on the body of men and women specific?

What is the representation of female desire?

Does it contain this violence that can be perceived in the male gaze?

In 2022, we find the representation of women in Picasso's work unbearable.

For me, the unbearable is that there is no female equivalent of Picasso.

Tamara de Lempicka sold much better and earned much more money than Picasso

When did it become essential to re-examine history by giving back their place to women artists?

This reintegration took place in three stages.

appeared in the United States

.

The question of gender is then posed in a scientific way in all fields of the human sciences, and in particular in the history of art, the spearhead of reflection.

But this question being raised mainly by feminists, it is primarily feminist art that is analysed, in other words a small category of this vast history.

Then, there is a second period that begins in the early 2000s: we begin to organize exhibitions, and we publish in-depth works on this subject.

Finally, there is MeToo, the third major turning point, which anchors this question in an emergency and underlines that the absence of women is not limited to the history of creation, but that it is a matter of intimacy.

L'

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Written in 1804, the Napoleon code institutionalized until 1970 the submission of women to the authority of the father and the husband.

Is it because they have acquired the same civil and political rights as men that they assert themselves on the artistic scene?

They can vote and no longer owe obedience to their husbands, but they cannot free themselves from the mental burden or refrain from managing the household.

If these women had the time to create, they did not have time to promote their work, which has often been taken over by men, like the photos of Gerda Taro attributed to Robert Capa.

I lived it too.

This lack of time, which results in a lesser presence in the media, explains the career delay of women.

Why was Niki de Saint Phalle almost more famous than Andy Warhol in the 1960s?

Quite simply because it received strong media coverage.

And the media is the most accessible archive.

A passage on TV or an article, even negative or written in a cabbage leaf,

will be scanned by the National Library of France, and will therefore be available to researchers.

It is the first item referenced, before letters or private archives, the existence of which is most often ignored.

In 1929, Virgina Woolf published

It is an incredibly beautiful text, a mixture of personal remarks and philosophical reflections, which remains extremely topical.

She asks the two important questions;

that of money and that of space.

If we admit that the public space has long been exclusively masculine, the domestic space has been the prison or the refuge of women.

This is what I tried to show at La Monnaie de Paris, in 2017, with the “Women House” exhibition.

As early as 1929, Virginia Wolf encouraged women to find a place that they could lock up without being disturbed.

It was not until the 1970s that they succeeded.

I am thinking of the dancers, Pina Baush in Germany or Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown or Lucinda Childs in the United States, who have so profoundly transformed this field that

According to 2016 figures, only 7% of female composers, choreographers, directors, conductors are programmed in festivals, national orchestras... Are quotas needed for cultural professions?

I would appreciate it if the subsidized places only receive money on condition that they respect a form of diversity, and not only related to the question of gender, but I am not for quotas: programmers must be free and above all responsible for what theyre doing.

With the establishment of quotas, they escape criticism… We must not forget either that many female artists refuse to define themselves in this way, Annette Messager, for example, for fear of becoming a ghetto.

This was one of the main obstacles for Elles@centrepompidou, until they understood that it was not an exhibition on feminist art, but on the 20th century seen through the diversity of the creation of women… From now on, the decision-makers have no more excuses, they can no longer say:

we don't know them.

If they don't program female artists, it's a mistake, a malpractice.

awarewomenartists.com