Heard the one about the gynaecologist and the artist?

Once I was a young artist raised in the sixties and living the seventies. To the art school came the man raised in the twenties and living the Reformation; he is the assessor. He sallies forth into the studio and parks his tweed bum against the desk, he measures me up a bit, taking in the merry Oxford bags and platform heel, rolls his eyes over me a bit more, both measures and rolls his eyes over my life class work and says obscurely, “Ladies shouldn’t wear trousers unless, of course, they are Marlene Dietrich” With that he stands up straight, unbalancing the desk top, sending everything crashing to the floor. His perspective being women shouldn’t wear trousers when painting naked women because it is not ladylike.

After the birth of my first born in the 70s I am in need of the services of a gynaecologist. My two midwives, pre and during the birth, had been single women without children and the gynaecologist is male – neither unusual at that time. The midwives are just on the right side of convent virgin bossy, the gynaecologist just on the wrong side of over familiar. He is an arrogant man giving me an examination with creepy familiarity. He explains the problem with my cervix with all the empathy of a porn film director, violates me with patronage, condescension and sneaky contempt. His perspective of my cervix comes from another angle completely. 

I receive an art award for two paintings which it is thought necessitates some explaining. I launch into details of how the work reflects the inner workings of my past adolescence fears and longings, how it references my influences of religious piety, religious violence and art history. Overlooking all this, two males, one the judge of the awards, talks about the perspective, planes and tone and the other male asks where I got it framed. My perspective is lost in the theory.

In my daughter’s head the laundry/shopping list runs away with the dish and spoon, her child’s needs competes with the creative space required in her head. Her periods, acquired female traumas and fuzzy hormones are evolutionary barriers before she begins to compete with cultural inequality. How can her work not be influenced by this perspective. 

I watch a programme about Dora Carrington, carefully inclusive, the critics both male and female. All mutual admiration until the male critic cannot help but laugh at the suggestion that Dora’s perspective was clouded by the want of love and security before the love of art. In his perspective, her tone, the plane, the frame speaks more than the artist. Dora ended her artistic life by shooting herself when love died. 

To women critics interested in telling the back story of female artists; shout a bit louder please. Our perspective is being drowned out by the men banging in nails to construct frames of a different perspective while we ooze out unseen underneath. Or am I still being ridiculous.