https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/white-girl-art
All art is narcissistic, and yet it seems utterly righteous to tell women that their experience is idiotic and unimportant, especially when they are making art that depicts their suffering with pain inflicted by the patriarchy.
This article fully rejects white women making art ‘about’ themselves, usually in the form of ‘body positive’ artworks that focus on the body. The article claims that this artwork is created in order to gain sympathy and attention from their audience. In what pseudo-intellectual realm does this have any semblance of reality? Consider male art – fully focused on their own unique and genius perception of the world. There is no rejection of this narcissism, but the critical audience are utterly annoyed by women assuming they have the same right to this self-interest.
There is also this dismissal of female disillusionment with their own bodies , a dismissal of the pain that is inflicted upon women by the traditional patriarchy that expects this feminine ideal I have looked at in my work. To combat these issues is not ‘radical’ or ‘revolutionary’ (god forbid) because these issues were already addressed by Jenny Saville in 1993! You stupid woman! Did you not know that your pain was erased by this one woman who addressed her individual body issues before you were born? The critics are bored by these countless women who address the most prevalent issue in her mind in an art institution that tells her to look inward. Perhaps these critics should question why so many women artists feel the need to express such a visceral and unsettling conflict between mind and body.
From this article I have learnt that to be a clever woman I must act like a man. I must ignore issues that have been addressed previously by another woman artist (because there can only be so many woman artists, and people get bored by the female experience). And finally, I must never represent the female form (leave that to the male artists) because it’s narcissistic (and there is nothing worse than a woman who doesn’t hate herself).
The article also urges these white girls to address the “people of colour, refugees, disabled people, and trans/nb people”. Where is the call for white men to do this? Where are the critics telling David Hockney to shut up about his lovely LA mansion, and paint about the trans experience? Or for Banksy to create a stencil of a wheelchair? Men are allowed to be entitled, but its an ugly look for a woman. And ewwww ugly women!
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