Art History, but more inclusive.
Also known as my obsessive Pinterest journey so far...
Re-visiting a favorite post. I hope you find inspiration!
I always have had my list of favorite artists, whose work I studied or admired. They were, as often is the case, mostly male due to there not being much out there as far as representation in galleries, museums, or even art history books. I find 4 out of 5 books on artists are male. My college Art History and Survey classes in art school lacked this diversity. I’ve been on a quest over the past several years to discover the great, yet often obscure female artists in Art History. I had picked up books on art by women to read, took a course on Women in Art History well after receiving my degree, since it hadn't been available as a course until after I graduated, and studied about them, along with other artists for years.
Down the road, I discovered Pinterest and decided that this was going to be my arena to celebrate all my favorite artists. I created a few incarnations of images of works, portraits, and biographies of the artists, yet I wasn't satisfied. I ended up adding images from other sources, especially for the female artists works, as they were woefully lacking an online presence. I researched pertinent information on all of these artists. This morphed into making boards of movements or periods of art. Here I really was able to dig deep into the women who were overshadowed by their male counterparts but were so important and exceptional in their contributions to each movement and/or period.
I then wanted to make the female artists stand out, so they got an asterisk by their name. I was proud of this, until I wasn’t and just gave everyone their own board again, and added every woman I could find information on to their own board, asterisk still included. This became a really, really long Pinterest page. I then gave them a place alphabetically, a board with all the “A’s”, with each having their own sub-board. And these boards were huge! I went again and gave everyone their own board and got rid of anyone who I found very little information on, or their work really didn’t speak to me. Again, equal representation, just flip-flopped to artists I admire and get something out of studying. This process has been close to a decade, and I really hope I’m done obsessing over it. I also weeded out the spam followers who had no reason to follow my art page.
Feel free to peruse my Pinterest boards and maybe find an artist you weren’t aware of. I will be going back to add some history for each artist again.
I hope you find inspiration!
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, drop them in the comments and we can start a conversation.
I hope this finds you well. Take care of yourselves and one another.
Until next time, Cheers, Elizabeth
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