I say this in the book’s introduction, but I was so fed up with women being seen as the wife of, the muse of, the daughter of, the sister of. Are you really going to contextualize this woman by who she knew? How in 2023 are we still contextualizing ? And I remember looking at a 50-word placard, and it was like, Yeah, she was a contemporary of Mark Rothko or Willem de Kooning, you know. It was an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery that was on abstract art across the globe from 1940 to 1970. This reminds me of the column you wrote for The Guardian a few months ago in response to a London gallery’s wall labels that placed some female artists in the context of the men in their lives. Speaking of Linda Nochlin, where’d the name of the Instagram page and the podcast come from? I was just sort of addicted to finding out about all these women’s lives. And it did require quite a lot of research, but then you just get into these rabbit holes of more and more artists.

I remember taking myself off to the British Library and tracking down Linda Nochlin’s book, the catalog of her exhibition from 1976, “Women Artists: 1550–1950,” and being like, Oh my goodness, women have been artists for centuries.Īnd the reason why I chose Instagram, I always say: Use all the resources that you have at your disposal. First of all, how are there no women artists? And second, how have I never thought about this? Essentially, have I actually been looking at art history from a male perspective? I honestly had to check myself. I had just finished university, and I went to this art fair and looked around me, and suddenly realized that there were no women artists. How did you come to start The Great Women Artists Instagram account, the precursor to your podcast? No one was like, Oh, this is Louise Bourgeois and she’s French American and this this this… It was more like, Here’s this spider, how does it make me feel? I remember when I was about six seeing the Louise Bourgeois spider there, and thinking, like, What is this? And I realized it was up to me to decide what I thought. It was the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, so more of an art space, really. ĭo you remember the first piece of art you loved?

Also my elder sister was really into art history, and so I basically just copied her. I remember the first time I ever took the Tube myself, I went to go see the Chris Ofili exhibition at Tate Britain. I don’t come from an artistic family, but my parents were always very encouraging of museum visits. Katy Hessel: Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by art.

Men without women novel