A Fish Without A Bicycle
Joe Kagle

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As the only man on this platform, giving a lecture on American Women Artists, there are some general ideas with which I wish to start. When I was in my twenties, my wife reminds me, my ideas were not what they are now. I thought that there was a vast difference between men and women artists, and of course the men were better artists. Just look at history. There are so many more of them who are famous. It took me years to learn that history is who writes it and for centuries men wrote the history. It would be interesting to go back in time and see what history would look like if a woman was the author. But that is not possible.

It is possible though to look at recent American history since the “Femininist Movement” started in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The Susan B. Anthony dollar came out, I believe, in the 1970’s since she was an early women’s advocate in America for the vote. American women have made a contribution to the arts since Mary Cassatt in the late 19th century, showing with the Impressionists and being accepted as one of their own. But the “Movement”, headed by Gloria Steinem, got rolling in the 60s and 70s. Men had written histories before that with quotes like, “A man without a woman is like a fish out of water.” Steinem changes all that with the statement, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

Therefore let me begin with my new insight into American Women Artists.

There are no American artists. There are no black artists. There are no Georgian artists. There are no women artists.

THERE ARE: Artists who are American. Artists who are black. Artists who are Georgian. Artists who are women.

The similarities between artists of different gender are greater than the differences.

That said, there are ways that women see the world that men can learn from and improve their outlook on our lives. This happened to me in an exhibition of photographs by an artist from America who is a woman, Annie Leibovitz. I am amazed at the insights that she brings through her camera. Let us wander through these photographs and see what Women look like who are Americans.

I will show only a few examples but as Susan Sontag says, “Each of these pictures must stand on its own. But the ensemble says, So this is what women are now- as different, as varied, as heroic, as forlorn, as conventional, as unconventional as THIS.”

No one seeing these images will fail to note the confirmation of stereotypes of what women are like and the challenge to those stereotypes. Each of these women will be looked at as models (especially by other women): models of beauty, models of self-esteem, models of strength, models of transgressions, models of victimhood, models of false consciousness, models of successful aging.

No collection of images of men can be interrogated in the same way. But no exhibition of men would be undertaken in the same spirit. How could there be any interest in asserting that a man can be a stockbroker or a farmer or an astronaut or a miner? Men can be looked on as object of beauty, by women as well as men. “That would be an exhibition of lustful imaginings to women and to other men,´ as Sontag writes. But when men are viewed as a sex object, that is not their prime indentity.

Again, quoting Sontag, “The tradition of regarding men as the creators and curators of their own destinies and women as objects of male emotions and fantasies (lust, tenderness, fear, condescension, scorn, dependence), of regarding an individual man was an instance of humankind and an individual woman as an instance of…women, are still largely in tact. In no language does “she” stand for human beings of both sexes. This exhibition opens the eyes of men and, I hope, the eyes of women to the realities of the 21st century. Leibovitz has captured a moment in time on film, using her artistry and her creativity, to give us a capsule that is the woman in America.

From the Greeks to the present day, the idea of beauty is what makes each of these women qualify as subjects for a work of art. Of course, the beauty of women made them ideal subjects. But beauty was the only reason to take a woman’s portrait or as a symbol of character traits that fit a woman for genteel domesticity. In the early 1860s a well-connected, middle-aged Englishwoman named Judith Margaret Cameron took up the camera as a vocation. She usually photographed men and women differently. Men were posed as the main subject of a composition; women were background or used to personify ideals of womanliness drawn from literature or mythology. What qualified the women was their beauty, as fame and achievement qualified the men. For a woman to be intelligent was not essential, not even particularly appropriate. It was in fact considered disabling. Beauty- as photographed in the mainstream tradition that prevails even now- blurs women’s sexuality or exploits it as in Playboy. But even here, the body might be saying one thing and the face another. The identification of women with beauty only was a way to immobilize women.

Women like Gloria Steinem changed all that with the simple phrase: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Annie Leibovitz is not a femininist in the same sense as Steinem but her photographs sing of the many dimensions of the subject of “Woman”.

In the past, in photography and painting, women were seen as always young. A man ages into his power. A woman ages into being no longer desired.

Therefore, the ideal for men and women was in the past, and sometimes in the present, different. For a woman, she must be forever young, forever good-looking, forever sexy- so beauty is still a construction, a transformation, a masquerade. In Steinem’s view of the world, beauty is a way to keep the status quo, to keep women barefoot, “stupid” and in the kitchen (or the bedroom, but never the boardroom or the corporation). This is changing slowly in America but it is changing. Annie Leibovitz shows this change in her portraits. A man to succeed must be good at what he does; a women must be good at her job and sexy. All occupations, except for a few (prostitute, nurse, secretary), are gender-labeled. One has to put the word “woman” in front of most job titles when it is a woman doing “men’s” work. How many times have you heard woman policeman, woman politician, woman vice-president, etc.?

The camera shows us many worlds, and the point is that all the images are valid. I believe, and Leibovitz shows it, a woman can be anything she wishes to be and also be the subject for a photographic work of art. A life is many times referred to as a “life style”. Styles do change and Leibovitz chronicles those changes in the woman in America. The concept that anyone, woman or man, can fulfill their individuality is a radical idea. But it is an idea that the 21st century is slowly embracing. Annie Leibovitz allows the camera and her own individuality to show “woman” in America. Of course, an exhibition of photographs of women is not an opinion, in contrast to what I have presented in my words. Or is it?

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