Big Daisy Painting Sells for Surprising Amount Considering It's By A Woman

A new world record auction price for a painting by a woman was set yesterday.  

£28.8 million was paid for this top-notch floral piece by Georgia O'Keeffe.  Originally estimated to fetch around £9.5 million, two keen bidders fought it out, smashing her previous record of a mere £3.9 million set in 2001.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1 (1932)

You may think this is a lot of money for a painting - and it is, although Jimson Weed has been to market twice before, achieving nowhere near the new record price – it sold for £620,000 in 1987 and £625,000 in 1994.

But in the art market, being a woman artist is bad news - the plain fact is men sell for more.  The art auction record is £90.8m for a Francis Bacon piece.   

Now, there are simply more artists who are male.  Lots of competition.  You could argue that that might make women's art more desirable, being rarer.  But no.  So why the discrepancy?  Is it sexism, and the market just values female art less?  Or that women don't have enough relevant things to say?  Or they say them in ways that male purchasers (because it's mainly men buying) can't identify with, ie. big daisies?  Women's art tends to be smaller, more emotional, less  in-your-face.  That would tend to suggest that market forces are telling women that their sort of art is less appealing, less marketable, less sellable.  Women - know your place.  Or is it that women just don't make good art?  Daisies are just a bit rubbish.

Anyway, the interesting thing about this painting is that it's being flogged off not by a private seller, but by the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The 17-year-old museum decided to sell three paintings from its collection of 1,149 works by the artist. Before the sale, its director, Robert A Kret, told the New York Times: “The museum holds half the artist’s output throughout her life. But still there are gaps that need to be filled.”

Selling your best exhibits when there's a finite supply is a bit odd.  O'Keeffe died aged 98, but a lifetimes output of around 2,500 artworks over such a long career isn't that much.  Artists don't retire, so I make that around 30 paintings a year.  What on earth was she doing the rest of the time??

But by selling three of their stock, the museum is not only trading up, but is increasing the profile and kudos of O'Keeffe in the art market.  Smart.

Or maybe they've decided to invest in some decent stuff by men...?

Read more on women painters in my blog HERE.

The Story of Amanda Vickery with Some Art

I've just caught episode 3 (the final episode) in the series The Story of Women in Art.  I blogged about episode 1 HERE.

In it, perky Prof Amanda Vickery marches purposefully around various scenic locations, leans doe-eyed against various walls in a curiously lumpy frock, and generally wastes a lot of time smouldering in front of the camera before explaining she now only has enough time left to talk about 6 artists.

BBC

Except they're not all artists.  We do have three  - historical painter and war artist Lady Butler, 

Lady Butler (Elizabeth Thompson), Scotland Forever!

forgotten Impressionist Berthe Morisot 

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle (1872)

and minxy is-that-a-petunia-or-a-vagina painter, Georgia O'Keeffe.  

Georgia O'Keeffe, Blue Flower, pastel 1918

But then the other half of the programme - 50% of the airtime! - is taken up with gardener Gertrude Jekyll, a Swedish woman who made her house lovely with some nice interior design (Karin Larsson), and a dress designer, Madeleine Vionnet.  I mean, what the...?

"All trailblazers!" declares Vickery, marching cheekily from Paris to America to Sweden - boy, can that woman march about.  But for crying out blinking loud woman, trailblazers they may be, but fine artists they are not.  

Daisies, cushions and frocks might all indeed be artistic expressions, and very meaningful, wonderful, life-affirming, life-changing expressions they are too.  In fact, I'd love to see a separate programme about Jekyll, Larsson and Vionnet. It would be fascinating.  I'd watch it.

But - and this is a very important but - they are not FINE art, and this programme is about FINE art - ie. sculptors and painters.  Which, by including these women, is doing a massive disservice to the actual subject matter of the programme, by elbowing out the real thrust and focus of the argument.

Good grief, it's not as if there's a shortage of subject matter.  There are loads of female fine artists out there, crying out for recognition - huge oceans of them, not waving, but drowning in a sea of historical obscurity.  But what does Vickery do?  Hold out a hand and lift them aboard the raft of scholarly acclaim?  Oh no.  It's daisies, cushions and frocks.  No cliches there, eh? 

Which brings us back to basic problem with Amanda Vickery as the presenter.  Because although she can walk down a street, and swagger through the streets of Paris in a mac with her hands in her pockets (but no handbag), and stride across the deserts of America, she doesn't know how to make a decent, scholarly, informed, focussed, pertinent programme about fine art.  And the reason we get daisies, cushions and frocks is because Vickery is a lecturer in in British social, political and cultural history, and so the subject matter is derailed into her area of interest.

So was it too much to ask an actual Art Historian to make an art history programme??   Or are there no pretty lady art historians who can walk attractively and lean up against walls seductively?

Women artists deserve better.

You can see Episode 3 HERE on BBC i-Player.