Renée and I were talking last night about famous artistic women. Actually, we were talking about how we were having problems remembering the names of famous artistic women.
It all started because I was trying to think up the names of any famous female classical composers. The problem is I couldn’t think of any. Sure, I could recall the names of famous classic performers who were women, but I was a bit surprised that I couldn’t think of any women who actually created classical works.
This then spread to directors, poets, writers, and painters, and we both had problems naming more than a handful of famous women in each category.
Has the cultured history been so dominated by men that women’s expression was never allowed to reach a wide audience?
Even now, I’m trying to think of famous present day women, and besides a smattering of so-called “independent” artists, the big names elude me.
Can anyone who’s less of a philistine than me help? Are women getting a fairer chance of having their work reach a wide audience in the arts, or is it still the same male-dominated business as usual?
You're not a phillistine... but save for a few classical composers such as Fanny Mendelssohn a lot of women published music under men's names.
The topic isn't being ignored by academia, there are more feminist musicologists than you can shake a conducting baton at.
Don't even get them started on "masculine" chord progressions.
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