Why Are Art Collectors Still Shortchanging Women Artists?

It’s no new news that the art world remains a man’s world for the most part, but that the situation’s getting better. Cindy Sherman’s major retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman, which closes its run at the MOMA on June 11^th (and which I wrote about here), is a clear sign that museums are finally coming around to the idea of featuring female artists on the same scale as they’ve always featured male artists. But even a woman as officially canonized as Sherman cannot command the same auction prices as men. Her Untitled #96 (from 1981, shown above) went for nearly $4 million USD, which is nothing to scoff at, but isn’t even one fifth of what Jeff Koons was able to get for his Balloon Flower. As a recent article in The Economist showed all too clearly, art collectors are spending bigger than ever before on post-World War II artists, but just not on post-World War II female artists. Why are art collectors still shortchanging women artists? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Are Art Collectors Still Shortchanging WomenArtists?"

[Image: Cindy Sherman. Untitled #96, 1981.]

Louise Bourgeois: Walking Through the Spider Woman’s Web

When French-American artist Louise Bourgeois passed away in May 2010, most remembered her as the “Spider Woman” thanks to her Maman series—giant metal spiders scattered all over the world in a macabre modern art gesture of maternity. Literally trapped in the shadow cast by those mammoth mothers of her own invention, Bourgeois’ other work done over her nearly century-long life has been sadly neglected. Germano Celant’s Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works brings together for the first time Bourgeois’ mostly non-arachnid art. Taken as a whole, Bourgeois’ oeuvre seems a complex web of personal and philosophical associations, but Celant acts as the perfect guide to lead you not necessarily to safety—for Bourgeois is never safe—but to a greater understanding of this complex and important artist. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Louise Bourgeois: Walking Through the Spider Woman’s Web."

[Image: Louise Bourgeois. Untitled, 2005. Fabric, 16 x 21 inches (40.6 x 53.3 cm). Ursula Hauser Collection, Switzerland.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of Germano Celant’s Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works.]