Salient writer Morgan Ashworth talks to Caroline Knowles and Rhiannon Platt, founders of the Tumblr Fuck Yeah Women Artists (fuckyeahwomenartists.tumblr.com).
Who is behind Fuck Yeah Women Artists? Are you women artists?
FYWA is collaborative effort between Caroline and Rhiannon. Caroline studied art history as an undergrad and Rhiannon is currently working on her MA in Art History. We both also work as female artists—Rhiannon minored in film as an undergrad and creates short films and Caroline dabbles in illustration and painting.
What is FYWA all about?
C: Sharing women’s art with the largest audience possible! Tumblr is the perfect forum for this because people can so quickly “reblog” our posts and share it with even more individuals. We try to stick to just the art and leave out commentary and let the work really speak for itself.
R: Representing both traditional and non-traditional female artists.
Why do you think it is important to showcase women artists specifically?
Pre-feminism, art history was very biased towards the idea of “the male genius artist”; think Da Vinci. Post-feminism forgotten female artists are slowly getting added into the art history canon, but receiving nowhere near the attention of their male counterparts. It’s about representing the unrepresented, both in terms of showing emerging artists as well as helping to rewrite the canon.
Do you think there is a noticeable difference between the work of female and male artists?
This isn’t really the issue. Instead it’s an issue of why women artists have not been integrated into the canon of art history as their male counterparts have. When you ask someone to name famous artists, you will most likely get a slew of male artists: Jackson Pollock, Leonardo Da Vinci, Banksy. Everyone should read “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by Linda Nochlin. She explains it very well.
Man it really sounds like I’m picking on Da Vinci a lot…
Are there any other requirements other than being a woman artist to be featured? Have you run into any difficulties or had anyone object to the site or its purpose?
No other requirements. And thankfully all of our readers are awesome. No mean notes, but some super nice ones.
When did you start the tumblr? Has it received much attention?
We started it back in February so it hasn’t been around too long but we’ve been receiving a lot of positive attention for it! Every day we gain a few more fans and followers. We encourage our blog to be interactive and for our readers to submit artworks and “artist of the day” suggestions for us
to feature.
Who are some of your favourite artists or pieces that have been featured on the site?
C: My favorites are some of the more up and coming contemporary artists—Jessie Henson, Emma van Leest, Noemie Goudal, etc.
R: I didn’t know that much about Andrea Dezsö, who we featured the other day. I loved her craft-as-art work. Also, I’m really into representing female filmmakers. I feel like filmmaking is left out of the arts because it appeals to the general population. So getting to put female directors like Julie Taymor and Jamie Babbit is amazing.