Camille Morino. “It is unbearable that there is no female equivalent of Picasso.”

In the United Kingdom, the Brit Awards, the British equivalent of the Victoires de la Musique, voted at the bottom of the gender categories; there will no longer be awards for best female and male solo artist, singers of both sexes will now be mixed. In the Netherlands, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam created two funds dedicated to acquiring works by women after discovering that they represented only 4% of its collections. The trend is confirmed, the process of making women more visible in the artistic sphere continues. Has the end of injustice and discrimination sounded? A classic hanging in the National Museum of Modern Art at the Center Georges Pompidou today still features an average of 13% female artists. A glass ceiling that heritage curator Camille Morino decided to attack by diving into the collections to extract works from those that are often relegated to reserves.

The result of his research, which made it possible to exhibit more than 300 artists and a thousand works united under the heading “elles@centrepompidou” between 2009 and 2011, attracted 2.5 million visitors. The rest of his career shows his dedication; Niki de Saint Phalle’s exhibition at the Grand Palais, that’s her, Kiki Smith at La Monnaie de Paris (where she was artistic director from 2016 to 2019), she again, Pioneers. Artists in Roaring Twenties Paris” in the Luxembourg Museum, always him. Now director of Aware (Women Artists Archives, Research and Exhibitions), an association she founded in 2014, she works in Marie Vasilieff’s former studio in Montparnasse, renovated by designer Matali Crasset. She continues her campaign aimed at promoting the work of female artists. A long fight, as evidenced by this interview.

In the video behind the scenes of the film portfolio “Visions of Women”

Miss Figaro. – “Why have there been no great women artists?” – this question was asked by the American art historian Linda Nochlin in 1971. What will you say to him after forty years?
Camila Morino. – There have been great women artists, but history has forgotten them, or rather, ignored them. The question of their visibility was already problematic when they were alive and famous. Take the example of Josephine Baker, a music-hall star who in the 1920s had far higher royalties than the singers of her time, or the artist Tamara de Lempicka, who during the Roaring 20s; sold much better and made much more money than Picasso. Their work was recognized, but no historian felt it necessary to follow them, as they were considered exceptions and, as such, did not form part of the history that only the great preserve. Because history is written by men, the work of these women artists has been less seen, less commented on, less studied. Today, like gymnastics specific to the 21st century but never practiced before, they are being systematically reintegrated not just into art, but into history as a whole. We are experiencing a historical and almost anthropological revolution, because by discovering the presence of women in the cultural field, we know their place much better. Not only in its articulation, but also in its content, what is called in cinema women’s veil. What is so special about looking at male and female bodies like Jane Campion or Nicole Garcia? What is the representation of women’s desire? Does it contain this violence that can be perceived in the male gaze? In 2022, we find the representation of women in Picasso’s works intolerable. What is unbearable for me is that there is no female equivalent of Picasso.

Tamara de Lempicka sold much better and made much more money than Picasso

When did it become necessary to revise history by giving women artists their place back?
This reintegration took place in three stages. During the 1960s and 1970s, when the United States took place gender studies. The question of gender is then posed scientifically in all areas of the humanities, and particularly in art history, which is a spearhead of reflection. But this question, which is raised mainly by feminists, is analyzed primarily by feminist art, in other words, a small category of this huge history. Then there is the second period, which begins in the early 2000s; we start organizing exhibitions and publish in-depth works on this topic. Finally, there is MeToo, a third major turn that anchors this issue in emergency and emphasizes that the absence of women is not limited to creation history, but is a matter of intimacy. The impact is such that this movement has multiplied research in all fields; they unfold one after the other up to and including sports.

The Napoleonic Code, written in 1804, institutionalized women’s submission to the authority of their father and husband by 1970. Is it because they have acquired the same civil and political rights as men that they assert themselves in the artistic arena?
They can vote and no longer have to obey their husbands, but they cannot free themselves from mental burdens or refrain from managing the household. If these women had time to create, they would not have had time to advertise their work, which was often taken over by men, such as Gerda Taro’s photographs attributed to Robert Capa. I also lived. This lack of time, which leads to less presence in the media, explains the delay in women’s careers. Why was Nikki de Saint Phalle almost more famous than Andy Warhol in the 1960s? Simply because it was heavily covered in the media. And the media is the most accessible archive. A segment or article on television, even negative or written in a cabbage leaf, will be scanned by the National Library of France and will therefore be in the hands of researchers. It is the first to be referred to before letters or private archives, the existence of which is often overlooked.

In 1929, Virginia Woolf published Own roomwhere he specifically affirms that it is preferable to be single and have an annuity for creativity;
It is an incredibly beautiful text, a mixture of personal observations and philosophical reflections, which remains extremely relevant. He asks two important questions. money and space. If we accept that the public space has been exclusively masculine for a long time, then the domestic space has been the prison or asylum for women. This is what I tried to show at La Monnaie de Paris in 2017 with the exhibition “Women’s House”. Back in 1929, Virginia Woolf encouraged women to find a place where they could shut up without worry. It wasn’t until the 1970s that they succeeded. I think of the dancers, Pina Bausch in Germany or Yvonne Reiner, Trisha Brown or Lucinda Childs in the United States, who have so profoundly transformed this field that they have incorporated it into contemporary art.

According to the data of 2016, only 7% of female composers, choreographers, directors, conductors are programmed in festivals, national orchestras… Do we need quotas for cultural professions?
I would appreciate it if the subsidized places only got money on the condition that they respect some form of diversity and not just in terms of gender, but I’m not in favor of quotas either. developers should be free and primarily responsible for what they do. . By setting quotas, they avoid criticism… We should also not forget that many female artists refuse to define themselves in this way, for example Annette Messenger, for fear of becoming ghettoized. This was one of the main obstacles for Elles@centrepompidou, until they realized that it was not an exhibition of feminist art, but the 20th century, which is seen in the diversity of women’s work… From now on, the decision makers do not have. more excuses, they can no longer say we don’t know them. If women artists are not programmed, it is wrong, wrong practice.

awarewomenartists.com