Artists Seek Stability and Support Just Like the Rest of Us This week, the unofficial theme at The Lattice Group’s new headquarters in springy Stockholm, Sweden, is ART: we recently learned that spotlighted artist Sigrid Sandstrom was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, we interviewed advertising art director and artist Gustaf von Arbin, and just last night we watched “Who Does She Think She Is?,” a new documentary about female artists who are also mothers.
All of this art business is somewhat new territory for me. First of all, I don’t have a creative bone in my body—let’s just say, I was always little too good at coloring inside the lines. I’ve always seen artists as brilliant fringe members of society who shun the banality of the “real world” for the passionate excesses of creative freedom, and then rush off to commit suicide or cut-off their ears. In my mind, artists are deep and tortured and self-absorbed. They eschew the ordinary. They certainly don’t do diapers. 
As is often the case, I’m dead wrong. First, take Gustaf von Arbin, a twenty-something Swedish born artist who is leaving a mark on New York City figuratively, as an art director, as well as literally, with his inspired street installations (pictured). Gustaf looks every bit as hip and free-spirited as the caricature of artists I’ve long had in mind. Which is why I was so shocked to hear that for him “being more creative comes from being stable.” According to Gustaf, while “there’s more inspiration” in fast-paced, unpredictable New York City, “you can’t really take in inspiration if the bucket is full.” Like Sandstrom, Gustaf longs for the stability that Sweden’s security system provides all its citizens: the guarantee of a basic quality of life regardless of occupation.
In the United States, there are no guarantees. This keeps the art world democratic and on its toes: he who suffers most createth better, right? According to Fractured Atlas, a non-profit that provides services for artists and arts organizations, there are about 300,000 uninsured artists in the United States. Now, those are people who are really suffering for their art. They must be brilliant! Putting aside romantic notions of starving artists, however, Gustaf’s desire for stability begins to make sense. After all, if you spend your time scrounging to afford health care, pay the bills, and keep from being evicted, how much time do you have to focus on creating art?
And what happens when on top of those everyday concerns you throw a few kids into the mix? This is the topic of “Who Does She Think She Is?,” a new film brought to you by director Pamela Tanner Boll (winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary for her Executive Producer role on “Born into Brothels”). Boll explores the lives of five women artists who are also mothers, two professions that pay extremely poorly or not at all. While jobs that require caregiving, like nursing and teaching, have traditionally been filled by women and very poorly paid, I always thought the art world was an equal opportunity employer—you just had to be crazy enough to want to join it. As far as pay, you could potentially make millions—you just had to be talented enough. But as the film makes painfully clear, it also helps to have a penis.
Female artists in museums are few and far between: out of 399 works in the permanent collection of the MoMA, 19 are by women artists. The contemporary art scene isn’t much better. Though statistics are hard to come by, in a Village Voice article oh so cleverly titled “Where the Girls Aren’t," Jerry Saltz counted that out of 297 one-person shows at 125 well-known New York galleries in the fall of 2006, only 23 percent were solos by women. Two years later, now writing for New York Magazine, Saltz “checked out every show in every ground-floor gallery in Chelsea from 18th Street to 26th Street. Of 74 solos, only 16 percent were by women.”
So what gives? “Who Does She Think She Is?” shows how torn some women are between the deeply self-less act of being a mother and the necessarily self-involved practice of being an artist. I can’t help but wonder: do male artists who are also fathers hold themselves up to the same parenting standards as these female artists? Moreover, women artists are viewed by some gallerists as a poor investment—they might have children and stop producing art for a time. But a similar devaluation of a male artist’s potential career would never be made. These stereotypes, along with the old-boys-club among curators and museum directors, need to go so that society can benefit from having the voice of all its creative-types available. It would be great if those creative-types could also afford to go to the doctor now and again. I may never be one of them, no matter how much red wine I drink, but I definitely want the opportunity to wear my smart-looking glasses, stroke my chin, and ponder their contributions.
- Vetta
Interview with Pamela Tanner Boll coming soon!
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