| Education and training: who learns? | ||
| The concept of genius is a contested category constructed to glorify the talents of especially | Párr. 1 | |
| gifted people and to elevate them above those destined for ordinary occupations. Feminist | ||
| scholars have skeptically observed that social factors play as influential a role as inborn talent | ||
| in selecting mostly male artists to stand in the ranks of geniuses. This is not a new idea; | ||
| 5 | Virginia Woolf noted in 1929 that historically women have not been in positions where their | |
| talents could be tried and developed. No matter what gifts nature may bestow on artists, they | ||
| must be trained; without education genius is merely a potential. Certain art forms present | ||
| formidable barriers, not only to opportunities for recognition but also to the fundamental | ||
| training required to discover talent and produce art. | ||
| 10 | The intellectual and philosophical ideas about the individual genius whose work is | Párr. 2 |
| the unique product of his creative efforts developed in the particular social and economic | ||
| context of modern Europe. Changes in art practice and consumption further contributed to | ||
| the gendering of the idea of the artist. But the participation or exclusion of women in the arts | ||
| has not been by any means uniform. It varies considerably depending on which art form one | ||
| 15 | selects for attention. Three genres of art—music, literature, and painting—are samples of the | |
| ways that women have been permitted or hindered from full participation in the arts. | ||
| These three genres in particular illuminate different features of conceptual | Párr. 3 | |
| frameworks governing art and the idea of the artist. Music, which has presented some of the | ||
| most tenacious barriers to women participants, elucidates subtleties about concepts of artistic | ||
| 20 | sensibility, emotion, and subjectivity. It is also a venue for discussing restrictions | |
| surrounding performance and the public presence of the artist. Prose literature, specifically | ||
| the novel, represents the other end of the spectrum of opportunities, for novel-writing | ||
| virtually began as a women’s genre, and women have always been major participants in this | ||
| art form, although the critical reception of their novels indicates some panic regarding the | ||
| 25 | prominence and popularity of female artistic sensibilities. Even though women still faced | |
| certain barriers that men did not, the history of novel-writing is not a history of exclusion. | ||
| Indeed, one could surmise that successful women artists breached some well-protected | ||
| precincts of creativity. Painting illuminates theories about the mentality of the creator of | ||
| visual art, focusing on the scope and power of vision and its ties with the intellect. Theories | ||
| 30 | about what is required to paint the world with accuracy are explicitly rooted in venerable | |
| philosophical ideas about human nature, knowledge, and achievement. | ||
| To understand thoroughly the resonance of gender in the fundamental concepts and practices | Párr. 4 | |
| of any given field would require considerably more detail and depth of research than can be | ||
| presented here. The purpose of this study is not to review the critical history of painting or | ||
| 35 | music, architecture or dance or literature, but rather to sketch gendered patterns of thinking | |
| about aesthetic matters and how art practice manifests the tenacity of certain fundamental | ||
| philosophical frameworks. | ||
| The general thesis that I shall advance is that the idea of women’s participation in art | Párr. 5 | |
| centrally relates both to concepts of feminine disposition and capacity and to ideas about | ||
| 40 | what constitutes a person’s descriptive identity. When placed into the social milieus that | |
| prevailed at formative points in the history of the arts, expectations about women’s identity | ||
| and the terms in which they defined themselves especially hampered their entering the fine- | ||
| art professions. Several touchpoints of analysis are useful to consider: (1) Whether an art | ||
| form demands the public presence of the artist, such that she would be on display to an | ||
| 45 | audience. In social classes and milieus especially sensitive to matters of propriety, whether | |
| or how a woman appears in public can be more or less crippling for the female performer, | ||
| whether musician, dancer, or actor. (2) Whether it requires a skill commonly considered | ||
| diminished in the female creative mind, such as mathematics. If it does, then education and | ||
| training in that art are apt to be foreclosed or truncated. (3) Or whether it requires a breadth | ||
| 50 | of experience that is considered inappropriate for a female to obtain. This issue often limits | |
| the reception rather than the production of women’s work, such as their writings, which are | ||
| often enjoyed but criticized for restricted scope and narrow vision, insuring that women’s | ||
| efforts will be counted as minor, manifesting “feminine taste.” Not all art forms make the | ||
| same demands on their practitioners, and so we find that patterns of inclusion and exclusion | ||
| 55 | vary with genre, time, and place. | |
| Referencia | ||
| Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “Education and training: who learns?” Gender and Aesthetics. An introduction, Routledge, 2004, pp. 59-61. | ||