Hanging offence

Modern Scottish Men, a new exhibition celebrating the achievements of male artists in the 20th century, opens next month in Edinburgh. Men only; no women. Bold! Only joking. That show would never happen today. How could it? Where would an exclusive, specifically male-only exhibition be tolerated these days? A women-only show, on the other hand, would be fair enough; we need to point out that the wee dears can paint too. And so we have Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885–1965. Should we perhaps be feeling patronised, ladies?

The recent death of Brian Sewell has again thrown up his old allegations regarding the inferiority of women artists. ‘Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness,’ he said, and the art market would appear to support his position by stoutly refusing to take any great interest in work by female artists. A Georgia O’Keeffe sold for $44.4 million last year, which seems a lot until you consider that two years previously, the market had seen fit to lavish $118 million on a thoroughly bland Modigliani.

Examine the catalogue of most expensive artwork. In February this year, somebody paid nearly $300 million for one of Gauguin’s Tahitian pieces. A length or two behind are Cézanne, Rothko, Picasso and Pollock. Painters of greater or lesser ability fall in below them but not one of them is female, until you reach O’Keeffe. It was not until 2004, more than 30 years since the bloated market began throwing millions at works by men, that something by a living female artist, Marlene Dumas, scraped $1 million at auction.

The market is only part of the story. It operates according to its own purpose, and is, evidently, no great arbiter of quality. What other mechanism would rank Barnett Newman above Titian? What is important, and what endures, is not the market value of an artwork but the work itself.