Sex and Gender

July 11th, 2008

One critique of the Gilbert & George exhibition has been that it doesn’t speak to women.
Is this sexism?
As I mentioned in my last posting, the history of art is full of sex – mostly heterosexual and mostly created from a male point of view. It is only very recently – since about the beginning of G&G’s career in fact – that women artists have been actively acknowledged, and only in the last few decades have they begun to even remotely nudge the balance towards greater equality (and many would say there’s still along way to go). But does equality in practice mean equality in representation?
Gilbert & George do not objectify or disparage women in their art: in fact, there are no women to be seen. Does this inevitably mean they and their art are prejudiced against women? The homoerotic nature of some of the pictures on show, in addition to the representation of rent-boys and other of the London dispossessed marks, for many people, a sufficiently bold incursion into new territory.
How far should an artist go to be inclusive?
And if they aren’t does it follow that they demean those they exclude?

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