Blakey Likes to Point a Moral at Times

Agnes Martin

Blakey likes to point a moral at times and that evening in the hotel -- our last in Santa Fe -- she outdoes herself. As I maunder on about the day, my mother and the odd vagaries of taste, she delivers an irresistible challenge: name ten female artists of the 20th century who are better than O’Keeffe and I will clean up all the dog and cat poo in the backyard for ever. I start off confidently enough: Agnes M. (natch), Popova, Goncharova, Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Eva Hesse, umm . . . Living artists aren’t permitted, or photographers, so, gosh, Louise Bourgeois and Imogen Cunningham and Berenice Abbott and Kiki Smith and Cecily Brown and Marlene Dumas and Ida Applebroog and scores of others get knocked out at a stroke. (Nicole Eisenman – please know I worship you!) Marie Laurencin seems far too feeble to mention; so too, I’m afraid, does Vanessa Bell. Gwen John? Not exactly a she-titan of the brush. Elaine de Kooning? The canonisation of wives has never seemed to me an effective feminist strategy. Dame Laura Knight? I love her, but does anyone else? Joan Mitchell? Marvellous but . . . uhhh . . . I peter out at Number Seven or Eight in a welter of anguish and indecision. If only Kandinsky or Andy Warhol had been a woman.

-- Terry Castle, "Travels with My Mom," London Review of Books 29, 16 (August 16, 2007).