Dear future English and Art History majors, here’s something I wish I had realized earlier in my undergraduate career:
Any discussion of canonical female artists or authors usually begins by noting how their work is reflective of how clinically insane they were, mining personal history for critical insight. Take Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who was raped and generally batted around by contemporary male painters in Italy — a detail that dominated the discourse of her paintings like Judith and Holofernes above.
I don’t mean to suggest that this kind of critical approach isn’t fair game, but be wary of how quickly academic types lean on it when discussing women, while similarly sociopathic men authors and artists are first and foremost admired for their pristine formalism.
For examples in literature, see Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson.
