The Art of Exclusion

by Melisa Ozturk

Stolen Art

In the wake of her arrival in New York City in 1957, Yayoi Kusama, a young Japanese woman from a rural provincial town in Japan, armed with a suitcase brimming with drawings and a fierce desire to succeed, discovered herself casted to the position of "outsider" in America: a female artist in an otherwise hostile, male-dominated world, a Japanese immigrant in an aggressively white artistic scene, and a victim of neurosis and depression. 

She was a female artist scarred by enstrangement from the very outset of her creative life, subjected to the misogynistic tendencies of a milieu which still hardly condones women, dismissing them with such expressions as “woman painter,” as obnoxious and derogatory as that of “woman driver.” 

From her unsung soft sculptures to the outright appropriation of her wallpaper images, the artistic landscape of Kusama’s past has been paved by exploitation, alienation and fabrication. The very celebration of male artists from Claes Oldenburg to Andy Warhol as pioneers in these artistic forms substantially obscures the endeavors of female artists such as Kusama, who were often the ones spearheading such developments: it was not until Kusama’s soft sculptural pieces were exhibited did Oldenburg garner much worldwide acclaim for featuring them in his show, after having previously only collaborated with harder materials throughout the 1960’s. In a similarly opportunistic spirit, Warhol had the temerity to blanket the walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery in wallpaper in 1966, only after having applauded those crafted by Kusama within her own exposition. 

That such driven women were amongst the most prominent figures of a triumphant wave of contemporary artists could thus not be recognized, or perhaps even envisioned, by their male counterparts. The breakthroughs Kusama has brought into the contemporary artistic world will remain unnoticed for several years, and she continues to be challenged to shine within a world scarred by its enduring legacy of misogyny, one in which women have been constrained to exist in the shadows of men. 

Reclaiming the Muse

The image of the Muse is one of artistic inspiration, of a fountain of inner creative drive and of innovation, but it is all too often erroneously cast as a means of defining the creative identity of female artists, confining them to a narrow path of influence on the artistic realm. 

Such was the status in which female artists such as Jo Hopper and Zelda Fitzgerald were unjustly restrained, forever battling to forge their own artistic identities in the shadow of their husbands. 

A parallel may thus be found in the creative lives of these two women, both of whom were relegated unfairly to the rank of mere muses or companions when, first and foremost, they were true artists. 

Jo Hopper, by her native name Josephine Verstille Nivision, embraced her artistic pursuits at an early age, expressing herself fluently in drawing and acting while in college. Her union to Edward Hopper, initially thought of as a creative idyll, swiftly evolved into a conjugal affliction for Josephine, as periodic tensions dimmed her sense of accomplishment. Just as her husband steadily rose to prominence, she sidelined her own desire to serve as her husband’s impresario. But more than a pure muse, Josephine contributed decisively to the artistic ascension of her husband, acting as a liaison between him and his professional relations so as to expose his works to the attention of the artistic scene. 

In a similar light, Zelda Fitzgerald was a defining agent in her husband's writings, epitomizing the persona of the flapper—a free-thinking woman with the world at her command—and lending her voice to a number of his female personas. Yet, this ostensibly collaborative pairing blurred the line between sheer admiration and appropriation, with Fitzgerald so often directly bringing his wife’s very words and writings into use. Scott most famously made use of Zelda's heartfelt response to the birth of their child in The Great Gatsby, as Daisy Buchanan declares in reply to the birth of her daughter, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

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Trapped in the misogyny of a world that just started to consider the possibility that women can have the right to be independent beings capable of making their own decisions, these women are thus representative of the difficulty of shaping not only an artistic but also personal identity in the shadows of men. From overcoming a traditional southern upbringing and its societal constraints like Zelda to understanding how to establish one’s prominence as a minority in every sense of the word like Kusama, the tales of the women prove to show the difficult battle of establishing one’s place within a society that rejects or refuses to recognize our prominence by pure contempt and prejudice. The below quote perfectly illustrates the lifelong struggle of creating one’s artistic identity as a woman in a society powered by men. 

Entangled in the misogyny of a world that has just begun to entertain the notion that women can have the potential to be autonomous beings capable of their own judgments, such women are thus emblematic of the difficulties involved in forging not just an artistic but also a personal identity in the shadows of men. Be it the battle to surmount a traditional Southern upbringing and its societal constraints, like Zelda, or the difficulty of coming to terms with being a minority in every sense of the word, like Kusama, the stories of these women reveal the ongoing struggle of finding a place for oneself in a society that rejects or refuses to recognize our prominence out of sheer disdain and prejudice. 

One can thus not overlook the legacy of exclusion upon which today’s celebrated male artists flourish, and fail to recognize the pivotal understanding that contemporary female artists have sprung out of a prolonged narrative of marginalization that has marked the entire course of the history of art.