Beyond the female gaze

Do women as artists paint differently from their male counterparts? I recently posed this question and was duly snubbed by Anjolie Ela Menon who counterposed: "Do you refer to Husain as a male artist?" Even while they prefer to be pitted against their peers regardless of gender, it is sociologically inevitable that the collective female voice should interest us. American art critic Jerry Saltz can't help wondering about it too. "When I criticise Joseph Beuys or Francis Bacon, nobody calls those opinions anti-male. Putting female artists or their subject matter off-limits is itself sexist and limiting," he insists. 

I believe women do paint differently from men yet I hesitate to use the term "feminist" for being corrosive and exclusionist. I cannot think of any male artist who paints the female view from their perspective, and not as men condescending to preempt the feminine outlook on a subject. They tend to paint the universal experience as opposed to women's more intuitively intimate ones. A few simple illustrations: Bharti Kher's use of bindis as fertility symbols is something only a woman could have achieved - can you imagine a man working with sperm-shaped bindis? And while husband Subodh Gupta uses steel utensils, they represent a larger world than that limited to women, even though those utensils are more familiar to women than men. When we view his work, it is never from a gender perspective; when we view Bharti Kher's work, it is rarely outside it.

Every time I am reminded of Arpita Singh's suggestion of the world as a terrible place for women because she places the female subject within a cycle of horror and violence, I think of Bhupen Khakhar's similar intimacy with the subjects of his paintings. Is that because he was gay? And, so, is it important to view works of art not only on the basis of their creator's sex but also their sexuality?

There has been a proliferation of women artists in recent years, perhaps because the creative world is less resistant to change than the corporate one. But since their signatures first started appearing on canvas, they have had to battle prejudice of a different kind. Critics often bring up the issue of the male, lascivious gaze as compared to the female one - I know I do - which tends not be misogynistic, but this may not be the general truth. Amrita Sher-Gil painted nudes the way a man might, with frankness, even curiosity. And so they ought - who else will know her body better than a woman? But to pit the male-female artist encounter as one limited to the objectification of nudes is itself limiting. The point remains that women artists paint things men do not concern themselves with. Take the folk modernist Madhvi Parekh, for instance. Her work is all about the minutiae of women's lives and affairs, as opposed to the grander themes of her husband, artist Manu Parekh. It doesn't concern her all that much whether it is considered feminist, or feminine, both or neither. For all her swagger, I could argue the same of Gogi Saroj Pal, though knowing her, I know she would protest either way.

Yet, Man Booker Prize novelist Eleanor Catton reminds us that this is limiting. "We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience," she writes. "And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive." Zarina Hashmi and Nasreen Mohammedi, Shilpa Gupta and Anita Dube, there is nothing "female" about their work, but even as they dissolve the gender debate, one might ask: Would male artists have a similar sensitivity? I'd have to hazard a no.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated