Gender ratios in art

The art posters in the last post were all labeled Image de l'art 1988 Art Image and each included the artist and title of the work and its location. There was uneven representation of male and female artists and when I counted the figures in each painting I found that there was also more male adults than female adults portrayed.

There were 21 posters in total that I had found at a resale shop. They were individually priced and so I had picked out a few favorites one day. I liked them so much that I went back a few weeks later and bought the rest of the collection that remained.

Twenty of the twenty one posters had the artist's name listed. One poster was of an ancient mural from Crete and it didn't list an artist. Seventeen male artists and three female artists were included in the group of art from around the world.

Within the varied paintings there were 57 adult females and 81 adult males for a ratio of 70.37% females to males. There were slightly more female children included with roughly fifteen girls to nine boys - gender was sometimes more obvious than other times. Four babies were included within the group of 21 posters.

The roles that females were portrayed was largely domestic compared to the males who were portrayed in leadership or struggles against nature or fate. The themes support an idea that I had suggested in a previous post -- gender bias may be in part due to a tendency to instinctually think of females as being either a mother or lover, or if not those then she must be an evil seductress.

That seems unkind and unreal but this collection of art supports the roles. Women are mainly seen as mothers or working in domestic roles. They are also seen as observers in the background or at a man's side in the posters with a group. Except in one painting, however, where an older female fortuneteller is distracting a young man while three attractive young women are listening -- and pick pocketing from him in various ways. Another painting has images of death, grim reaper like, and the focal characters are more female in appearance while the observing characters are the ones that are more male in appearance (skulls and masked faces but with more or less feminine looking hats and headscarves).

I could add a list of the paintings and see if I could find links on line but that seems like a lot more work than I have time for at the moment. I wrote the list on paper last night and tallied the figures on paper -- old school but easier to carry up a ladder than a laptop. (Third post in the series, with list of the fine art from around the world.)

I hope everyone who planned to managed to get out to vote yesterday. I made it to vote, there was a library millage involved -- and libraries are important ;-)

Happy Wednesday.

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