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Having just seen two very different exhibitions, we sat in the café at the Tate to exchange our impressions, whilst looking through the catalogue and leaflet we had acquired on our visit.
The first exhibition, at The National Gallery, presented Manet's portrait of his only pupil, Eva Gonzalès, and showed works by Gonzalès and other women artists in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Paris.
The second one was the first solo exhibition devoted to a black British woman artist in the Tate's history, and the most extensive survey of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's work to date. Although the artist's style is figurative, she paints only from her imagination and the subjects of her paintings are all fictitious.
“Well I feel we've moved from a bastion of maleness—that building … to an enclave, here, where it felt deeply womblike, and dreamlike …”
“It reminds me, by contrast, of what you said when we were walking around the Manet/Gonzalès exhibition. You felt that the people in the portraits and self-portraits seem boxed in, and you yourself felt frustrated.”
“I did. These women artists were trying to fit into what was there, what had gone before. They had to compromise a lot in order to be allowed to step into a man's world. Like immigrants, really …”
“Can you believe they were generally not allowed to have live nude models in case it corrupted them? That's why there were so many portraits and self-portraits.”