I was struck as well by how many of these artists’ younger counterparts see the lives of those who picked them as models of self-possession and assuredness, even as the older artists themselves claim this wasn’t the case: “What I think we all saw in Margaret was confidence,” says the 34-year-old comedian Atsuko Okatsuka of the 54-year-old actress and comedian Margaret Cho. Many of these older artists faced overt sexism or discrimination (when she began her career in the 1960s, the 83-year-old writer Margaret Atwood was told, “Well, of course women can’t write”) their very presence, not to mention their accomplishments, is a testament to their perseverance - an undercelebrated but necessary quality in an artist’s life. It didn’t have to be someone from the same field or discipline it didn’t even have to be someone they knew - it just had to be someone who gave them a sense of hope, and in whom they saw either their younger selves or, in some cases, the self they wish they had been. Margaret Cho (left) and Atsuko Okatsuka.įor this issue, we asked 33 mid- and late-career female artists and creative people (the majority of them over 45) to identify a younger female artist who inspires them. Cheryl “Salt” James (left) and Sandra “Pepa” Denton (right), a.k.a. Yet if being a woman means always looking backward - to remind us of where we were, what we must avoid and how our predecessors managed in their own difficult circumstances - it means looking forward, too, as part of the ongoing exercise of hope that is also intrinsic to womanhood.Ĭlockwise from top left: Maria Grazia Chiuri (right) and Zadie Xa.

I always say that history is not a line but a loop, and it’s been dismaying and frightening for many to watch as we tumble down the other side of the curve. I suspect many women, in America and around the world, feel they’re in a state of whiplash as they’ve witnessed hard-won freedoms and rights become imperiled in recent years. Poor women’s lives are circumscribed further women marginalized because of their race, sexuality or ability, further still. Make art, live alone, have children, don’t have children: A woman’s choices are often circumscribed by the era in which she is born, and then again by how tolerant, encouraging or generous the men in her life - beginning with her father - are. For most of civilization (and even now), the question was never what women could do - it was what we were allowed to do.

Contemporary female portrait painters