Making room for art
Post-Soviet women and the struggle for creative expression
Archived article from Oct 5, 2001
By Alice Roche Cody
Compiling a book of interviews with post-Soviet Eastern European women artists on their lives and careers was, as it turned out, no easy task. In the four years they spent on the project, Matthew and Renee Baigell encountered numerous obstacles: hostile husbands, subjects afraid to talk openly and women who bristled at the mention of feminism.
But the two persevered. For each of the more than 80 interviews, Matthew manned the tape recorder, while Renee, who speaks fluent Russian, tried to put her subjects at ease.
"We were strangers walking into someone's studio with a portable tape recorder, and many of these artists had a history of problems with the secret police, so there was a certain hesitancy," says Matthew, a professor of art history on the New Brunswick campus. "My wife, who understands Russian culture, was able to put the women at ease. They could see that we're American, not the KGB." Once her interviewees were more relaxed, Renee slowly coaxed them to talk.
Renee, who has taught in the English and comparative literature departments at Rutgers, interviewed women artists ranging in age from 30 to 80. She asked her subjects to discuss their status as artists, the difficulties they experience pursuing art in a male-dominated field and the struggles they face making room for art while caring for children.
In their newly published book, "Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia, Latvia, the First Decade," the Baigells weave the artists' interviews with their own thoughtful narratives. Co-published by the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and Rutgers University Press, the book is the first in-depth analysis of the lives of contemporary post-Soviet women artists. Publication coincides with an exhibit at the Zimmerli, "Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists from the Dodge Collection," which was curated by Renee Baigell and runs Sept. 8 through Nov. 4.
The book sprang from the couple's previous publication, "Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika" (Rutgers University Press). While working on the earlier book, the two realized that the issues of female artists needed further exploration.
The overriding struggle of the female artists interviewed in the Baigells' latest work is trying to balance an art career with family life. As Alena Romanova, a Russian figure painter and jewelry maker, states, "A woman in this country has one role -- that is motherhood. In this country, she can only be a mother. And in relationships to men, she is still a mother."
Even today, post-Soviet culture dictates that if a family has children, the mother must care for them, while the father is excused from such domestic responsibilities.
Latvian artist Ieva Iltnere, born in 1957, attempts to strike a balance by devoting a few hours each day, between feeding her family and cleaning the house, to art. Yet her husband's days are devoted solely to art. "I don't have the same privileges as he does," she says. "I have to be home for the children at a certain time and do things with and for them. All these obligations are stifling, and I feel my brain is cut into different pieces and placed in different compartments. But my husband can allow his project to take up his entire mind. I become envious when this happens and experience myself as weak."
In spite of these difficulties, Iltnere, who graduated from the Latvian Academy of Arts, is driven to create art. Like many of the women included in the book, she has an unfailing dedication to her craft. "There is no end to housework, but a painting is different," she says. "It is permanent and lasting, whereas laundry is constant and continuous. I have to paint to preserve something of myself."
Although not the norm, a few of the women the Baigells spoke with chose art over marriage and a family. Valentina Pivovarova, an abstract painter born in the 1920s, remained single because the alternative would have meant sacrificing her art. "One has to desire to be an artist more than life itself," she insists. "If a woman concentrates on housework, then nothing will come of her dreams. Art for us is tied to our lives. Art is like a calling."
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