Regarding Margaret Keane and her husband usurping her credits -- even though I hope it happens less these days that husbands -- or "connected" partners -- try to take credit for a female artist's works, I do wonder sometimes whether there is more involved in the occurrence than just the "social norms" of the past where the works of the "little woman" were devalued. I think that psychological factors and emotional ones can come into it as well.
I've been in a situation where I basically subverted my own professional ambitions so as not to ... well, outshine the person I was in a relationship with. It wasn't a situation where he was attempting to take credit for my work, but my interests were far more wide-ranging than his, and so I curbed myself in for the sake of "his comfort." What can I say -- I was smitten. It was a good thing the relationship did not work out, that is, not a full entanglement. I don't think I would have been able to continue paring down my own creative interests just for his comfort. As it was, I was beginning to chafe at the self-imposed restrictions I had built into the situation.
So, I think that sometimes in the past, women have quietly let their work be usurped in spite of their inner creative drive, just to keep the seeming haven of the relationship.
But in the end, it does boil down to the necessity of being true to oneself, doesn't it? Or as the pompous Polonius says in HAMLET: "to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any" one (well, of course, good ole Shakes wrote "man", but it is a universal truth).
Regarding Margaret Keane and her husband usurping her credits -- even though I hope it happens less these days that husbands -- or "connected" partners -- try to take credit for a female artist's works, I do wonder sometimes whether there is more involved in the occurrence than just the "social norms" of the past where the works of the "little woman" were devalued. I think that psychological factors and emotional ones can come into it as well.
I've been in a situation where I basically subverted my own professional ambitions so as not to ... well, outshine the person I was in a relationship with. It wasn't a situation where he was attempting to take credit for my work, but my interests were far more wide-ranging than his, and so I curbed myself in for the sake of "his comfort." What can I say -- I was smitten. It was a good thing the relationship did not work out, that is, not a full entanglement. I don't think I would have been able to continue paring down my own creative interests just for his comfort. As it was, I was beginning to chafe at the self-imposed restrictions I had built into the situation.
So, I think that sometimes in the past, women have quietly let their work be usurped in spite of their inner creative drive, just to keep the seeming haven of the relationship.
But in the end, it does boil down to the necessity of being true to oneself, doesn't it? Or as the pompous Polonius says in HAMLET: "to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any" one (well, of course, good ole Shakes wrote "man", but it is a universal truth).