Examining the issue of why women artists in their late life are suddenly garnering world-wide recognition, she first suggests that the early period of these women's live is accounted for by their looks. 'In a world slavishly devoted to youthfulness, are middle-aged women just intrinsically boring? Do we only get interesting again in late age, when we no longer remind people uncomfortably of their mothers?"
Or perhaps we're looking at the particular life circumstances of women born in the first part of the 20th century. Successful creators, like successful criminals, need means, motive and opportunity. Motive is hardly a problem. Means and opportunity? However self-denying one is, there's a basic requirement of money and time. Just being able to sell a work was a huge hurdle from some of these women, early on; public galleries with their male curators were often uninterested. And time is essential - not just the freedom from one's children but sometimes form other family members. The artist Paula Rego, now highly successful at 79, looked after her older and then much better-known artist husband, Victor Willing. Only after his death did Rego find her real subject matter" - rage.
But there's something else too, something interior. It's about psychological permission: about allowing yourself to strive and be successful. For women of these generations, perhaps only the post-maternal, post-sexualized self could grasp at the freedoms all creative people need.
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