Recalculating Art
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
Art by women is literally undervalued. The highest price achieved by a contemporary female artist is $12.4m, while it is $91m for a man. If a painting is signed by a man it goes up in value, signed by a woman it goes down. We might expect this historically, but as the majority of art students today are women, why is there such a gender value gap now? To untangle this mystery, Mary Ann Sieghart enters a thrilling world of glitzy, high-stake auctions and make-or-break gallery decisions. She lifts the lid on the opaque world of art valuation, explores how punters react to genderless AI art, and uncovers historic collusion and contemporary bias. She asks if male artists are actually better than women and why, in the bible of the art world today, there is just one woman mentioned, as a footnote. Pinning down work being done to level this playing field, Mary Ann talks to the galleries showing more works by women, discovering powerful women shifting the attention and canny investors who are realising maybe it is just the right time to buy. Featured in the programme are: Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern; Prof of Finance, Renee Adams; from Sotheby’s Helena Newman and Marina Ruiz Colomer; philanthropist Valeria Napoleone, Bellatrix Hubert from David Zwirner gallery; author Helen Gorrill, art curator Naomi Polonsky, and the London Art Fair. Producer: Sarah Bowen
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, this is seriously from BBC Radio 4 and I'm Vanessa Casile. |
| 0:47.0 | This podcast brings you an incredible selection of documentaries about everything you could imagine |
| 0:52.0 | and some things you couldn't. |
| 0:54.4 | Next up, something captivating, enlightening and seriously good. |
| 0:59.9 | Opening here with Lot 1, the sensational sensational immaculately executed falling woman it's |
| 1:06.0 | auction time at southerbies and they're opening the bidding with a fabulous |
| 1:09.7 | painting by American artist Anna Wyant. It's going to break records for her work. |
| 1:16.0 | But auction prices for art by women are still dramatically lower than for art by men. |
| 1:24.0 | You might expect this for historical paintings. |
| 1:27.0 | After all, there were many fewer old mistresses than old masters. |
| 1:31.0 | The world record for any work sold at auction is 450 million dollars for |
| 1:38.6 | a work by Leonardo da Vinci, but the record for a work of art by a woman sold at auction is only 44.4 million dollars for a work by Georgia O'Keefe. |
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