Tate Modern: Exploring Women Artists (1)

In this film, the Girls actress Jemima Kirke addresses the topic of women in art (or the lack them).

Kirke, best known as Jessa Johansson in the HBO series, looks at the changing role of female artists in a male dominated art world over the centuries - and how some of them eventually took on the establishment in the 1970s.

It is pathetic and ludicrous that history, men in particular, diminished and dismissed women in art.  Interestingly, though, while men commandeered painting and sculpting, women were left to find their own genre in media that were either somehow resonant their lot in a patriarchal society or something altogether different outside the purview of their male counterparts.  In other words, experimental art, as Kirke explains.  The point that they've led debates on art over the last four decades is important to know.