What does a woman do with this “power” guidance of mentors and teachers? Some I suppose accept it and buckle down to make strong, bold, powerful art. For some women this may even be natural. We come in all shape and sizes and personalities and temperaments after all. But bold and strong was not who I was, and I saw no reason why I should have to abide by this prescription. I saw no reason that the value of bold and strong should be perpetuated by me. I saw the requirement as sexist.

But, I lived in a patriarchal world where even many of the most gender-equality enlightened men I knew still adhered to the valuing of bold and powerful. They did not see the valuing of power as perpetuating a non-egalitarian patriarchy.

If I objected to the idea that only “powerful” art was important, I also objected to the valuing of power itself. Power is something that one group exercises over another. In a patriarchy, that power is exercised by men over women. But as art historian Linda Nochlin proposes, “. . . symbolic power is invisible and can be exercised only with the complicity of those who fail to recognize either that they submit to it or that they exercise it.” (Nochlin 2). Wouldn’t I be complicitly submitting to power if I proceeded to paint powerfully by professorial prescription?

I couldn’t help but wonder if Amy Beach had buckled to the pressure in her day to imitate the strength of the symphonic music of the most highly regarded composers like Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. How could she not have? If she was to be accepted in the music society, she had to prove that she could compose as powerfully as any man. Although some criticized her for sounding powerful and virile, they would not have taken her at all seriously if she had composed all melodic, lyrical, pretty pieces. Was the power of some of her passages really Amy Beach or was it Amy Beach impersonating power so that she could be accepted into the purely male dominated world and tradition of male symphonic music? continues on page 15, Working Powerfully