To be seen, disappear

authorship, gender, and hyphenated subjects in the artistic field

Abstract

This article analyzes the mechanisms through which the author’s gender identity structures the reception and recognition of artworks within the contemporary artistic field. It takes as its object of study the novel The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt (2014), focusing on the fictional project known as Masquerades, through which the protagonist presents her work under the identities of three male artists. The research adopts a qualitative and interpretative approach, combining theoretical-conceptual analysis with literary analysis. The corpus consists of the novel in dialogue with the theoretical framework mobilized, which brings together the concept of the author (Michel Foucault, 2006), reception theory (Hans Robert Jauss, 1982), the sociology of culture (Pierre Bourdieu, 1996), feminist art criticism (Griselda Pollock, 2015), and studies of masculinity alongside the genealogy of the concept of genius (Christine Battersby, 1989). The results demonstrate that the novel stages, with epistemological rigor, three structuring axes: the gendered horizon of expectations that renders the artwork invisible before it is even evaluated; the mask as a device for redistributing the sensible that reveals the field’s unconscious bias; and the patriarchal dividend as a hegemonic norm that benefits male artists without requiring explicit exclusion. It is concluded that Hustvedt’s fiction not only confirms the theses of the theoretical framework but also complicates them by demonstrating that, for a woman artist’s work to be recognized, the field paradoxically demands the erasure of the author herself.