Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Product detailed description

 Why have there been no great women artists? Linda Nochlin did not accept the question as it was put. Instead of answering, she asked what the question assumes. Her essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? is regarded as the first major work of feminist art history, and it remains one of the texts without which today's view of art is unthinkable.

Nochlin does not set out to find forgotten geniuses. She examines how the idea of the artist as a male genius came about and takes apart the assumptions it rests on. She shows that accepting the white male viewpoint as the natural basis of art history is not merely a moral failure but a failure of thinking itself. The text is engaging, and it makes the reader question their own assumptions.

In this stand-alone anniversary edition, the essay appears alongside Thirty Years After, in which the author returns to her original arguments. It was written in a period of thriving feminist and queer theory, race studies and postcolonial studies, and it describes the emergence of a whole new canon. Among others, Nochlin draws on the work of Louise Bourgeois and Cindy Sherman, and assesses the state of women in art with passion and precision. Fourteen illustrations accompany the text. Her message has lost none of its urgency. As she put it herself in 2015: there is still a long way to go.

It suits art history students as well as readers curious about how an artistic canon is formed. Its compact format and 112 pages also make it a fitting gift for anyone who likes to think about art and society.