Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

- Blurb -

Linda Nochlin' s seminal essay on women artists is widely acknowledged as the first real attempt at a feminist history of art. Nochlin refused to handle the question of why there had been no ' great women artists' on its own, corrupted, terms. Instead, she dismantled the very concept of ' greatness' , unravelling the basic assumptions that had centred a male-coded ' genius' in the study of art. With unparalleled insight and startling wit, Nochlin laid bare the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art historical thought as not merely a moral failure, but an intellectual one. Freedom, as she sees it, requires women to risk entirely demolishing the art world' s institutions, and rebuilding them anew - in other words, to leap into the unknown. In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlin' s essay is published alongside its reappraisal, ' Thirty Years After' . Written in an era of thriving feminist theory, as well as queer theory, race and postcolonial studies, ' Thirty Years After' is a striking reflection on the emergence of a whole new canon. With reference to Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman and many more, Nochlin diagnoses the state of women and art with unmatched precision and verve. ' Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? ' has become a slogan and rallying cry that resonates across culture and society; Dior even adopted it in their 2018 collections. In the 2020s, at a time when ' certain patriarchal values are making a comeback' , Nochlin' s message could not be more urgent: as she herself put it in 2015, ' there is still a long way to go' .