Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin

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'. With 14 illustrations