Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists 50th Anniversary Edition

The fiftieth anniversary edition of the essay that is now recognized as the first major work of feminist art theory—published together with author Linda Nochlin’s reflections three decades later. Many scholars have called Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay on women artists the first real attempt at a feminist history of art. In her revolutionary essay, Nochlin refused to answer the question of why there had been no “great women artists” on its own corrupted terms, and instead, she dismantled the very concept of greatness, unraveling the basic assumptions that created the male-centric genius in art. With unparalleled insight and wit, Nochlin questioned the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art history. And future freedom, as she saw it, requires women to leap into the unknown and risk demolishing the art world’s institutions in order to rebuild them anew. 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. In the 2020s, Nochlin’s message could not be more urgent: as she put it in 2015, “There is still a long way to go.”

A comprehensive compendium of renowned art historian Linda Nochlin's work, including her landmark essays on the position and influence of women artists. Linda Nochlin was one of the most accessible, provocative, and innovative art historians of our time. In 1971, she published “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”—a dramatic feminist call to arms that questioned traditional art historical practices and led to a major revision of the discipline. Now available in paperback, Women Artists brings together twenty-nine essential essays from throughout Nochlin's career. Included are her major thematic texts "Women Artists After the French Revolution" and "Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History," as well as her landmark 1971 essay and its rejoinder, " 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' Thirty Years After." These appear alongside monographic entries focusing on a selection of major women artists, including Mary Cassatt, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Miwa Yanagi, and Sophie Calle.

Women, Art, and Power?seven landmark essays on women artists and women in art history?brings together the work of almost twenty years of scholarship and speculation.

Why is everything that compromises greatness in art coded as 'feminine'? Has the feminist critique of Art History yet effected real change? With a new preface by Griselda Pollock, this edition of a truly groundbreaking book offers a radical challenge to a women-free Art History. Parker and Pollock's critique of Art History's sexism leads to expanded, inclusive readings of the art of the past. They demonstrate how the changing historical social realities of gender relations and women artists' translation of gendered conditions into their works provide keys to novel understandings of why we might study the art of the past. They go further to show how such knowledge enables us to understand art by contemporary artists who are women and can contribute to the changing self-perception and creative work of artists today. In March 2020 Griselda Pollock was awarded the Holberg Prize in recognition of her outstanding contribution to research and her influence on thinking on gender, ideology, art and visual culture worldwide for over 40 years. Old Mistresses was her first major scholarly publication which has become a classic work of feminist art history.

Historically, major women artists have been excluded from the mainstream art canon. Aligned with the resurgence of feminism in pop culture, Broad Strokes offers an entertaining corrective to that omission. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of 15 female artists from around the globe in text that's smart, feisty, educational, and an enjoyable read. Replete with beautiful reproductions of the artists' works and contemporary portraits of each artist by renowned illustrator Lisa Congdon, this is art history from the Renaissance to Abstract Expressionism for the modern art lover, reader, and feminist.

Linda Nochlins 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 worlds institutions, and rebuilding them anew in other words, to leap into the unknown. In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlins 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.

"This expanded edition is brought up to date in the light of the most recent developments in contemporary art. A new chapter considers globalization in the visual arts and the complex issues it raises, focusing on the many major international exhibitions since 1990 that have become an important arena for women artists from around the world."--BOOK JACKET.

Women -- as warriors, workers, mothers, sensual women, even absent women -- haunt nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western painting. This book brings together Linda Nochlin's most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art, as she considers works by Millet, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt, and Kollwitz, among many others.In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions and for art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.