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Why There Are No Great Women Artists
What feminist art history can teach us about male genius
The title of this piece is deliberately provocative, of course.
It comes from the seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” written by the American art historian Linda Nochlin in 1971.
Nochlin asked the question why, if you look down the list of the most famous artists of all time — Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh, Munch, Klimt, Matisse — there are no women artists named.
Nochlin’s answer would prove to be a watershed moment in feminist art history.
Nochlin claims that art history has made the insidious supposition that women are incapable of artistic greatness.
Instead, she argues that the issue lies with a fundamental misconception of what art is — assumed to be a direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience — that gives rise to the male-centric notion of artistic creativity.
“These assumptions, conscious or unconscious, link together such unlikely superstars as Michelangelo and van Gogh, Raphael and Jackson Pollock under the rubric of “Great” [..] The Great Artist is, of course, conceived of as one who has “Genius”; Genius, in turn, is…
