Reading Linda Nochlin

In 1971, Linda Nochlin published an essay that revolutionized the study of art. Entitled "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" it tackled the issue of how to connect feminist ideas to the reality of the dearth of great art produced by women. She noted that feminists usually took one of two paths in answering this question: either they quickly dredged up the limited list of well-known women artists, like Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun in France and Artemisia Gentileschi in Italy, or they claimed that there should be different standards of value for 'masculine' versus 'feminine' art. Nochlin evaluated and discarded both of these avenues: for the first argument, it is an unfortunate fact that these women artists do not, under any circumstances, rise to the level of a Michelangelo or a Rodin; for the second, you cannot define certain types of art as "feminine" without running into plenty of men who have worked in those materials or styles, like the dainty Rococo paintings of Fragonard in the early 18th century.

Nochlin then analyzed the concept of Genius as the "golden nugget" that was then still implicitly accepted as the semi-divine source of artistic ability. Basically, the idea went that if so many male artists could triumph over adversity to produce great art, women should have been able to do the same; the fact that they haven't suggests a lack of Genius in their entire sex. She argues that this myth doesn't hold water under any kind of sociological analysis--the fact that most great artists have been white males of the bourgeoisie (and very often members of artistic families) suggests the reason that members of other groups, including women and blacks but also, surprisingly, the nobility, have not produced great art is because their roles precluded a full-time devotion to artistic pursuits.

This seems somewhat like old hat three decades later, after the rise of feminist art history and the subsequent (and necessary, in my opinion) takeover by gender studies, but Nochlin was the first to really put this in print, to change the way people thought about the creation of art, and to replace feminist defensiveness with a well-reasoned explanation of a historical fact. I have to admit that today was the first time I'd actually read the essay, though I've seen to summarized and referred to in any number of places. I suppose that's a good testimonial to how well Nochlin's ideas have been absorbed into scholarly consciousness.

As for the picture, that's the so-called Bikini Venus, a Roman sculpture in the Gabinetto Segreto (read: erotic art collection) in the Naples Archeological Museum. I should have taken a detail so the gold paint could catch the light, but I love the design of her bikini. The way she's using that little male figure as an armrest is amusing too--he has his hands on his hips like, fine, lean on me, but hurry up and fix your sandal, dammit! Of course, this was probably sculpted by a man...