Why have there been no great woman artists?
While many feminists and art historians rushed to acknowledge those female artists history has deigned to note this was not what Linda Nochlin was asking in 1971. What element in our society has allowed the art history world to remain dominated by the white, western, male population? And how does the rest of our society reflect this acceptance?
Looking at the essay in today’s context, nearly forty years after it was written, we must concede that the social situation described by Nochlin is stagnant. Perhaps, as Nochlin did, we must reexamine the question itself.
The most common response by stammering feminists to the woman question is to adamantly deny its allegations. Challenged to list every female artist that comes to mind the question is inadvertently vindicated. “The feminist’s first reaction is to swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker… to dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history,” [1] sighs Nochlin. Expounding examples of Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffmann, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith, Georgia O’Keeffe and the hundreds of other commonly known female artists does not disprove the fact that there have been no great female artists but rather highlights the discrepancies in the number of successes in the art world. This is not to say, however, that there have been zero prominent woman artists. There are examples, of course, of woman-dominated fields (‘The Case of the Disappearing Lady-Etchers’ by K & G Lang exemplifies the role of women in the revival of etchings in the late nineteenth century[2]) and of female artists who have reached a significant level of success. But the question’s implications cannot be responded to didactically with historical examples. By countering the question with a list, the feminists “do nothing to question the assumptions lying behind the question… On the contrary, by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications.”[3] The question pessimistically suggests, “There are no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness.”[4]
The question of the ‘women problem’ reveals more than just a discrepancy in the number of female artists reported in art history books; it reveals a core problem in what we understand and how we study our own history.
The blind acceptance of the white Western male viewpoint as ‘what is’ “prove[s] to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones.”[5] In the modern era, as the social sphere becomes self aware, blindly accepting ‘what is’ is without question, “may be intellectually fatal.”[6] The woman problem is exemplary of societal look on most subjects in that it implies the domination of white western male control and “falsifies the nature of the issue.”[7] By questioning why there have been no great women artists we are questioning who is asking the question and more importantly why it needs to be asked. It “can become a catalyst, an intellectual instrument, probing basic and ‘natural’ assumptions, providing a paradigm for other kinds of internal questioning.”[8] The ‘women problem’ is not an isolated ‘problem’ but rather a footnote in the study of gender and racial inequality throughout history.
In order to define the ‘women problem’ as the lack of great female artists throughout history we must first define what is characterized as a ‘female artist’. Here in lies a problem: what makes a woman artist a ‘female artist’? The classification of any group of artists into a movement or genre requires the assumption that their work follows a common ideology, style, tradition or concept. It can then be assumed that the ‘female artist’ is defined by her femininity and the delicacies that come with being the ‘softer sex’. Yet as Nochlin points out this position is completely unfounded in the historical examples of female artists, ”no such common qualities of ‘femininity’ would seem to link the styles of the women artists generally, anymore than such qualities can be said to link women writers.”[9] Looked at rationally, ”women artists… would seem to be closer to other artists… of their own period and outlook than they are to each other.”[10] The female artist as a subgroup is in fact limiting and detrimental to an individual female artist. By subcategorizing artists into their demographics or genders we are in fact labeling them as outsiders to the art world. Any work of substance they produce is labeled as a triumph for their category rather than for the artist herself. To be a ‘female artist’ is not a decision made by the artist but a decision made by those who formed the question. A question that assumes there is in fact a ‘women problem’. Nochlin concedes that these “‘problems’ are rapidly formulated to rationalize the bad conscience of those with power,”[11] and the inherent prejudice involved in the use of the word ‘problem’ (which surmises a need for a ‘solution’) must be overcome by the women it describes. We must shift our entire outlook on the ‘women problem’, ‘black problem’, ‘poverty problem’ and all other ‘problems’ within our modern society so that they no longer imply a solution is necessary but rather a reunderstanding of terms.
[1] Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art and Power. New York: Harper & Row. 1988 page 147
[2] Lang, K & G. ‘The Case of the Disappearing Lady-Etchers’
[3] Nochlin, page 148
[4] Nochlin page 147
[5] Nochlin, page 146
[6] Nochlin, page 146
[7] Nochlin, page 147
[8] Nochlin, page 146
[9] Nochlin, page148
[10] Nochlin, page149
[11] Nochlin, page 151
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