Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

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