Literature Review One - March, 2025

“Why have there been no great women artists?” – Linda Nochlin.

A shortened version of an essay in the anthology Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness. Edited by Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) was an influential American feminist art historian who taught at Yale University and at New York University, (alongside Rosalind Krauss) before joining staff at Vassar College where she began her ‘Women and Art’ course in 1970, ‘’’a time when there were no women’s studies, no feminist theory’”.[1] It was while at Vassar that she wrote this historical essay for ARTnews, which laid the groundwork for a renewed public understanding of how social, cultural, and political barriers barred women from partaking in the art world.[2]

In her book, The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel explains that it was this essay that “kick start[ed] the debate on gender disparity in art (as well as the feminist art movement in general). An essay so influential, Judy Chicago said it ‘changed the world.’’’[3]

However, Rebecca Morrill in her introduction to Great Women Artists, published 2019, points out that there is evidence that these questions are not new to the debate.[4] Morrill mentions the preface in Walter Shaw Sparrow’s Women Painters of the World, from 1905, in which similar concerns are raised.

‘[H]e touches on some of the fundamental issues that would come to concern feminists later in the century; the need to explore assumptions about the definition of ‘genius’ in art; the issue of whether a fundamentally feminine art style exists; and the question: ‘Is a woman artist equal to any man among the great masters?’.[5]

In the essay, Nochlin first highlights the subconscious bias that existed at the time, in the accepted viewpoint of the art historian which was almost always that of the white Western male. This white male subjectivity she argued, creates intellectual distortions which must change if there were to be a more accurate view of art history going forward. The relevance of the feminine critique, she argued, was not to answer the question, “Why have there been no great women artists?”, but to probe at more far-reaching questions of the discipline.

Thus, the so-called woman question, far from being a peripheral sub issue, can become a catalyst, a potent intellectual instrument, probing the most basic and “natural” assumptions, providing a paradigm for other kinds of internal questioning, …[it] can create a chain reaction, expanding to encompass every accepted assumption of the field.[6]

This is the crux of the essay, not to challenge the idea that there have been no great women artists, but (now that she has our attention), to get us to ask further probing questions. Nochlin describes how the reaction of her feminist contemporaries was to swallow the bait and refer to examples of notable women artists from the past. Nochlin cites Berthe Morisot, Angela Kauffman, and Artemisia Gentileschi, as artists that feminist commentators dig up, in an attempt to challenge the question, albeit inadequately and therefore “’merely reinforcing its negative implications.’”[7]

I attended a recent lecture series by Linda Yang at the Auckland Art Gallery, in which she presented six lectures introducing artists such as, Rachel Ruysh, Judith Leyster, Artemisia Gentileschi, Geertruid Roghman, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Sonia Delauney, Hilma af Klint, and Yoko Ono.[8] All are artists working in the period up to when Nochlin’s essay was written in 1971. Throughout the lecture series, Yang presents these women artists as more than adequate examples and as artists of great worth, while at the same time highlighting the obstacles they faced.

In Yang’s introductory lecture, she posed a couple of overarching questions which hark back to Lochlin’s essay: “What are/were the circumstances in which women could or could not produce art in Western European art history?” and “In what ways is gender a social construct, and what implications does this have on making and looking at art?” Still necessary questions to ask an audience to reflect upon today and showing evidence of Nochlin’s ongoing influence.

Yang describes how as an undergraduate of Art History (presumably in 2000s), she didn’t think to question why there were no women artists mentioned in her lectures. Unfortunately, Nochlin’s complaint that art history is viewed through the lens of the white Western-male art historian, was obviously still relevant.

In fact, Nochlin later curated an exhibition in 1976, alongside Ann Sutherland at LACMA in which she showcased artists such as Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola with the intention of legitimising the long history of women artists.[9] Interestingly, Morrill notes the artist Georgia O’Keefe refused to be part of the exhibition on the grounds that she wanted to be known as a great artist not a great woman artist.[10] This leads me to understand that Nochlin’s belief was not that there had been no great women artists, but such a question was not a relevant to ask until the inequalities and injustices had been addressed. Imagine how much greater these women artists could have been, might be the underlying question if they were supported and encouraged in their pursuits.

Nochlin continues by questioning the arguments that feminists of her era put forward regarding a different feminine style, that was distinctive and recognisable and unique to the experience of a woman’s situation and experience, and therefore comparison to male artists was in fact irrelevant. However, Nochlin was more interested in making connections between contemporary artists than between other women artists.[11]

‘And certainly, an art produced by a group of consciously united and purposely articulate women intent on bodying forth a group consciousness of feminine experience might indeed be stylistically identifiable as feminist, if not feminine, art. This remains within the realm of possibility; so far, it has not occurred. [12]

I am reminded of the recent work by the Matataho Collective, Takapau, 2022, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, and which I had the good fortune to see at the Govett-Brewster in New Plymouth previously. On the Mataaho Collective website front page, the statement reads “We are a collaboration between four Māori women who produce large-scale installations with a single authorship.”[13] This seems to be a contemporary example of feminine style, distinctive, recognisable and unique to the experience of Māori women’s situation and experience, produced by a group of articulate women who refute individual authorship. It may not have occurred by the time Nochlin was writing the essay but there is strong evidence that fifty years on, it has.

Nochlin’s main argument, however, is with the art institutions and education system which do not offer equal opportunities to those students not “born white, preferably middle class and above all, male”[14]. This is what needed to be urgently addressed in the 1970s, a decade charged with political and social change, and yet those issues may still need addressing today. Hessel in her introduction mentions a 2019 study that revealed some sobering statistics.

[I]n the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 percent of artworks were by men, and 85 percent by white artists. Currently women artists make up just 1 percent of London’s National Gallery collection. This same museum only staged their first solo exhibition by a historic female artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, in 2020.[15]

Hessel in fact conducted her own YouGov survey in 2022 and found that 83% of 18–24-year-olds could not name three women artists. In this argument, Nochlin remains as relevant today. There may be more practising women artists, but they are still under-represented by the education system and major institutions.

Morrill explains that in the twenty-first century, it may seem irrelevant to talk of art in terms of gender at all. Although there is strong argument for this to be the case, the “’surrounding structures of the art world – where art is exhibited, traded and written about’”, still present a dominant viewpoint with subconscious bias and the advantage of being a white, Western male.[16]

Other critical questions in Nochlin’s essay, revolve around the assumption of ‘artistic genius’ and reference the social class of an artist. “Why have there been no great artists from the aristocracy?” she asks.[17] But she could equally ask “Why have there been no great artists from the working class?”. Historically, but still relevant today, the “‘conditions for producing art’” require a level of financial security.[18] Yang, in her lecture series, mentioned that many of the women artists she showcased were in fact reasonably well-off or connected in some way to male artists. With regards to the lack of great artists with aristocratic credentials, historically, the ‘lady painter’ was never intended to pursue this “‘amateur, genteel pastime’”, although a few artists with aristocratic titles are included in Sparrow’s book.[19]

Morrill highlights an omission in Nochlin’s essay, that the perception of ‘greatness’ in art shifts and is not fixed over time. However, I am not convinced that Nochlin was concerned with greatness but more so with the disadvantages that women artists faced and still face. She was an art historian interested in the spectrum of art making.

Nochlin concludes with her cry that it is the institution not the individual [talent], that has limited female achievement in the arts, and that we must face up to the reality of that history. “‘Disadvantage may indeed be an excuse; [but] it is not an intellectual position.’”[20] It is important to take part in the creation of institutions in which “‘greatness are challenges to anyone’”, and this argument certainly has ongoing relevance.[21]

[1]  Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023), 326

[2]  ARTnews magazine, New York. Article appeared in January 1971 edition.

[3]  Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, 2023, 330

[4]  Rebecca Morril, “Introduction.” In Great Women Artists, Phaidon Editors, (Phaidon Press, 2019).

[5]  Walter Shaw Sparrow, as cited by Rebecca Morrill in her introduction to Great Women Artists, 2019, 9 (Walter Shaw Sparrow’s book Women Painters of the World from the time of Catarina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the Present Day, (London: Hodder & Stroughton and New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1905):11

[6]  Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 2

[7]  Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971,3

[8]  Linda Yang (BFA/BA Hons, MA Art History), “Women & Art” (Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, October-November 2024).

[9]  Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

[10] Morrill, R, Great Women Artists, 2019, 12.

[11] Ibid., 4.

[12]  Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 4-5.

[13]  www.mataahocollective.com

[14]  Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 5

[15]  Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, 2023,10

[16] Morrill, R, Great Women Artists: 12

[17] Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 10

[18] Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 10

[19]  Ibid., 9

[20]  Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, 37

[21]  Ibid., 37