Alice Neil, *Linda Nochlin and Daisy,* 1973 - taken from inside cover of Katy Hessel’s book *The Story of Art Without Men.*

Take Aways:

Linda Nochlin was a professor of Art History at Vassar College, feminist writer and American.

The reading was a shortened version of and essay in the anthology Women in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness. Edited by Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

White Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the Viewpoint of the art historian.
cites John Stuart Mill (1806-73), English philosopher, liberalism, “we tend to accept whatever is ‘natural’
White male subjectivity = intellectual distortions which must be corrected to achieve a more adequate view of history.
A feminist critique of the discipline of art history is needed which can pierce cultural ideological limitations - to reveal biases and inadequacies, not just with regards to women artists but in the formulation of the crucial questions of the discipline as a whole.
So called ‘women question’ can become a catalyst, an intellectual probe. Why no great women artists? Why no great women (insert other disciplines)?
Assumption to title questions range from ‘scientifically proven that women can’t create anything significant’, to wonderment that women, despite near equality, have achieved anything significant in visual arts.
Feminist reaction to ‘swallow the bait’ and attempt to answer. Dig up examples. Rediscover artists. Angela Kauffman and Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot.
However, Another approach to Q. Contemporary feminists (1970s), there is a different kind of greatness for women’s art than for men’s. They propose the existence of a distinctive and recognisable style, ….. posited on the unique character of women’s situation and experience.
She argues that this distinctive ‘Feminine’ style has not occurred so far. That women artists have more in common with other contemporary artists than other women artists throughout time.
Are women more inward-looking, more delicate and nuanced in their treatment of their medium? She references Rosa Bonheur’s - Horse Fair (1852)
She dismisses this idea. Choice of subject matter does not equate to ‘feminine’ style.

“The problem lies not so much with the feminists’ concept of what femininity is in art, but rather a misconception of what art is. Naive idea that art is the direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. “
“The fact is that there have been no great women artists. Nor have there been any great Lithuanian jazz pianists, or Eskimo tennis players.”
In actuality, in the arts and many other disciplines, situation is oppressive, stultifying and discouraging to women, (and others) who are not born white, middle class, and male.
The fault that there are no great women artists lies in the institutions and education system.
Underlying the question about great women artists lies the myth of the Great Artist.
The genius myth, while ignoring social and institutional structures within which he lived and worked. Art historians have unconscious bias.
The transmission of the profession from father to son in seventeenth/eighteenth century. Nineteenth century father-rejecting revolts, but still often exist. Picasso and Braque, sons of artists.
Why have there been no great artists from aristocracy? No genius in women and in aristocrats?? Or is it a difference in the demands and expectations on those groups of people. Total devotion to professional art production out of the question.

The Question of the Nude:

Complete unavailability of nude models to women artists
Up until 1893, women not admitted to life drawing at offical academy in London, and even then, had to be partially draped.
Women not accepted into art institutions, not accepted as professional painters - France nineteenth century. “Deprived of encouragements, educational facilities, and rewards” striking that even a small percentage of women sought a profession in the arts. (NB: Linda Yuang lectures did describe many of these women as coming from wealthy families, ie: fact that art was not money earning etc). Similar situation in literature. Note: Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson.
In Renaissance and after, the Great Artist would be involved in exchanging ideas in humanist circles, establish relationships with patrons, travel widely and freely, and become involved in politics and intrigue.
Also have an enormous amount of self-confidence, worldly knowledge and natural sense of dominance and power - ie: Rubens, running a major atelier-factory.

The Lady’s Accomplishment

Image of the ‘lady painter’ = nineteenth century etiquette, modest, proficient, self-demeaning, amateurish.
Needlework or crocheting, suitable ‘accomplishment’.
Mrs Ellis’s The Family Monitor and Domestic Guide, 1845.
‘To be able to do a great many things tolerably well, is of infinitely more value to a woman than to be able to excel in any one. By the former, she may render herself generally useful; by the latter, she may dazzle for an hour.’
Not to forget Freud and his tag lines about what women want. ‘Such an outlook helps guard men from unwanted competition in their ‘serious’ professional activities and assures them of a ‘well-rounded’ assistance on the home front, so they may have sex and family in addition to the fulfillment of their own specialised talent’.

Successes

General facts: almost all women artists were either daughters of artist fathers, or later in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, had close personal relationships with strong or dominant male artists. - until most recently.
Only by adopting masculine attributes, single-mindedness, concentration, tenaciousness, and absorption in ides and craftsmanship for their own sake, have women succeeded.
Rosa Bonheur discussion.
Saint-simonian community. Ideal of equality for women. Disapproved of marriage, women wore trousers. Influence on her as a child. But she did consider marriage as indispensable to the organisation of society. She didn’t marry however as she wanted to retain her independence.
Betty Friedan ‘frilly blouse syndrome’, - professional women to adopt some ultra-feminine item of clothing or insist on proving their prowess as pie makers.
She was criticised for not being feminine enough.
Conclusion
Institutional not individual reasons for achievements in the arts.
What is important is that women face up to the reality of their history. And present situation.
Disadvantage may be an excuse, but it is not an intellectual position. Use situation as underdogs as a vantage point. Women can reveal institutional and intellectual weaknesses in general, and take part in the creation of instituations in which clear thought and true greatness are challenges open to anyone courageous enough to take the necessary risk and leap into the unknown.

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin, 1971.