A Women’s History Month Tribute to Linda Nochlin
In addition to reintroducing women artists into the art historical canon, Nochlin has written extensively on how women have been represented in the visual arts. Her book, Representing Women, analyses works by both men and women artists from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. One such example is in the first chapter "The Myth of the Woman Warrior," in which she points out that, despite the seeming strength of the female personification of Liberty during the French Revolutionary eras, they are depicted as passive, ill at ease, and/or marginalised.(7) This is in keeping with government and philosophical discouragement of women entering the public sphere.
What is interesting about this remarkable scholar, who describes her family as consisting of intellectuals and rebels and whose mother "did not want [her] to marry or get pregnant because...she thought [she] should just be brilliant and creative,"(8) compared her feminist awakening to St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. She elaborates by explaining that it was as if she had been blind beforehand but afterward had "seen the light."(9) Where would art history be had this "conversion" not happened? Given the sociological climate of the early 1970s, feminist art history would still most likely have been launched. However, a question remains: would this alternative scholar have been as tireless and dedicated to her field as Nochlin has been? Rather than pondering what might have been, I am thankful that art historical scholarship has played out the way it has. And it is with that that I join feminist art historians around the world over in paying a debt of gratitude to Linda Nochlin.
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Notes
(1) Nochlin, Linda, Andrea Fraser, Amelia Jones, et al. "Feminism and Art [Nine Views]: (Panel Discussion)." Artforum International (1 Oct. 2003): n.pag. Rpt. at Looksmart Find Articles.
(2) Available in Nochlin's Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (Boulder, CO, 1988): 145-78.
(3) Berthe Morisot, for example, was one of the leaders of the Impressionists, helping to organise their exhibitions. Arguably, she was responsible for keeping the group together. However, her being a woman led to her near omission from the mainstream art historical canon.
(4) Originally published in Screen 16:3 (Autumn 1975): 6-18.
(5) Hughes, Robert. "Rediscovered: Women Painters." Time (10 Jan. 1977). n. pag. Rpt. at Time Archives. (Subscription required)
(6) Sutherland-Harris, Ann and Linda Nochlin. Women Artists, 1550-1950 (Los Angeles, 1977).
(7) Nochlin, Linda. "The Myth of the Woman Warrior." Representing
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