The Feminist Critique of Art History Thalia Gouma-Peterson; Patricia Mathews The Art Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), 326-357. Stable URL hitp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=0004-3079% 28198709%2969% 3A3%3C326%3ATFCOAH% 3E2.0,CO%3B2-0 The Art Bulletin is currently published by College Art Association, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor.org/journalsicaa html. ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Mon Nov 28 05:32:34 2005The Feminist Critique of Art History Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews Art criticism and art history from a feminist perspective are recent phenomena, emerging only during the last fifteen years. They have, in their short history, moved from a first generation in which “the condition and experience of being female’ twas emphasized,’ to a second generation, beginning in the late 1970s, influenced bby feminist criticism in other disciplines and offering a more complex critique of both art and culture through an investigation of the production and evaluation of art and the role of the artist. In this survey, we propose, first, to outline the history of feminist art and art history, then to discuss the interrelated themes in each, and, finally, in the concluding and pivotal sections (IV and V), to discuss various fem inist art-critical and art-historical methodologies. I. The Emergence of Feminism in Art and Art History Art History: Women, History, and Greatness Feminist inquiry in art history began in 1971 with Linda Nochlin’s article, “Why Are There No Great Women Art- ists?” In her answer to this question, she stressed that: Art isnot a free autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, “influenced” by previous artists and more va- aguely and superficially by “social forces,” but rather ‘occurs in a social situation, is an integral element of so- cial structure, and is mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the and artist as he-man or social outcast.? The potentially radical implications of Nochlin's initial Wie are grateful to Oberlin College and the College of Wooster for faculty rant to support research for this article. We would also like to thank {aa Tickner, Griselda Pollock, Beth Irwin Lewis, Linda Nochlin, nd Linda Hus for thei willingness to share unpublished materials with us. Finally ‘we thank Richard Spear for his encouragement in preparation of this essa. * Such a move characterizes other disciplines as well. See Hester Eisen- stein, “Introduction” The Futur of Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine, New Brunswick, NI 1985, xvii 2 Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Are There No Great Women Amis?” Women Sexist Society. Studies in Power and Powerlessness, ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara Moran, New York, 1971, 480-510; repented in a speial sue of Art News, January 1971 as “Wy Have There Been No Great Wornen ‘Artists? and in the important earl collection of essays Ar and Sexual analysis could not be fully explored until neglected women artists were identified. That was the main objective of a seties of biographical and expository studies by Eleanor Tults (1974), Hugo Munsterberg (1975), and Karen Peter- son and J.J. Wilson (1976).* In 1976 Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris published Women Artists 1550-1950, the catalogue of the momen- tous exhibition they had organized, which opened in Los Angeles and traveled to Austin, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn, and brought to public attention the achievements of women artists In the preface to their catalogue, Harris and Noch- lin stated: “Neither of us believes that this catalog is the last word on the subject. On the contrary, we both look forward to reading the many articles, monographs, and critical responses that we hope this exhibition will gener- ate.”* Their wish was not entirely fulfilled, for monographs con women artists are still very few and most of them are devoted to artists ofthe late nineteenth and early twentieth Politics, ed. Thomas B. Hest, Elizabeth C. Baker, New York, Landon, wr. 3 Eleanor Tfts, Our Hidden Heritage: Fe Centuries of Women Artists New York, 1974; Hugo Munsterberg. A History of Women Artists, 1975 Karen Petersen and JJ. Wilson, Women Artist: Recognition and Reap: paisa fromthe Early Middle Age to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1976, Fora history of women scholats inthe visual ats from 1820 on, sce Women ae Interpreters ofthe Viswal Arte, 1820-1979, ed Claire Richter Sherman with Adele M. Holcomb, Westport, CT, and London, 1981, ‘Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nocblin, Women Artists 1550-1950, New York 1976 * Bid. 1.centuries.* ‘The documentation of women artists’ work and lives has ‘continued in the late 1970s and 1980s primarily in surveys: books by Elsa Honig Fine (1978), Josephine Withers (1979), and Wendy Slatkin (1985), which are intended as comple- ments to the standard art history surveys, which even now acknowledge the existence of women in only a most cur- sory way. The documentation also has been carried on in more extensive compendia: Charlotte Streifer Rubenstein’s American Women Artists (1982) and Chris Petteys’ mon- umental Dictionary of Women Artists (1985)? Many of those books share to a certain extent the un- spoken but still apparent objective, to prove that women have been as accomplished, even if not as “great” as men, and to try to place women artists within the traditional historical framework. As will be developed later in this essay, we believe such an approach is ultimately self- defeating, for it fixes women within preexisting structures without questioning the validity of these structures. Fur- thermore, since many of the same women artists have been repeatedly discussed, feminist art history has come dan- ‘gerously close to creating its own canon of white female artists (primarily painters), a canon that is almost as re- strictive and exclusionary as its male counterpart. ‘The debate over “greatness” exemplifies the nature ofthe issues raised among the first generation of feminist writers By emphasizing the primary role of institutional factors in determining artistic achievement, Nochlin challenged the © For example: Griselda Pollock, Mary Cassatt, London and New York 1080; Gillan Perry, Paula Modersotin-Becker. Her Life and Work, New York, 1979; Mina C, Klein and H. Arthur Klein, Kathe Kollits. Life in ‘An. New York, 1972; Martha Kearns, Kathe Kollwitz, Woman and Artis. New York, 1976; Barbara Rose, Helen Frankenthaler, New York, 1970 Patrica Hill, Alice Neel, New York, 1983. Exceptions to this trend in- ‘clude: Anne Marie Pasez, Adélaide Labill-Guiard. Biographie et cata: logue raisonné de son opwcre, Pars, 1975; Marianne Roland:Michel, Are Vallayer Coster, 1744-1818, Pars, 1970; and Mary Garrard forthcoming monograph on Artemisia Genileschi to be published by Princeton Uni versity Press in 1988, This isa very incomplete listing of recent mono- graphs, and includes no exhibition catalogues. Most recently, two mono sraphs on Gwen John were published: Cecily Langdale and David Fraser Jenkins, Gives Joh: An Interior Life, New York, 1986, and Mary Taub- rman, Gwen John: The Arist and Hor Work. Ithaea, NY, 1986, But a6 Eunice Lipton and Carol Gemel point out in their review (The Women's Review of Books, 1, December, 1986, 10-11), “both texts avoid the very perspectives that woul illuminate Johns Ife and work” and “eschew ‘questions of gender and ideology.” Langdale and Fraser do acknowledge feminism asa critical perspective. but do not lt this alter the parameters oftheir Modernist discourse. Elsa Honig Fine, Women and Art, A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renassonce to the 26th Century, Montlar, N} and London, 1978; Josephine Withers, Women Artists from Washington Cal- Inctons, College Park, MD, 1979; Wendy Slatkin, Women Artists Hi tory from Antiquity the 20th Century. New York, 1985; Charlote Ste fer Rubenstein, Americ Women Artists; From Early Indian Times t0 the Present. Boston, 1982: Chris Pettey, Dictionary of Women Artists «an International Dictionary of Women Artists Bam Before 1900, Boston, {THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 327 myth of the great artist as one who is endowed with that mysterious and ineffable quality called genius. However, as Norma Broude later pointed out, she did not question the authority or validity of the male-defined notion of greatness and artistic achievement. The concept of greatness as something toward which art- ists aspire is too deeply ingrained to be easily divested. Re- actions to Nochlin’s argument were immediate and specific. Most extravagant was Cindy Nemser’s riposte (1975), in which she unwittingly reasserted the patriarchal model as the relevant one to evaluate art by women. Her heroic con- ception of genius, and her assertion that “women can do it all,” set women against men and against each other, a position that many feminists were then trying to move be- yond; more important, she ignored the need to explore why ‘women have been repressed, and to work to change those ‘conditions, institutions, and ideologies, goals that are cen- tral to some of the feminist critics to be discussed below. ‘As Carol Duncan pointed out in her review essay of Nem- ser’s book, by insisting that art and greatness are universal, Nemser rejected any possibility for women's art “to grow out of a consciousness and experience that is typically female.”® Germaine Greer passionately reasserted the principle of greatness in The Obstacle Race, the most extensive survey ‘of women artists to date, where she declared that one “can- not make great artists out of egos that have been damaged, ‘with wills that are defective, with libidos that have been 1985, Alo see Lamia Doumato, "The Literature of Women ln Art.” Ox Jord Art loural, 1, Apri, 1960, 74-77. Bibliographies inclide Eleanor ‘Tuts, Americon Women Artists, Past and Presonts A Solected Biblio svaphical Guide, New York, 1984; Donna G. Bachmana and Sherry Pi Tand, INomen Artists: An Historical, Contemporary and Feminist Bibl: graphy, Metuchen, NJ, and London, 1978; and Virginia Watson-Jones, Contemporary American Women Sculptrs, Phoenix, AZ, 1986, © Norma Broude, review of Greer, Obstacle Race, Munro, Originals and Loeb, Feminist Collage, in Art Journal. xt, 1981, 18082. Nochlin (as in 1.2) only briefly allied to the ise that there might bea diferent kind of ‘geatnes for women’s art than for mens art,” and concluded that “women artists and writers would seem to be closer to other artists and writers of thei own period and outlook than they are to each othe.” In her esay of 1973, Nochlin altered her position enough to admit tat, although she had said (in 1971) “that simply looking into women artists ofthe past would not really change our estimation of thee values,” she nevertheless went on to explore “some women artists of the past” and found her “estimations and values have, in Tact. changed,” and that in the proces of examining ther, her whole notion of what at ial about fs gradually changing.” See Linda Nochlin, “Hw Feminism inthe Arts Can Implement Cultural Change." Women and the Arts, Ars in Society 11, 1974, 81-89, reprinted in Feminist Collage, ed. Judy Loc, New York, 1974, 513, under the tile “Toward a Juster Vision. How Feminism Can ‘Change Our Ways of Looking at Art History © At Talk, Concersations with 12 Women Anite, New York, 1978, 6 "© Carol Duncan, "When Greatnes isa Box of Wheaties,” Artforum, Ort 1975, 83328 Tue ART BULLETIN seprEvnER 1967 voLUME LeDe NUMBER 3 driven out of reach and energy diverted into neurotic chan- nels.”"" Both Broude and Lisa Tickner took Greer to task for this attitude. Broude pointed out that Greer “measures the works of women of the past against the standard of ale artistic values and achievements, thereby accepting, unquestioningly, the patriarchy’s definition of artistic “greatness.” Greer's position thus ultimately is not very dif- ferent from that of Nemser. Broude further compared this position to that of Hilton Kramer, who asked if “the influ- ence of the Women’s Movement” has “contributed to an erosion of critical standards in art.” For Broude and most feminist art historians working today, the question is not one of immutable, amorphous “standards of greatness,” but rather the nature of the “very values upon which those standards are based,” that is, “the parochial values and standards of the male culture.” Indeed Broude called for a reexamination of the basis upon which works of art are judged to be “good” or “bad.” “What are [the critis'] val- tues? Where do these values come from? Whose life expe- riences do they represent? And, finally, are those life ex- periences and values necessarily the only ones out of which art may come?” ‘Ten years after Nochlin’s first article, two British art his- torians, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, in Old Mis- tresses: Women, Art and Ideology, took fundamentally new directions from earlier surveys by rejecting evaluative crit- sm altogether. They turned to an analysis of women’s | and ideological position in relation to art, art pro- duction, and artistic ideology as a means to question the assumptions that underlie the traditional historical frame- ‘work." In doing so, they touched upon another of Noch- Germaine Greer, The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters ‘an Theis Work, New York, 1979. The organization ofthe book isle ‘based on this central thesis and groups the women according tothe nature ‘of the obstacle that destroyed their ego (Family, Love, The illusion of Success, et). It unfortunate that Greer could not get beyond the thesis she had aleady expounded in The Female Eumuch (New York, 1971), namely that women have been castrated by a society that programs them to serve and submit, for her book is substantial, shows evidence of ex tensive research in muscums, libraries, and archives, and contains inter- esting and even stimulating material that could be useful for further re earch, bu i goes over questions that had already been asked and is unable to move beyond them, One has the impression that research for It was started inthe early 1970s, and that the immensity ofthe project delayed publication tothe point thatthe book came ovt #00 late In the context ofthe late 1970 tf an anachconist, ™ Broude (as inn. 8), 180-83; and Ticker, Woman's Art Journal, Fall, 1980/ Winer, 1981, 64-69 " Broude (as inn. 8), 181. See Kramer, “Does Feminism Conflict with [Artistic Standards?” Now York Times, 27 Jan, 1980, section 2,1, 27. In lin's major points, that is, “to what extent our very con- sciousness of how things are in the world has been conditioned — too often falsified — by the way the most important questions are posed.” Pollock and Parker em- phasized that “the way the history of art has been studied and evaluated isnot the exercise of neutral ‘objective’ schol- arship but an ideological practice.” They recognized that ‘women’s relation to artistic and social structures has been different to that of male artists” and their purpose is to “analyse women's practice as artists to discover how they negotiated their particular position.”* Parker and Pollock also posed new questions: Why has it been necessary to negate so large a part of the history of at, to dismiss so many artists, to denigrate so many works of art simply because the artists were women? What does this reveal about the structures and ideologies of art history, how it defined what is and what is not art, to whom it accords the status of artist and ‘what that status means? Their book, as they state, is “not a history of women artists, but an analysis of the relations between women, art and ideology.” In asserting and utilizing a deconstructive approach for feminist art research, Old Mistresses is different from all of the other surveys of women artists, which tend to re- cover the lives and works of women, without a conscious ideological method." Using various new approaches such as the construction of gender and psychoanalytic theory, Pollock and Parker “deconstruct” the image of the woman his magazine, The New Criterion, Kramer sill upholds his male-dfine, traditional view of greatness as dominated by certain aesthetic erlteria, Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, New York, 1981 also see Pollack, “Women, Art and Ideology: Questions for Feminist Art Historians,” Woman's Art Journal 1, Sprig Summer, 1983, ° Nochlin (as inn. 2), 484, who pursued this point further (1974, as In 1.8) Pollock and Parker (asin n. 1), nvibxix, They emphasize that "to ee women’s history only as a progressive strgrle against great odds isto fallinto the trap of unwitingly reasterting the established male standards 35 the appropriate norm. If women’s itary is simply judged against the norms of male history, women are once again st apart, outside the hie- torial process of which both men and women are indissolubly pact.” ° tid, 132-33, An exception is Nochlin’s essay in Haris and Nochli asin.) 45:artist and the nature of male fascination with the female body.” Between the decade of Nochlin’s first article and the work, of Pollock and Parker, various art historians have done significant revisionist work, which will be discussed in sec- tion II below. ‘The First Generation of Art and Art Criticism Because much of the art-historical activity just discussed was preceded and conditioned by the activities of women artists and critics, a short history of the feminist movement inart and art criticism is useful at this point. Women artists of the first generation were concerned with issues pertain- ing to the nature, evaluation, and status of female artistic production, and have been at the forefront in the devel- ‘opment of feminist art criticism.” The feminist movement in art began in the late 1960s, under the impetus of the more general feminist movement and political activism of the mid-1960s.* From the begin- ning, the emphasis of artists on the East and West Coasts ‘was different. New York artists sought economic parity and ‘equal representation in exhibitions, through a critique of institutional sexism, whereas their West Coast counterparts were more concerned with exploring issues of aesthetics and female consciousness. The first women's art organization, Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), began in New York in 1969 asa splinter group of the Art Workers Coalition, which was politically radical but indifferent to women’s issues. The following year, the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists was or- » Parker and Pollock do not want merely to rescue “Old Mistresses” from undeserved neglect and to restablish their repstations, and they do not want to annex them tothe mainstream of at history or simply to absorb them as aditions asin n. 14, 45-46). They believe thatthe existence and ‘activity of women in ar throughout history is of itselt a sufficient fue tification for historical inquiry” bid. 47). They quote Nochlin’ state ment of 1971 that “the so-called woman question, far from being a Pe ripheral sub-issue, can become a catalyst potent intellectual instrament probing the most basic and natural’ assumptions, providing a paradigm {or other kinds of internal questioning and providing links with paradigms im other fields” (Nochlin, as inn. 2}, and they argue that “a radial reform if not a total deconstruction of the presen structure of the discipline is needed inorder to arrive at areal understanding of the history of women and art" (Parker and Pollock, 35 inn. 1, 47-48), The contemporary gen- ‘zation of feminists, as well as poststructuralist writers in genera, have deconstructed the myth of greatness and it relation to gens for both smale and female artist, Roland Barthes’ concept of the “death of the author” has permeated such recent literature in most disciplines concerned with Postmodern cl ture, including art and feminism. (Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author’ [1968), Image Music Tet, transl. Stephen Heath, New York, 1977, 42-48. See Deborah Cherry. “Feminist Interventions: Feminist In erative,” review of Parker and Pollock, Old Misreses in Art History, vy 1982, 503. Many other examples could be cited, Se Janet Wolf’ mod tration of Barthes extreme position in The Social Production of Art, New York, 1984, chap. 6.) 2 See Christine Havice, “The Artist in Her Own Words,” Womans Art Tourna, 1, Fall/Winter, 1982, 1-72 and n. 3 above for artists ax writers, 2 For a brief history of this phase of feminist activites in the art world see Lucy Lippard, “Sexual Poiies: Art Style,” in Brom the Center Fm init Essays in Women’s Art ed. Lacy Lippard, New York, 1976, 28-37 (a longer version ofthe article first published in Avt in America, Sep ‘THE FEMAINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 329 ganized by Lucy Lippard to protest the near-total exclusion ‘of women artists from galleries and museum exhibitions, ‘Their protest against the number of women artists in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Annual “raised the Whitney's consciousness,” so that instead of the usual five to ten percent representation, in 1970 it showed twenty- two percent women artists. This figure remains almost the same today, despite continuing feminist activism. Women in the Arts (WIA) was founded in 1971, and two years later organized a major show of one hundred and nine contem- porary women artists, “Women Choose Women,” at the New York Cultural Center. It was the first of many such shows that culminated in the exhibition, Women Artists 1550-1950, organized by Harris and Nochlin, About the same time, feminist artists picketed the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972, and again in 1984, to protest the number of women artists exhibited there, ‘Meanwhile, other organizations were created to meet the needs of the proliferation of art by women and the interest in women's art. In New York, the Women's Interart Center ‘opened in 1971; and women's cooperative galleries were opened, including the A.LLR. Gallery in 1972 and Soho 20 in 1973, both of which are still active. In Chicago, Artem- isia and Arc Galleries were opened in 1973. Faith Ringgold and her daughter Michele Wallace organized Women Stu- dents and Artists for Black Art Liberation to protest the exclusion of women artists from exhibitions of Black art- ists, and, in 1971, Black women artists formed their own organization, Where We At ‘On the West Coast, Judy Chicago organized the first 1971), A Documentary Herstory of Women Artist in Revolution, WAR, ‘New York, May, 1971; Elizabeth Baker, "Picketson Parnassus,” Art News Sept. 1970, 31; Cindy Nemser, “The Women Artists Movement,” The Feminist Art ournal.v, Winter, 1973/74, 8-10; Jdith Hole and Ellen Le Ine, Rebirth of Fominiam, Nev York, 1974, 368-6 Gloria Orenstein, "Re view Essay: Art History,” Sigs, 1, Winter, 1975, 505.25; and Cynthia [Navaretta, ed, Guide to Women's Art Organizations: Groups, Acie, Nerworks, Publications, New York, 1979, Statistical surveys done in the ‘easly years ofthe feminist movement aso played a role in urging action by poiting out the blatant inequalities in the art world and academia. ‘Se Orenstein (as inthis note), and the WCA survey of art departments, and the Tamarind Lithography Workshop's 1972 stady by June Wayne, ta, Sex Differential sn Art Exhibition Reviews: A Statistical Study Los Angeles. For the postion af women in academia, see Ann Sutherland Harts artis, ‘Women in College Art Departments and Museums,” Art Jourral, sxe, 1973, 417-18; “The Second Sex in Academe, Fine Arts Di vision,” Artin America, May-lune, 1972, 18-18, and “The Second Sex in Academe," AA.ULP. Bulletin, 1970, 283.95, Also see Barbara Ehrich White and Leon S. White. "Survey on the Status of Women in College ‘Art Departments” Art Journal, xxx, 1973, 420-22. For an overview of womensstudies nat history, see Athena Tacha Spear, ‘Women's Stules InArtand Ar History,” mimeographed booklet, College Art Association Detroit, 1974: and Barbara Ehvlich White, "A 1974 Perspective: Why Womens Studies in Art and Art History?” Art Journal, sx, 1976, 340- A. For the Southern California women artists’ movement, ee Faith Wild- ing. By Our Oxon Hands: The Women Artiste Movement, Southern Cal fornia 1970-1976, Santa Monica, 1977. Fora short review ofthe begin ring phases and activities ofthe women's movement in art see Lavience Alloway. “Women's Art in the 70s," Artin America, May/Tune, 1976 (64-72. He also talks about early exhibitions of contemporary art by women, Also see Grace Glueck, “Women Artist 80," Art Ness, Ot 1980, 58-63,330 Tue ART BULLETIN SEPTENRER 1967 VOLUME LxDe NUMBER 3 feminist art program in 1970 at Fresno State College. The following year she collaborated with Miriam Schapiro in the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the ‘Arts.2 The result was the celebrated “Womanhouse” ex- hibition, in which the group took over an entire house to express their particular definition of women’s lives as shaped by their new feminist consciousness, a Gesamt- kunstwerk of women’s images. These ranged from outrage to irony and humor.® This collaboration soon devolved into two separate workshops: Chicago's performance group, whose influence on feminist performance art and the genre in general can still be felt, and Schapiro’s journal- writing class, which also was influential for feminist and other art.® After her return to New York in 1975, Schapiro, along with Nancy Azara and others, founded the on-going Feminist Art Institute in 1979. Womanspace, a nonprofit gallery and art center, and the Los Angeles Woman's Build- ing, with exhibition spaces, workshops, and programs of study, both opened in 1973, and were important devel- ‘opments in that explosive beginning of feminist art in Cal- ifornia.* In 1972, the Women's Caucus for Art was estab- lished, with chapters across the country, intended to bring together and provide a forum for women in all areas of the arts, Its original purpose was to correct perceived imbal- ances within the College Art Association, academia, and the art world. At its conferences, major issues concerning ‘women and art continue to be presented and debated. Publications devoted to those new developments were not long in appearing, though they were often short-lived. For example, Womanspace Journal, edited by Ruth Iskin, ® See dy Chicago, Through the Flower: My Struggles asa Woman Art- fst Garden City, 1973, chap. 4; Arlene Raven, Judy Chieag, and Sheil de Bretteville, “The Feminist Studio Workshop,” Womanspace Journal, Feb./Mar.. 1973; and Judy Chicago and Mita Schapiro, “A Feminist ‘Art Program,” Art Journal, exxt, 1971, 48-49, ® Miriam Schapiro, “The Education of Women as Artists: Project Wom anhouse” orginally published in Art lournal, x3, 1972, 258-70; repr in Loeb (as in n. 8), 247-53; and Womarhouse, exh. ct. 1971, Other collective projects include Chicago's The Dinner Party, completed 197, discussed below, her Birth Project, 1985, and the “Sister Chapel,” 2 tav- ‘ling esibition, 1978, of eleven painted panels paying homage to female role models from Bella Abzug to Frida Kahlo, conceived and organized by lise Greenstein. It was perceived asa "counterattack against the pa- telarchal worldview expressed in the Sistine Chapel.” See Glovia FOr- censtein, “The Sister Chapel, a Traveling Homage to Heroines,” Wom lanart 1, Winter/Spring, 1977.12 2 See the two books published by Schapiro with her students, Anony- ous Was ¢ Woman, Valencia, CA, 1974 (not tobe confused with Mera Bank's book), and a volume of letters and statements by artists from 3 project ofthe Feminist Art Program, Art: A Woman's Sensibility, ed ‘Miriam Schapiro, Valencia, CA, 1975, Fora history ofthe performance art movement among feminist artist in California, often inspired by Chi- ‘ago, see Martha Reslr, “The Private and the Public: Feminist Artin California,” Artforum, Sept, 1977, 66-74, and Moira Roth, “Toward a History of Calforia Performance: Part One and Two,” Arts Magazine, Feb. and June, 1978, and The Amazing Decade. Women and Peformance ‘Art America, 1970-1980, e. Mita Roth, Los Angeles, 1983, 2 See Arlene Raven, "Feminist Education: A Vision of Community and ‘Women’s Culture” in Loeb (as inn. 8), 254-59; Lucy Lippard, “The LA, Woman's Building” From the Center (asin n. 21), 96-100, orig. publ 1974; and Nancy Marmer. Womanspace, A Creative Battle for Equality sn the Are World” Art News, Summer 1973, 38-39. From the early 1970 begun in 1973 but lasting only three issues, contained a ‘number of important early feminist statements on art. The longer-lived Feminist Art Journal, based on the East Coast and guided by Cindy and Chuck Nemser, was founded by former stalf members of Women and Artin 1972, and added ‘a feminist perspective to contemporary art criticism.” In- terviews (mostly by Nemser) of living artists, and historical profiles, although mainly biographical rather than critica, ‘were valuable source material in a field where little infor- ‘mation had been disseminated at all. However, critical is- ‘sues were raised in certain articles, such as the question of “art” versus “craft” and the debate concerning a female sen- sibility. In 1977, the Feminist Art Journal suddenly ceased publication. Christine Rom, who has thoroughly studied the history of this important early journal from its inception to its de- mise,” sees its failure as more than monetary, although this ‘was the immediate cause. It was, she said, “seriously plagued by obvious contradictions and confusions that ‘would have eventually threatened its continuance.” As an alternative publication, for example, it never lived up to the expectations of its audience. “Radical feminist views were slighted.” Its tone became strident after 1974, when ‘Nemser and her husband became sole editors, and Nemser began to use the magazine to promote her own point of view. Finally, its censorship of Chicago, Schapiro, and Lip- pard, among others, illustrates that it was not, as it was proposed to be, “open to artists of all persuasions.” Never- theless, it documented the formative years of the women’s art movement, and published a number of important ar- on, feminist art organizations, women’s art centers, collectives, publi= cations, and galleries have contnved to proliferate. In 1971, West-East Bag (WEB) was founded, a collective international elor 1 keep various areas ofthe movement in touch with eachother, which inladed the de velopment of aside registry of women artists, ™ The critical journal, Women and Art. begun in 1971 by Redstocking ‘Artists, folded after only one ise in 1972. I was meant to “document the activities ofthe women’s att movement” (Christine Rom, “One View: The Feminist Art Joural.” in Woman s Art Journal, Fall: Winter, 1981- 42, 20, Womanart was published fr two yeats, from 1976, See Corinne Robins, "The Women's Art Magazines,” Art Criticism, 11, 1980, 84-95, which documents the decline of women's at jousnals. Ike goal was to represent “women artists! voice inthe art world, to improve the staus of all women atts, and to expose sexit exploitation and discrimination.” as well as "encourage women artists ofall persia Slons to discuss and illustrate their work” (Rom as in n. 26), 20, citing Editorial.” Feminist Art Journal, Ap., 1972 2. See Patrica Mainard's "Quilts: The Great American At,” one of sev- eral important acicles on this seve inthe Feminist Art Journal, Winter, 1973 (republished in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, es, Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, New York, 1982, 331-46), and her “Feminine Sensibility: An Analysis,” again one among several on this subject in the Feminist Art Journal (Fall, 1972). Through sich articles, partculaely by Patricia Mainardi and Cindy Nemse, the magazine bee ame associated with certain tance, In the cae of the female aesthetic for example, these two writes argued against Judy Chicago's biogical and universal interpretation. They also disagreed with her demand for feparatism, See, for example, Janet Sawyer and Patrica Mainard, “A Feminine Sensibility: Tow Views,” Fomine Art Journal, Ape, 1972 © The joural dates fom 1972-77; ace Rom (as inn. 26), 19-24, Citations fin this section are from Rom,ticles on various significant issues. In 1975, Women Artists Newsletter was founded (titled Women Artists News since 1978), and it still serves as a ‘major outlet for news of activities, conferences, and ex- hibitions specifically of women artists. From 1977 to 1980, the Los Angeles Woman's Building published Chrysalis: A ‘Magazine of Women’s Culture. The title referred to the per- sonal and cultural transformation of women believed to be underway as a result of feminism. The journal covered a broad range of cultural issues relevant to feminism, with a number of articles devoted to feminist art and film. These included Lippard’s important statement on female and male difference seen in the nature/culture dichotomy and in fe- male body imagery in art by women; Gloria Orenstein’s ‘Leonora Carrington’s Visionary Art for the New Age” (issue no. 3); Ruth Iskin and Arlene Raven's “Through the Peephole: Lesbian Sensibility in Art” (no. 4); and an in- troduction to women artists’ books by Lippard (no. 3). It also contained a number of profiles of women artists such as Mary Beth Edelson, Betye Saar, Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, and Eleanor Antin. The editorial board and list of contributing editors reads like a “Who's Who" in feminist art studies — from the art historians Arlene Raven, Carol Duncan, Gloria Orenstein, and Linda Nochlin, to the art- ists Judy Chicago and Sheila Levant de Bretteville, among many others, as well as important feminist figures outside the field, such as Adrienne Rich and Mary Daly. The jour- nal'sailure to continue publication despite the high quality ofits contributions is disheartening, Two valuable later ad- ditions to feminist art literature still active today are Hel- icon Nine, A Journal of Women’s Art and Letters, begun in 1979, with articles on women artists past and present, and Women and Performance. ‘Two of the most important journals now published, with very different emphases, are Heresies and the Woman's Art Journal. The former, initiated ten years ago and published by the Heresies Collective, describes itself as “an idea-ori- ented journal devoted to the examination of art and politics from a feminist pespective.” The Collective consists of com- mitted feminist artists, writers, anthropologists, art his- torians, architects, filmmakers, photographers, etc. More consistently than Chrysalis, which was similarly though less politically oriented, Heresies focuses on a specific theme © Chrysalis no. 2, 1977, "Quite Contrary: Body, Nature, Ritual in Wom- ens An.” 31-47, ater reprinted as part of her book, Overlay, New York, 198s, 2 For example: in fue no, 1, Carol Duncan’ important article, “The Esthetis of Power in Modern Erotic Art" Heresies, 1, 1977, 46-50: Lucy Lippard’s "The Pink Glass Swan: Upward and Downward Mobility inthe ‘Ant World,” reprinted in her anthology, Get the Message? A Decade of ‘Ar for Socal Change, New York, 1984; Eva Cockcrfts "Women in the ‘Community Mural Movement”; ae well as works by the artists Martha Rosler, Mary Beth Edelson, May’ Stevens, Nancy Spero, and the artist Harmony Hammond's important contribution tothe question of the na- ture of the feminist sensibly, "Feminist Abstract Art — A Poliial Viewpoint. According to Alexis Hunter (Women Artts of the World, ed. Cindy Lyle, Syivia Moore, and Cynthia Navaretta, New York, 1984, 91), there was an easy conflict between expressions of political art and individual THE FRIST CRITIQUE OF ART uisroRY 331 in each issue. Important topics have included Women and Violence (issue no. 6), Lesbian Art and Artists (no. 3), Third World Women (no. 8), Women and Architecture (no. 11), Feminism and Ecology (no. 13), Women and Music (no. 10), Film and Video (no. 16), and, on feminist art, Women’s Traditional Arts: The Politics of Aesthetics (no. 4). The ‘magazine contains much source material — writings by art- ists or poets — as well as analysis and criticism.” In its international, radical perspectives on political, feminist, class, and racial issues, Heresies has remained vital as an alternative in the art world to the basically white, male- dominated art journals. Over the years, it has evolved to- wards more coverage of politics than art. Elsa Honig Fine's Woman's Art Journal began publica- tion in 1980, and has maintained a reputation for publish- ing scholarly articles on women artists from all historical periods, with a variety of viewpoints. It is certainly the ‘most important outlet for art-historical research on women in America, considering the limited coverage given to the field in more traditional journals. Outside the United States, feminist art movements have also flourished. In Britain, feminist activity began in the early 1970s, about the same time as in this country, and from its inception has been concerned with radical feminist issues, such as building an audience of women, rather than issues of equity with men. Arising from a Marxist ideology, British feminists have been politically active since the be- ‘ginning of the movement.” The feminist magazine collec- tive, Spare Rib, began publication in 1972 and is still in print. That same year the Women’s Art History Collective was established, The magazine Block has published signif- icant feminist articles since its inception in 1979 and the scholarly journal Art History continues to publish much feminist research. The early phase of the movement was influenced by American feminism, especially the work of Lucy Lippard, Linda Nochlin, and the Feminist Art Journal.” Situations in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark seem very similar to those in America, with activity beginning in the early 1970s. Italy's feminist art movement began slightly later, and is said to be polarized now along the lines of party politics. In Southern Australia, Lippard' visit in 1975 catalyzed the movement.* According to Susan Schwalb in perception, shih has now been settled s9 that both exist contiguously, ® Griela Pollock mentions these influences in her article, “What's Wrong swith Images of Women?” Sereen Education, xx, 1977, 28, but goes on to say that "the Iterature highlighted many important problems but was rot onthe whole theoretically very rigorous or helpful" Fora chronology fof events in the women’s movement in Britain, see Margaret Harrison, ‘Notes om Feminist Artin Britain 1970-77,” Studio International, ex 1977 (an issue on women’s at), 212-20, She notes tthe time ofthe article the following areas “explored by women artists’ there: "Examination of the female payche; political identification with seorking women, re- Interpretation of the myths of religion and gods and goddesses; se of symbols to crytallse content: use of documentary techniques: deve: ‘opment of new forms and exhibiting structures; the inclusion of Feminist content in the work; and the location of the principles of feminism and its relationship to the raltes ofa clas society" (p. 220), % Women Artists ofthe World (as in m. 32), 109, 128332 THE AR BULLETIN serrEnMER 1987 Vouuaee Extx NUMER 3 Women Artists of the World, the French are far behind ‘Americans in organizing. Lippard points out that, in France, “feminist artis more often defined according to American cultural feminist notions (autobiography, images of self, performance, traditional arts) than according to the more uuniversalized psychopolitical theory for which French fem- inism is known.” ‘Asa result of the feminist movement in art and art his- tory in America, an older generation of women artists have been recognized for their talents. Lee Krasner has been credited as a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism. Louise Bourgeois, who had had only six one-artist exhibitions be- tween 1950 and 1978, had seven from 1978 to 1981, and ‘was given a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern ‘Art in 1982. Alice Neel, who had been ignored throughout the 1960s, was critically acclaimed before her death. De- spite these and many other redressings that could be men- tioned, none of those artists has been studied in as thorough a manner as their male colleagues. The integration of their art and their histories into the development of modern art has not yet been accomplished, and there are even some feminist historians and critics who have strong doubts whether that is either possible or desirable. Miriam Schapiro, thinking back over her involvement with the early phase of feminist art, aptly describes the “jubilant” mood of women artists: ‘We had discovered the gold of sisterhood and it was a ‘unique and precious find. It gave us the moral support that our previous isolation had prevented. Out of our consciousness-raising groups and our political action meetings we emerged as a vigorous art body. . .. The position papers... written by the first wave of liber- ationists . . . stressed the gathering of one’s forces for freedom from the intellectual and emotional dependence fon men.” The first decade of feminist art thus was buoyed not only by anger, but by a new sense of community, the attempts to develop a new art to express a new sensibility, and an optimistic faith in the ability of art to promote and even engender a feminist consciousness. 25 "Issue and Taboo,” in Get the Message? (as inn. 31), 132. For a bret overview of European feminist movements, see Woman Artists of the Word (as in n. 32). For a discussion of the early period of feminist art steuggles in the United States, see Jacqueline Skles, "The United States: 1970-1980," in the section entitled "The Status of Women in the Aas Worldwide,” Women Artists ofthe World (as inn. 32), 69-76, This book, in fact, gives an important overview of feminist art movements through: ‘out the Western world and some third-world countries, The similarity of conditions and atitudes towards women artists and thei work inthe 19th land 20th centuries comes through clearly in these essays. > For Lee Krasner, see Marcia Tucker, Lee Krasner, Large Paintings, Whi rey Museum of American Art, New York, 1973; Barbara Rose, Lee Kr ner: A Retrospective, Houston and New York, 1983 (her first American retrospective, at age 75) for Louise Bourgeois, see Deborah Wye, Louse Bourgeois, exh cat. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1982; fr Alice Nee, see Ellen H, Johnson, “Alice Nees Fifty Years of Portrait Painting.” Studio International, exci, 1977, 175-79; Ana Sutherland Haris, Alice Asa result of the ferment of activity within the early ryears of the feminist movement in art, artists and critics ‘were engaged by new issues. Feminist artists working in the first half of the 1970s exposed what may now seem obvious discordances and fractures in the fabric of our cul- ture, though their questions are still without resolution ‘Typical of the first manifestations were issues of patriarchal ‘oppression in the work of Nancy Spero and May Stevens: of female body manipulation and degradation and the cre- ation of a more positive body sense in the work of Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Semmel, and Hannah Wilke; the attempt to break down the false hierarchy from “fine arts” to “crafts in the work of Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, and Har- mony Hammond; the investigation of female archetypes such as the Great Goddess in the work of Mary Beth Edel- son; and the recuperation of women’s history, whether in the work of Judy Chicago or among feminist art historians." ‘These and other issues were debated among feminist art critics, Art historians, too, were soon engaged in similar debates. II. Themes Act Versus Craft The first generation of women artists and art critics rec~ ognized that women were underrepresented in exhibitions and galleries, and, more important, that female experience was neither validated nor even addressed in mainstream art. The Modernist myth of the artist assumes that s/he stands outside social structures and is therefore free to ex- press universal experience without prejudice or limita- tions. In Europe and this country, however, “universal vision” is too often equivalent to white, middle-class, male perception. “Omission is one of the mechanisms by which fine art reinforces the values and beliefs of the powerful and suppresses the experience of others." A large part of traditional female creative output that conveyed a female experience had been invalidated as art and relegated to the category of “craft” through the crea- tion of an aesthetic hierarchy qualitatively differentiating high’ from "low" art. As Broude makes clear in her article fon Miriam Schapiro,*: until recently, “decorative art and decorative impulses . . . acted as important liberating ca- Nee: Paintings, 1933-1082, Loyola Marymount University, Malone Art Gallery, Los Angeles, 1983; and Patricia Hills, Alice Noel, New York, 1983, » Response to Alloway’ article (as inn, 21), Artin Ameria, Nov./Dee., 1976, V7. 2 For a brief review of these issues, sce Cindy Nemser, "Towards a Fem Inst Sensibility: Contemporary Teends in Women’s Art” Feminist Art Tournal,w, Summer, 1976, 1923 » Harmony Hammond explores this issue in "Class Notes," Heresies, no, 3, Fal, 1977, rep. in Wappings, Essays on Feminism, Art and the Martial Arts, New York, 1986, 35. {© An Anticatalogue,” 1977, quoted by Hammond, ibid. 34. 4 Norma Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and Femmage': Reflections on the Conflict between Decoration and Abstraction in Tentith-Centry Art ‘Arts Magazine, Fb., 1980, repr. in Broude and Garrard (as inn, 28), 315- 29.talysts” for male artists, whereas traditional decorative art ‘ereated by women was considered “women’s work.” Crafts were also considered “low’ art since they could not tran- scend utilitarianism. Miriam Schapiro's “femmage” as well as Faith Ringgold's handmade “Family of Woman’ figures and her more recent narrative quilts challenge this hier- archical distinction by placing women's “crafts” in a “high art context.* Patricia Mainardis research on quilts® and the art of Harmony Hammond and Joyce Kozloff also res- urrect decorative art and craft as a viable artistic means to express female experience, and they point to its political and subversive potential. Essays abound on the way in which the definition of craft as a low art form has been used to keep the female in her powerless place. More recently, Joyce Kozloff has moved her work into the public realm through commissions for installations in subway and train stations. Such work fulfills the feminist intention of bringing art to a larger public, and maintains a feminist purpose for decorative art. Miriam Schapiro hhas also continued to use decorative motifs, but now in support of her search for the persona of the creative ‘woman.** Charlotte Robinson’s seven-year project to bring together “fine” artists and “craft” quilt-makers is another important manifestation of the concern to “eliminate the hierarchical division between fine arts and crafts . . . that separation between visually distinguished articles created for aesthetic pleasure and those created for practical use.” Robinson's group also hoped to acknowledge “the chain ‘connecting contemporary women with generations of their mothers.”* In her essay for the catalogue, The Artist and the Quilt, Lippard developed the often asserted statement that “the quilt has become the prime visual metaphor for ‘women's lives, for women's culture,” relating its aesthetic to a specifically female style of life, sensibility, and “net- working” politics." The history of the quilt, she points out ‘© Thalia Gouma-Peterson, “The Theater of Life and Illusion in Miciam, ‘Schapiro's Recent Work’ in Tim Darin’ As Fast As Can,” New Paintings By Miriam Schapiro, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, 1986, repr. from Arts Magazine. Mar, 1986, 3-8; and idem, “Fath Ringgold’ Nar. rative Quilts," Fith Ringgold. Change: Printed Story Quilts, New York, 1987, 9-16, repr fom Arts Magazin, Jan., 1987, 4-49, © Mainardi (as in. 28). On the isues of cea as at, als see Rachel Maines, “Fancywork: The Archaeology of Lives,” Feminst Art Journal, sir, Winter, 1974/75, 1,3, 4 See especially Rozska Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of Femininity, London, 1984. For less poitial sted, sce “Mirra Bank, Anonymous Was a Woman, New York, 1979. Also see Her ties no, 3, Winter, 1978, entitled Woman’ Traditional Arts. The Polite of Aesthetics © Joyce Kozlof: Visionary Omamen, ed. Patricia Johnston, with con tributions by Hayden Herrera and Thalla Gouma-Peterson, exh cat. Bos ton University Art Gallery. 1986 © As Thalia Gouma Peterson described it in her essay on Schapiro (asin 9.42) © The Arist and the Quilt, ed. Charlotte Robinson, with essays by Jean “Taylor Federico, Miriam Schapiro, Lucy Lippard. Eleanor Muaro, and Bonnie Pesinger, New York, 1983, 10, The project was conceive in 19 Also see Elaine Hedges, “The Nineteenth Century Diarist and Her Quilts,” Feminist Studies, vir, Sarnner, 1982, 293-99 (abridged from American {THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART mistoRY 333 in her Marxist political analysis, informs the “relationships among producer, receiver, and object that the art world rarely acknowledges,” since itis the “product both of class and gender separation, and of the degree of economic sup- port for the art in question.” She finds that this qualitative dichotomy in class and in gender led to the degraded value of utilitarian objects Such attention to craft arts has resulted in a number of exhibitions of quilts and other productions traditionally made by women; it has also no doubt stimulated the dis- play of work such as that of the Chilean “arpilleras,” hand- sewn patchworks with political intent made by women and smuggled out of the country, and the interest in and ex- hibition of Native American art, as well as Afro-American art, by women.” The critical responses have varied to the artists’ attempt to sanction female creative expression through craft. Many art historians and critics have supported these artists, oth- ‘ers have not. Donald Kuspit proclaimed that art based on decoration betrayed the critical potential and intention of feminist art. He considered decorative art to belong to that ‘now authoritarian Modernist mainstream, and criticized it on that basis." Tamar Garb critiqued Broude’s position on Miriam Schapiro's decorative art.*' which Broude attempted to leg- itimize by linking Schapiro to the male tradition of abstract artists such as Matisse and Kandinsky, who also were in- spired by decorative art. Broude maintained that the main ifference between these artists and Schapiro’s “femmage” lies in her desire to reveal rather than conceal her sources as “objects of aesthetic value and expressive significance.” Schapiro not only conveys women’s creativity and expe- rience, but also satisfies “the mainstream’s demand for sig- nificance,” according to Broude. Her art is thus “properly ‘understood’ in terms of “a dialogue with an older tradition Quilts: A Handmade Legacy, exh. cat. Oakland Museum, 1981) “Up, Down, and Across: A New Frame for Quilts” (asin. 47), 32, 2%. 1 See, for example, the exhibition catalogue (with essays) curated by Har- mony Hammond and Jaune Quickto-See Smith forthe Gallery of the ‘American Indian Community House, Women of Sweelgrase, Cedar and Sage, New York, 1985; "Connections Project/Conexus,” a collaborative ‘exhibition on women amis from Brasil and the U.S, organized by Joely Carvalho and Sabra Moore, at The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic ‘Ar Jan-Feb. 1987; Forever Foe: Art by African American Wore, 1862- 1980, ed, Ama Alexander Bontemp, catalogue fora traveling exhibition beginning at Minos State University, curated by Jacqueline Fonville- Bontemps and David C. Driskell, Alexandria, VA, 1980, and Samella Lewis, The Art of Elzaboth Catlett, Claremont, CA, 1988. Also see Her= esis, no. 15, Winter, 1982, devoted to the topic of racism ("Racism isthe Issue). These ate important resources, but more research needsto be done bby feminist on Black, Chicana, and Aslan artists, among others. "© Donald Kuspit, “Betraying the Feminist Intention: The Case Against Feminist Decorative Art.” Arts Magasine, Nov, 1979, 124-26. Many fem- Init fin this essay very problematic, Harmony Hammond, for example ctiticizes Kuspit’s “authoritarian” criticism In "Horsblinders” In Wrap pings (as inn. 38), 100, 8 Tamar Garb, “Engaging Embroidery," review of Parker, The Sub wersive Stitch in Art History 1x, 1986, 13-33.334 THE ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 1007 VOLUME LxDx NUMBER 3 ‘of modernism." To this Garb responded that, admirable as her defense of Schapiro was, Broude's attempt to “es- tablish Schapiro's significance ‘in the language of the main- stream” was self-defeating. “The problem of negotiating Modernism with its range of phallocentric metaphors” is that “the mainstream is strong enough and entrenched enough to appropriate all subtle subversions.” Feminists rust not, as Broude does, accept “the divisive construction of ‘Art’ and ‘Craft’ produced through mainstream art his- tory” in which “embroidery is seen as mindless and dec- orative.” Garb suggested exploring the decorative arts, as Parker does with embroidery in The Subversive Stitch, as “a cultural practice, and a site of ideological struggle.”* Parker and Pollock, too, asserted that, to celebrate the sep- aration of art and craft is to lose sight of craft as the center of the development of the nineteenth-century “ideology of femininity.” Thus the political implications of the history ‘of women’s crafts go far beyond the nature of a female sensibility, to encompass the discourse on power and pow- erlessness, radical impulses in female creativity, the history of art-making, and the ideology of repression as well. Craft also is implicated in the debate between a celebration of ‘women’s cultural signs and the dismantling of them. ‘The Female Sensibility and Images by Women One of the most heated debates during the first decade ‘offeminism, which seemed to demand a position from most writers and artists, was the possibility of a female sensi- bility and aesthetic expressed in contemporary art. Gloria Orenstein considered it @ “central theoretical question.” Noncommital concerning the nature of its existence, but indicating that the concept of the female sensibility pro- duced a “new liberating tendency in art for many women,” Orenstein pointed to the self-conscious investigation of fe- 5 Broude, "Schapiro" (as in n. 41), 315, 32, 326 °° Garb (as inn, $1), 132,133. Also see Parker (asin, 4), Kuspit also links the female sensibility or the “feminine sensibility” ashe calls, with Modernism throughout hs article (a in n, $0). % Pollock and Parker (asin. 14), Sa 5 Orenstein (as inn, 21), 519-21. The first exhibition to “ustrate and validate the theory” was held at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Spring, 1972, "21 Artists Invisible Visible,” with a catalogue by Judy Chicago and Destra Frankl © Schapiro, “The Education of Women as Artist: Project Womanhouse” (as inn 23). ® Although some did not, such as Agnes Martin, who said thatthe “con cept ofa female sensibility is our greatest burden as women artists” (cited by Renee Sandell, "Female Aesthetics: The Women’s Movement and Its ‘Aesthetic Spit,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, xv, Oct, 190, 19) 5 Vivian Gornick, “Toward a Definition of Female Sensibility” (1973), Essays in Feminism, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1978, 112, Such investigations in the first decade of feminism inevitably raced the se of separatism. Both Judy Chicago (Through the Flower [as in 22), 72, et passim) and Lacy Lippard considered it necessary, in order that ‘omen artists fel themselves to be "as at home in the world ae men ae.” Yet Lippard recognized the danger of separatism — that it “become not training ground, but a protective womb.” She ultimately would ike to ‘see a "wilectic between the female world, the art world, and the ral world” (Lippard, “Changing Since Changing,” From the Center asin. 21], 1), However, she Further noted that “ts erucil that art by women ‘male body imagery, and of female experience generally, as well as the new audience of females that it addressed.** Womanhouse (1972), the project that grew out of Chicago's and Schapiro's Feminist Art Program at the California In- stitute of the Arts, was one of the first manifestations of the female aesthetic. In reference to that project, Schapiro speaks of West Coast women bringing a “new subject mat- ter into their art — the subject matter was the content of their own life experiences, and the aesthetic form was to bbe dictated by this new content. . .. What formerly was considered trivial was heightened to the level of serious art- making. . ..”* Most feminist artists and critics not only seemed to accept the existence of such an aesthetic on some level,® but also the need to explore it, as Vivian Gornick pointed out in 1973: To achieve wholeness, [women] . . . must break through to the center of their experience, and hold that experience up to the light of consciousness if their lives are to be transformed. They must struggle to “see” more clearly, to remember more accurately, to describe more fully who and what they have always been. For centuries the cultural record of our experience has been a record of male experience. Its the male sensibility that has apprehended and described our life. It is the ‘maleness of experience that has been a metaphor for hu- man existence.* A whole body of recent research in psychology, litera- ture, art, music, sociology, and education indicates that ‘women perceive reality differently than men, for whatever reasons, and therefore have different expectations of and responses to human experience.” Carol Gilligan's psycho- logical study presents the view of many of these revisionist not be sucked into the establishment and absorbed by it” (bid, "The ‘Women Artist's Movement — What Next” p, 141). Harmony Hammond also considered separatism necessary In order to "acknowledge our di ferences" and “learn about, suppor, and work with each other” (Hamm- mond, asin n. 38). This issue is of les concern today although many art historians stil fel the need to study women artist a a separate ct- gory, and many aris still make art out of that position. bibliography of such ides ie extensive, inclding: Elaine Showalter, “Toward a Feminist Poetic” (1978), The New Feminist Critic, ed. . Showalter, New York, 1985, 125-43; also see other articles in this an- ‘thology Silvia Bovenschen, “ls There a Female Aesthetic?” New German Critique, x, Winter, 1977, 111-39 (repr. in Female Aesthetics, ed. Gisela Ecker, transl. Harriet Anderson, Boston, 1985, 2350); Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Bort: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, New York, 1976; “Michelle Citron, et a, ‘Women and Fl: A Discussion of Feminist Aes thetic." New German Critique, xa, Winter, 1978, 83-107: Critical In- ‘quiry, vt, Winter, 1981 Special Issue on Writing and Sexual Diference); Mary Jacobus, e., Women Writing and Writing about Women, New York, 1979; Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination, New York, 1972 Janet Todd, ed, Gender and Literary Voice, New York, 1980; Joan Sem mel and Apri Kingsley, “Seal Imagery in Women’s Art,” Woman’ Art Journal, Spring/Summer, 198, 1-6; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gu- bar, The Madiooman in the Attic, New Haven and London, 1979; Eiser- stein and Jardine (asin n. 1); Julia Penelope Stanley and Susan J. Wolfe (Robbins), "Toward a Feminist Aethetic.” Chrysalis, no, 6, 1978, 57-7 Patrica Mathews, “What Is Female Imagery?” Women Artists News, x, NNov., 1984, 5-7, and catalogue essay, Virginia Women Artists: Female Experience in Art, Blacksburg, VA, 1985. Many others could be cite.texts with the following thesis: “Given the differences in ‘women’s conceptions of self and morality, women bring to the life cycle a different point of view and order human experience in terms of different priorities.” ‘The question was first formulated with respect to the sources and the nature of the female sensibility. Was it bi- logically determined? Or was it purely a social construct? Chicago, Schapiro, and, soon after, Lippard claimed to be able to recognize female sexual or body imagery in art by women.*! However, such “central core” imagery or “vax ‘inal iconology,” as it is sometimes called," was as much 2 political as an essentialist or erotic statement, as Tickner pointed out," an attempt to challenge the notion of female inferiority and “penis envy,” as well as to establish and reclaim a sense of female power. Miriam Schapiro, too, said that “our discovery of the ‘central core image’ was a way of making ideological statements for ourselves, a kind of subject matter that was surfacing in the art of other ‘women and finally an explication of how that subject mat- ter can be disguised.” Elaine Showalters astute and balanced study of what she «alls feminist bio-criticism concludes that it is “useful and important” to study “biological imagery,” but “there can ’be no expression of the body which is unmediated by lin- sguistic, social, and literary structures.” Her ideal model centers on a theory of women's culture that “incorporates ideas about women's body, language, and psyche but in- terprets them in relation tothe social contexts in which they Many artists and art critics now see the female sensibility as a totally constructed one. Yet even with the rise of the study of “gender difference” as opposed to “female sensi- © Carol Gilligan, n a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Wom: ‘en's Development, Cambridge, 1982, 22 Lucy Lippard, "Judy Chicago, Talking to Lucy R. Lippard,” From the Center (as in n. 21), 228. Also see Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago, Female Imagery.” Womanspace Journal, 1, Summer, 1973, 1-16; Judy (Chicago, Through the Flower (asian 2), 142-4; Arlene Raven, "Wom ‘en's Art The Development of a Theoretical Perspective,” Womanspace Tournal, 1 Fels -Mar., 1973, 14-20; Ruth lkin in “Sexual and elf Imagery in An.” Womanspace Journal, 1, Summer, 1973, speaks of the central cavity and inner space imagery; “Interview with Misia Schapiro by “Moira Roth” Miriam Schapiro: The Shrine, the Computer and the Doll- hhouse, exh, eat, Mandeville Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, 1975, 12-13; Lucy Lippard, “A Note onthe Politics and Aesthetics ‘fa Woman's Show." Women Choose Women, exh. eat, New York Cul: tural Center, 1973; "The Women Artists Moverent — What Next,” 143- 44, and ‘Wha Is Female Imagery”, 8089, bath in From the Centr (as Jinn. 21); and Deena Metzger, “In Her Image,” Heresies, no. 2, 1977, 9. Alloway, in his article on women's art (as in 9.21, isnot convinced by any of these arguments, "No reason,” he says, “has been advanced 60 prove that central configurations are inherently female” (p. 70) For the View thatthe female sensibility derives from experince alone, and not from body, see Cindy Nemer, ef al, clcusted by Rom (a inn. 26), 22; 1.28 above; and “In Her Own Image ~ Exhibition Catalogue” The Fo Inst Art Journal, Spring, 1974, 11-18. Lipard later modified her postion fon central core imagery (a8 did most of those who were involved with the issue early on). See “sue and Taboo,” in Get the Message? (asin 31), 12526 © Fora discussion of such imagery and these terms, sce Barbara Rose, ‘Vaginal Ieonology.” New York Magazin, vi, 11 Feb. 1974, and Dorothy ‘WE FEMCIMIsT CRITIQUE OF ART HISroRY 335 bility,” the concept of the specifically female voice, whether understood as essentialist or as ideologically constructed, still imbues much feminist thought. This is especially true among French feminists. Julia Kristeva, for example, writes with regard to the way woman's different viewpoint con- ditions her place in the world: Sexual difference — which is at once biological, phys- iological, and relative to reproduction — is translated by and translates a difference in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic contract which is the social contract: a difference, then, inthe relationship to power, language, and meaning." Many contemporary feminists now focus on the question of representation and gender difference rather than on a specific female sensibility. Those Postmodernist artists and writers believe that representation is atthe very root of the difference between male and female in our society. Both feminists and Postmodern cultural philosophers under- stand representation not as a mimesis of some ultimate real- ity, but rather as a way of reflecting the culture's vision of itself. Representation thus legitimizes culture's dominant ideology, and is therefore inevitably politically motivated. It constructs difference through a re-presentation of pre- conditioned concepts about gender that inform all of our institutions and that are at the very foundation of our ide- ology and system of beliefs. The same is true about our cultural definitions for male and female identity. Stephen Heath claims that there is not an “immediate, given fact of ‘male’ and ‘female’ identity but a whole process of differ- entiation”; Tickner notes that this differentiation is “pro- Seiberling. “The Female View of Erotic,” New York Magazine, vit, 1L Feb. 1974, © Tickner, “The Body Polite: Female Sexuality and Women Artiste Since 1970," Art History, 1978, 41-42, Schapiro, 1976, in response to Alloway (asin, 37), 21. Donald Kuspit speaks ofa change in attitude towards central or vaginal imagery (asin 2.90, 126) [At the time of ther firs appearance, these strong, upfront — blatant — pattems seemed to function ike the clenched fist of a sebllious rilitary salute... Such imagery was emphatic about the neve feminist sense of determination and slf- determination. Its idealistic abstraction perfectly sulted feminism’s sence of new expectation, new poten tility, new energy, and new clarity of purpose... Now, retrospec tively, the central image seems to have a diferent mesning based ‘na traditional sense of femininity — that was nove to be dominant where it was once submissive. The issue of the relation between nature and women's bodies has been explored by many, including Susan Griffith, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside He, New York, 1978; Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating [New York, 1974, chaps, 8.9; and Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature ito Culture?” Feminist Stes, 1, 1972 reps in Women, Culture and Society ed. M.A. Resaldo and L. Lamphere, 1974, 67-87. Also see Estella Lauter, Women ae Mythmakers. Poetry and Visual Art by Tisen- tieth: Broude and Garrard (asin 9. 28), 1. This positon is substantiated by numberof the articles they included in their anthology, most of which ‘were orignaly published during the 1970s 7 Adsinne Rich, ‘When We Dead Awaken: Wiring as Revision,” On Lies, Secrets and Silence, New York, 197, 38, Also see ir Her Oxon Inags, of literary critics during the same decade. Those critics have focused on texts by women as the primary source for a radical critique of literature. Their position was first artic~ ulated by Adrienne Rich in 1971: A radical critique of literature, feminist in its im- pulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how ‘we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as ‘well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative and how we can begin to see and name — and therefore live — afresh.” Sandra Gilbert made an even more comprehensive case for a “revisionist imperative.” According to her, feminist crit- icism “wants to decode and demystify all the disguised questions and answers that have always shadowed the con- nections between textuality, sexuality, genre and gender, psychosexual identity and cultural authority.” Elaine Showalter suggested that women speak in two voices, that of the “dominant group” that generates the dominant social structure, and that of the “muted” or sub- ordinate group. She considered women’s writing to be “a double-voice discourse” that always embodies the social, literary, artistic, and cultural heritages of both the muted and the dominant group.”* The study of images by women can be a significant source of insight into women’s practice as artists if read as such multilayered visual texts Inquiry into the female sensibility was undertaken by a small number of American art historians in the 1970s. Glo- ria Orenstein discussed the character of the female imagery created by women artists of the Surrealist group and by Frida Kablo.”*Frima Fox Hofrichter pointed out that Judith Leyster's attitude as a woman towards the themes of prop ‘sition and prostitution differed substantially from that of her male contemporaries, such as Frans Hals or the Utrecht Caravaggisti. The central figure in one of Leyster’s paint- ings, a woman sewing, is not the temptress-instigator of the sexual proposition — but the “embarrassed victim” and ‘Women Working inthe Arts, ed Elaine Hedges, Ingrid Wenet, Oe West bury, NY, 1980. Blaine Showalter, “Feminist Cnc in the Wilderness,” Critical In aquiry. vit, Winter, 1981, 179-208, esp. 183; repe. in The New Feminist Critics (a in 9.59), 243.70. 7. These terms have been wsed by anthropologists Shirley and Edwin Ar dene. Shirley Ardenr, ed, Perceiving Women, New York, 1977, 203 Ewin Ardener, “Bele and the Problem of Women,” in Perceiving Women, 3: and Elaine Showalter (a in n. 73), 20001 * Gloria Orenstein, Women of Surrealism.” The Feminist Art Journal 1 Spring, 1973, 15-21. Orenstein observed that Leonor Fini, Leonora Car- rington, Dorothea Tanning. and Remedios Varos, among others, repre- sented women as alchemists, inventors, sclentiss, goddesses, visionaries, land ancient wisdom ligures, and not as the stereotypical woman- Frima Fox Hoftichter, “Judith Leysters Proposition — Between Virtue and Vie,” The Feminist Art Journal, 1, Fall, 1975, 22-2; repr. in Browde and Garrard (as in n.28), 17381, ” Mary D. Garrard, "Artemisia Gentieahi's Sel Portrait asthe Allegory of Paitin,” Art Bulletin, vet, 1980, 97-112 ™ Mary D. Garraed, “Artemisia and Susanna,” in Broude and Garrard (asin n.28), 147-71 ™ Alessandra Comin, "For Whom the Bell Tolls: Private versus Universal Grief in the Work of Edvard Munch and Kathe Kollwits, "Arts Magazine, Mar., 1977, 42. Reprinted in Broude and Garrard (as in n. 28), 271-91, aspart ofa longer article entitled “Gender or Genius? The Women Artists (German Expressonisn” © Comini pursued her two-fold study ofthe woman's different imerpre- tation ofa particular theme and her exclusion from the historical ases- tment of her times in a comparative study of Paula Modersohn-Becker and ‘Otto Madersohn, and of Gabrielle Minter and Wassily Kandinsky, in ‘State ofthe Field 1980: The Women Artists of German Expressionism,” Arts Magazine, Nov., 1980, 147-53, 18 Showalter (as inn. 73), 186, This was pointed out by both Virginia Woolf and Hélene Cixous. Parker and Pollock (as inn. 14, 121-23, discuss some of these complies, expecially as they pertain to women’s se portraits © bid © Griselda Pollock, “Modernity andthe Spaces of Femininity.” was pre- sented at the meetings ofthe Brith Assocation of Art Historians held at Brighton Polytechnic, April, 1986, and will appear this year in her {ME FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 337 ‘The job of defining the specific difference of women's art presents, as literary critics have warned, “a slippery and demanding task.”*' Patricia Meyer Spacks has described such difference as a “delicate divergence” and this, as Showalter observed, “challenges us to respond with equal delicacy and precision to the small but crucial deviations” that have marked the history of women’s art.” It is pre- cisely “the cumulative weightings of experience and exclu- ion’ that form the basis of Pollock's recent discussion of the work of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot in contrast to that of their male contemporaries. Her project is to show “how the socially contrived orders of sexual difference structure the lives of Cassatt and Morisot” and how that, in turn, structures their art.© She deals with the profound differences in men’s and women's art in late nineteenth- century Paris, The difference, "the product of the social structure of sexual difference and not any imaginary bio- logical distinction,” structured both what and how men and women painted. Such studies make it possible to “defend the specificity of woman’s experience while refuting the meanings given them as features of woman’s natural and inevitable condition.” Pollock's investigation of gender construction aligns her art-historical approach with more radical interdisciplinary methodologies." Female Sexuality in Art A related concern in feminist art and theory is the ex- ploration of female sexuality. Since the feminist art move- ‘ment began in 1970, feminist artists have been “getting in touch with and reclaiming their bodies, their sexual feelings and expressing those in art." In the mid-1970s, feminist artists such as Joan Semmel and Hannah Wilke attempted collected essays. Also see the intelligent and sensitive study by Alber Boime, “The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to be More Like a Man?” Art History, v, 1981, 384-409, who discusses the importance of gender construction (or, in his words, "sex typing) for Rosa Bonheur in major decisions she made both about her life and her Pollock, thi © Although «sophisticated analysis ofthe various differences between the work produced by men and women exit in Ieraure, it has only begun to be touched upon in art, art criticism, and art history. Pechaps because such differences are less tangible in art than i iterate, feminist cries and art historians have shied away from intensive, analytical study its visual manifestation, except of course Postmodern feminist studies (of “gender and dilference” through representation. Janet Wolff notes the groveing body oflteratere on women’s ae” and Iteature, concerning this difference, and sees it as "an important analytical development in cultural studies, and one which must be made increasingly central tothe sociology of an” as in n. 18,43). % Hammond, “A Sense of Touch,” fist publ. in New Art Examiner, Sum- ser, 1979, and in Wrapping (as nn, 39), 77, Lippard discusses female body are generally in her article, “The Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth: European and American Women’s Body Ar,” From the Center (a i 21), 12138. Also see Lippards "Quite Contrary: Body. Nature, Ritual in Women’s AW” (as in a. 30), 31-47, and her “Binding/Bonding.” Artin America, Apr, 1982, 112-18, on the abstract, political, and female art of Harmony Hammond,338 THE ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 1087 VOLUME LXix NUMBER 3 to generate new expressions of female sexuality that denied what they saw as the passivity and idealization of past im- ages of women represented through the male gaze. Ham- ‘mond states that in such “women-centered” art, women present themselves as “strong, healthy, active, comfortable with their bodies, in contrast to the misogynist attitudes toward women’s bodies and bodily functions that we ob- serve throughout the history of western art.” She refers to her own rubberized, wrapped rag sculptures, Wilke's latex and eraser works, Bourgeois’ latex sculptures, and many others. Tickner indicates the problem with such an attempt to express female sexuality in art when she questions the basic assumption that women “will find a cultural voice to ex- press their own sexuality.” Like Heath and Kelly, she ex- presses reservations about any static definition of sexuality The fallacy here exists in the implication that there is a definitely defined male sexuality that can simply find expression and an already existent female sexuality that simply lacks it. Women's social and cultural relations have been located within patriarchal culture, and their identities have been moulded in accordance with the roles and images which that ideology has sanctioned." ‘Women have no language with which to express their sex- uality except the male one, and it is difficult to determine ‘even what that sexuality is in “women-centered” terms. “The question is how, against this inherited framework, women are to construct new meanings which can also be understood.” Tickner thus maintains that “the most sig- nificant area of women and erotic art today [1978] is that of the de-eroticizing, the de-colonizing of the female body: the challenging of its taboos: and the celebration of its rhythms and pains, of fertility and childbirth.” ‘A second generation of feminists has abandoned the issue of female sexuality, and of female sensibility, in favor of an investigation of the workings and interactions of gender differences rather than the nature of the specifically female. Instead of restructuring the “‘colonized’ and alienated fe- male body” as Tickner saw many first-generation feminist artists doing,” from Sylvia Sleigh to Hannah Wilke, art- ists such as Barbara Kruger and Mary Kelly are decon- structing it. ©" Sense of Touch” (asin. 86). 78. "The Body Polite” (as inn. 63), 238 © tid, 239. © tid, 247 % Duncan, “Vielty and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century Van- guard Painting.” Artforum, Dec., 1973, 30-39 (repr. in Broude and Gar ‘ard [a in n.28), 292-393), Larry Silver, “The State of Research in Northern European At ofthe Renaissance Era,” Art Bulletin, exvi, 1986, 527-3, © Henry Kraus, The Living Theater of Medieval Art, Bloomington, IN, 1967, 41-62 hiss his chapter on “Eve and Mary. Conflicting Images of Although images of female sexuality have not been of major art-historical concern because the subject was so rarely treated in the past, it has been briefly explored by Carol Duncan in her discussion of Paula Modersohn- Becker. Duncan suggested that, in her nude Self-Portrait (1906), Modersohn-Becker was able to express a whole- some sense of her own sexuality without becoming objec- tified or commodified.” Historical Studies of Female Imagery as Prescriptive and Proscriptive Agents The nature of female imagery in art has been an impor- tant issue for feminist art history. As art historians began to think of art as “a purposeful, active, and vital shaper of culture,” in Larry Silver's words, images of women in art were seen to embody different and more complex mean- ings.” The great variety of female stereotypes, ranging from virgin, mother, and muse to whore, monster, and witch, have been shown to be signifiers for a male-dominated cul- ture, signifying what is desirable (virgins and mothers) and what needs to be repressed and civilized (harlots, monsters, and witches). Such images are thus seen as playing pos- itive-prescriptive and a negative-proscriptive role. Virginia Woolf has aptly described the relation between female im- age and cultural sign as woman's “delicious power of re- flecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (A Room of One's Own) ‘The negative function of images of women as “cultural symptoms” (Panofsky) has been discussed by Henry Kraus, ‘on images of women in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture (1967),*" Madlyn Milner Kahr, on the theme of Delilah in the course of six centuries (1972)," and Linda Hilts, on images of witches in the art of Hans Baldung Grien and his Circle (1982).* Those studies demonstrate that the concept ‘of woman as “the original cause of all evil” (Bernard of Clairvaux) was firmly rooted in Western culture from the early Middle Ages onward, and remind us, as Silver ob- serves, “of the normative hierarchy of male domination.” We believe that applying Panofsky’s iconological analysis (or iconographical synthesis) to these images of women can provide insights into the manner in which “under varying historical conditions, essential tendencies of the human mind were expressed by specific themes and concepts.""” The issue of woman's presence in art as an embodiment Medieval Women,” rep: in Broude and Garrard (asin, 28), 79-99 % Madlyn Milner Kahr, “Delilah,” Art Bulltin, ex, 1972, 282.99, repr. in Broude and Garrard (as inn. 28), 119-148. Also sce Madlyn Milner Kahr, “Rembrandt and Dellah,” Art Bulletin, wy, 1973, 240-59 © Linda C. Hults, "Hans Baldung Griens Weather Witches ia Frankfurt Pantheon, xt, 1982, 124-30 and her forthcoming "Balding an the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of Images,” Jour of terdiszplinary History, vt, 1987, Also see Silver (as inn. 92), 529-30 © bi, 529. © Exwin Panofsky Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes inthe Art ofthe Renaissance, New York, 1967, 1615,‘of male fears and desires was incisively discussed by John Berger.** He used the personification of Vanitas as an ex- ample of men's moralizing through the female nude: “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the paint- ing Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.” The real function of the mirror, the symbol of woman's vanity, is to make her “connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.” Berger raised three significant issues in this passage: frst, the use of the female nude for the purpose of hypocritical moralizing in an androcentric society; second, the moral condemnation of the woman whose nakedness the male artist liked to paint and the male patron liked to own; and, third, the use of the mirror to make woman an accomplice in her own objectification as “sight.” Countless other sub- jects exemplify this form of moralizing (e.g., Susanna, De- lilah, the Three Graces, odalisques and prostitutes). Cen- tral to these and most other treatments of the female nude is the notion that “men act and women appear. Men look at women, Women watch themselves being looked at." None of these issues was raised by the scholars who con- tributed to Woman as Sex Object. Studies in Erotic Art 1730-1970." Indeed, that uneven collection of articles is striking for its traditional approaches and paucity of new questions. As Lise Vogel observed, the focus is on the erotic ‘experiences of men as presented by male artists through the image of woman." She described the traditional range of approaches used there, from bland Freudianism' to con- ventional iconographic analysis," reaching a level of cov- ert misogynism in David Kunzle's long essay, “The Corset as Erotic Alchemy: From Rococo Galanterie to Montaut’s Physiologies."** A number of other contributions do ex- plore the dialectic between high art and popular imagery" John Berger. Ways of Seng. London, 1972, 45-64. This introductory book, addressed to a general audience and based on the BBC television series of 1971, contains one of the mot astute analyses ofthe tope atthe time. For a recent treatment ofthe topic see Marina Warner, Monuments snd Maidens: The Allegory ofthe Female Form, New York, 1985 » bid 47. 2 bid. % Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin, Woman as Sex Object. Studies in Erotic Art 1730-1970, New York, 1972. Based in large part on papers presented at the College Art Assocation meetings in 1972 in a session entitled “Erticism and Female Imagery inthe Art ofthe Ith Century, chaired by Nochlin, the book was advertised with overtones of high-class voyeurism. The process of is advertising, bepining inthe fll of 1972, thas been chronicled by Lise Voge in “Fine Arts and Feminism: The Awak- ening Consciousness,” Feminist Studies 18,1974, 3-37, republished in 3 shortened version in Art Journal, ev 1976, 378-85, under the ile "Erot- ica the Academy and Art Publishing: A Revicw of Nomar as Sex Object.” © bi, 379, © Marcia Alletuck, “Henry Fusel's ‘Nightmare’ Erticism or Pornog- raphy.” and Gert Schif, "Study of Picasso's Suite 347" (as in. 100), S34, 23853, 1 Robert Rosenblum, "Caritas Romana after 1760: Some Romantic Lac- tations as inn, 101), 42-63. Rosenblum seems hardly to be aware ofthe more provocative ero, socal, psychological. and politcal implications ofthe mot THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 339 and the way in which lowbrow erotic imagery was incor- porated into high art by late nineteenth-century painters." However, as Vogel further observed, even essays with fem- inist intentions were inhibited “by the heavy heritage of traditional art-historical approaches.” The two most challenging articles in the anthology are also the shortest. Alessandra Comini in “Vampires, Vir- «gins, and Voyeursin Imperial Vienna” discussed the changes in the imagery of women and sexuality in turn-of-the-cen- tury Vienna as reflections of social phenomena. Comini is very conscious that the beholders of these images were pre- sumed to be male. Nochlin, in “Eroticism and Female Im- agery in Nineteenth-Century Art,” demonstrated that the meaning of the term “erotic” is confined to “erotic for men. She observed that “the imagery of sexual delight or prov- ocation has always been created about women for men’s enjoyment, by men,” and added that the equivalent sexual imagery created by women has been blocked by “woman’s lack of her ovn erotic territory on the map of nineteenth- century reality.” This, she believes, happened because “women have no imagery available . . . with which to ex- press their particular view-point.”*® One wishes that Noch- lin had pursued her astute observations in greater depth However, her attempt to create an intentionally ludicrous, male equivalent to the female breast-as-apple metaphor, through a photograph of a bearded male nude in athletic socks and moccasins holding a tray of bananas, failed at the time not only because the “food-penis metaphor has no upward mobility” (Nochlin), but also because, as Vogel ob- served, the “politics of contemporary sexual relations are such that a mechanical reversal, in which the man becomes a sex-object available at a price cannot be made.”® Pollock further discussed the basic asymmetry inscribed into the language of representation that such reversals serve to ex- pose." The image of the bearded man does not suggest the 5 Asin n, 101, 90-168. Kune is primarily concerned with the fasci- ration the corseted woman held for certain men rather than with tim plications as a cultural manifestation and the actual eect ofcorsetry and ltsimages on women. Alo see his Fashion and Fetihism: A Socal History of the Corset, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body Sculpture in the Wiest, Los Angeles, 1982 3 Beatrice Farwell, "Courbe’s Bigneuses and the Rhetorical Feminine Image" and Gerald Needham, "Manet, Olympia’ and Pornographic Pho- tography" (a in n.101), 61-79, 8089. 2© Martha Kingsbury, The Femme Fatale and Her Sisters” (a ia. 101), 182-205, pursues this topos as it existed in high art, popular culture, and real le, but doesnot recognize its role as an artistic social shaping of experience © As inn. 101, 20621, © Asin, 101, 615, "0 Vogel (as in n. 101), 384. Ia fac, in recent images thie objectifying reversal s becoming more succesful without altering aay ofthe precon ‘ceptions concerning the female nude. Indeed. it gives them a new Ife 5 Griselda Pollock, "What's Wrong with Images of Women?” (ain 233), 2633, Pollock acknowledges that many ofthe points she raises in this essay were developed by the Women's Art History Collective over long period. The group collected images and experimented in diferent teaching situations. This stresses that significant new ideas can be pro- duced by acolective efort and asa part ofthe teaching procesBM THE ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 1067 VOLUME LxDe NUMBER 3 same thing as the sickly smile of the booted and black- stockinged woman holding the apples in Nochlin’s exam- ple, not simply because there is no comparable tradition of erotic imagery addressed to women, but rather because of the particular signification of woman as body and as sexual object, and a commodity for sale, for which there is no exact male equivalent. AA different approach to an analysis of images of women was taken by Carol Duncan, who, in two path-breaking articles (1973), discussed the effect of images of women on the viewer, and their role as shapers of culture and ideol- ogy. In “Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in Eigh- teenth-Century French Art,” Duncan situated the increas- ing popularity of such secular themes as happy motherhood and marital bliss in French art and literature within the complex social, cultural, and economic parameters of the growing campaign in eighteenth-century France to con- vince women that motherhood was their natural and joyful role. She concluded that both art and literature were part of a campaign, at a time of social and political transition, to convince women of their “proper” roles within the emerging modern bourgeois state.” In “Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century ‘Vanguard Painting,” Duncan discussed the power of art to position and control those it represents, in this case the female nude as used by the Fauves, Cubists, German Expressionists, and other vanguard artists before World War I. She asserted that their images of powerless, often faceless nudes, and “passive available flesh,” are witnesses to the artist's sexual virility. These women are represented as “the other,” a race apart, “in total opposition to al that is civilized and human.” According to Duncan, such im- ages reflect the male need to demonstrate cultural suprem- acy at a time when the struggle for women’s rights was at its height Ina third article, Duncan, similarly but more specifically than Nochlin, redefined the basic meaning of the term “erotic,” not as “a self-evident universal category, but asa culturally defined concept that is ideological in nature.”* She demonstrated that female nudes by artists as stylisti- cally diverse as Delacroix, Ingres, Munch, Mird, Picasso, and Willem de Kooning are conditioned by the same “per sonal psychology and Weltanschauung,” to use Panofsky’s terms. They also have the same effect, to teach women to see themselves “in terms of dominating male interests.” The obsession with the confrontation between the submissive female nude and the sexual-artistic will of the male artist in these paintings, in which the male “I” prevails on the 58 Carol Duncan, "Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in Eighteenth- Century French Ar," Art Bulletin, ev, 1973, 570-83 (rep. in Brouge and Garrard, asian. 28, 20048), 3 “Vieity" (a in. 9. 2 Duncan (asin. 31), 46-50 2 bi, 47 8 Panofsy (asin. 97), 18, Duncan (as in 8 31), 80. 8 Bram Dijkstra, Ios of Pervert: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin fundamental instinctual level of experience," can be seen as an expression of “cultural symptoms” (Panofsky)."* Duncan noted as well that the male nude is treated fun- damentally differently than the female nude, Matisse’s Bow swith Butterfly Net (1907), for example, is shown as a highly individualized and dynamic being, acting against nature and engaged in a culturally defined recreation. Duncan in- sisted on the importance of these different treatments of the male and female nudes, because they embody and foster different values. Since we consider “our received notions of art as the repository of our highest, most enduring val- ues,” the covert meanings of such images affect the way we perceive male and female in our culture. She concludes with two significant points: first, that most of us have been taught to believe that art is never “bad” for anyone, nor does it ever have anything to do with oppression, and, sec- cond, that the sanctified concept of art as “True, Good, and Beautiful is born of the aspirations of those who are em- powered to shape culture."” Her article and Pollock’s “What's Wrong with Images of Women,” both published in 1977, were major break- throughs in recognizing and articulating the ideological construct of the female in art and the asymmetry of mean- ings carried by male and female images. Both also provided ‘a methodology, iconological and contextual, to be used as ‘an analytical tool in further studies of the subject. The interdisciplinary nature of much scholarship today has encouraged many scholars outside the field of art his- tory to explore images as a source for their investigations. ‘Two such studies that reiterate Duncan's position on the misogynistic nature of images of women in the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries should be mentioned. Bram Dijkstra, a professor of comparative literature, traced “the evolution of images of women from the nuns, ma- donnas, and invalids of the mid-Victorian period to the vampires and man-eaters of the 1890s,” from sentimentality to virulence, and cited works by such “modern” artists as Degas, Manet, and Renoir." ‘The “veritable iconography of misogyny" that Dijkstra uncovered for the 1890s also appeared in the first decades of the twentieth century, as attested by the interdisciplinary study by the historian Beth Irwin Lewis. In her research on Lustmord, images of ravished and murdered women cre- ated in the period from 1910 to 1925, Lewis collected a large number of examples by artists in Weimar Germany who identified themselves with the avant-garde and were perceived by critics and historians as left-leaning. She also found images by other German and Belgian artists, some ‘d-Sicle Culture, New York, 198. Se the reviews by Elaine Showalter, In The New Republic, 6 Mar. 1987, 38-40, and Alessandra Comin, in The New York Times Book Review, 1 Feb, 1987, 13-14. Also see Reinhold Helle, The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Women in Ninetonth Century Art exh ext, Smart Gallery, University of Chea, 1981; and Susan Casteras, The Substance or the Shadow: Images of Vie torian Womanhood, New Haven, 1982. 1° Data (asin a. 118), vi 1 Beth Irvin Laws wil publish this material ina forthcoming aiecof whom were much older, with the same violent themes. Lewis considers these images as responses to the gathering demands of women for sexual as well as political equality, as did Duncan, and to the challenge to established, clearly defined sexual roles. Her thesis is that the Lustmord images of that generation of artists constitute a turn from por- traying women as exotic and dangerous to portraying the death and destruction of those women. Such negative images of women persist today. The art of Eric Fischl and David Salle, for example, supposedly employing the discourse of pornography in order to expose it, legitimizes the objectification of women through im- agery and gives such objectification a renewed authority. Historical Studies of Images of Women as Sources of Woman's History Feminist art historians have consistently looked beyond, the object itself (without abandoning it) at issues that point to the status or role of women in society. In this way, they have been in the forefront of revisionist art history. Chris- tine Mitchell Havelock and Natalie Boymel Kampen used images in certain groups of objects to document women’s roles in Greek and Roman society. Havelock, on the basis of evidence provided by ancient Greek vase painting, dis- cussed the roles played by women in rituals of birth and death in Greek society.:*! Kampen focused on relies that depict working-class life and especially saleswomen where female and male figures were given parallel and equal treat- ‘ment. Her consideration of images is based on a study of Roman legal and social values, and the relation of stylistic modes to gender and social status." A similar approach was taken by Claire Richter Sherman in studies of French queens. She analyzed the depictions of queens in official documents of the late medieval period, and especially the extensive cycle of miniatures in the Cor- conation Book of Charles V of France pertaining to Jeanne de Bourbon (1338-78), consort of Charles V, who, highly regarded by her husband, exercised significant influence at "2 Christine Mitchell Havelock, “Mourners on Greek Vases: Remarks on the Social History of Women,” The Greek Vase: Papers Based on Lectures Presented 0 a Symposium Held at Hudson Valley Community College at Troy, New York (1979). ed. Stephen L. Hyat, New York, 1961, 101- 18 (repr. in Broude and Garrard [asin 28, 44-6). "2 Natalie Boye! Kampen, “Status and Gender in Romaa Ast: The Case of the Saleswoman.” presented atthe College Ar Association Annual Meeting, Detroit, 1976, and published in Broude and Garrard (asin n 28), 62-7. and idem, Image and Status: Working Women in Ostia, Basel, 1881, Also see the review by Christine Havice in Woman's Art Journal, vr, Fall, 1985-Winter, 1986, 5, "2 Claie Richter Sherman, “The Queen in Charles Vs Coronation Book: Jeanne de Bourbon and the Ordo ad reginam benedicendar,” Viator, vi, 1977, 255-98, and idem, “Taking a Second Look: Observations on the Teonography of a French Queen, Jeanne de Bourbon (1338-1378),” in Broude and Gaerard (as in. 28), 100-17. 12 Margaret Miles, Image as Insight. Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture, Boston, 1985, Alo see her article, "The ‘Virgia’s One Bare Breast Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Wester Culture. ed ‘Susan Rubin Suleiman, Cambridge, MA, 1986, 193207, where Miles i THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 341 court, Through this study, Sherman demonstrated the im- portant role of the queen in the public life of the monarchy." By using art as historical evidence and in terms of both content and style, Havelock, Kampen, and Sherman iden- tified the significant roles of women within patriarchal so- Cieties. The works they discussed also raise questions about the patronage, audience, and function of groups of works, issues that art historians are increasingly considering a sig- nificant component in the study of art. In another interdisciplinary investigation, the theologian Margaret Miles studied images of women as a source of information about women’s lives during the Middle Ages.'* As opposed to the currently popular deconstructive ap- proach, Miles's method can be called reconstructive. She claims that a relatively small group of theological texts written primarily by secluded communities of monks have been used too exclusively and authoritatively to under- stand the experiences and lives of women in the Middle ‘Ages. Both verbal and visual texts, she argues, “must be used to illuminate, correct, and supplement the impressions we get from each . .. only then will we be able to under- stand how the lives of human beings were organized psy- chologically, spiritually, and intellectually — how, that is, their lives were formed, informed, and supported by words and images.” Miles believes that the use of visual images as historical evidence “promises to provide a range and depth of material for women’s history that is simply un- available in verbal texts.” Noting that imagery during this period was used to “for- rmulate and reflect a culture designed by men for the benefit of men,” Miles observes that the meaning received from images was not the same for men as for women. She thus poses the important questions: “How did women make use ‘of images? Is it possible that women could have received positive and fruitful messages from images of women that ‘were ‘igures in the men’s drama’?” The information about women’s lives contained in images of women is an area of \estigates the meaning ofthis iconographic typeof the Virgin inthe socio- religious contest of lith-entury Teseany, "9 Miles Image a Insight asin n 124), 9,10. She observes that in Cris- tian images there isa continuous depiction of women and the development ‘of subjects and themes based on the experience of women. She suggests that “for a woman whose daily Ife centered around the worship of 3 Christan community. these images may have been powerfully affirming ina way that twenteth-century women find dificult to imagine, flooded asweare with exploitative commercial images of women.” Miles examines the visual evidence provided by athcentary Roman churches (pp. 41-62) and by the images of women in 1ah-century Tuscan painting (pp. 3-9). Her approach, however, could be applied Irultully to any period ofthe Middle Ages and antiquity and i, infact, analogous to the approaches taken by Havelock, Kampen, and Sherman 2 Ibid, 64. Inthe last part of her discussion of women in 1éth- Griselda Pollock also assumes a more encompassing, perspective To avoid the embrace of the feminine stereotype which homogenizes women’s work determined by natural gen- der, we must stress the heterogeneity of women’s art ‘work, the specificity of individual producers and prod- ucts. Yet we have to recognize what women share — as 4 result of nurture not nature, ie., the historically var- iable social systems which produce sexual differen- tiation. This exchange effectively represents the different ideo- ‘The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1984, 21-22 aleter to Artin America, Now., 1983, 7. "> Weinstock (a inn. 170), 7. "2 Tickner, "Nancy Spero: Images and la peinture fminine” (in pres) Her art-histricl stork alo employs neve methodologies in its atempt to situate women within their own space. See her work on the sultragists (also in press. "5 lesue and Taboo (in Get the Messager, asin n. 31), 147, 1% Pollock (as in n. 83)logical positions of the two feminist groups. Both positions have potential worth, despite the fact that it is in the nature of the committed to deny it. (The move toward revisionist psychoanalytic feminist thought as a link between the con- structed self and the constructed category “Woman” makes sense in this impasse.) The recent art of May Stevens, for example, has managed to negotiate both positions, through her Postmodern vocabulary of disjunction and fragment, which both critiques patriarchal institutions and addresses specifically female concerns.” Weinstock’s accusation that Cherry's definition of “sex” difference is only biological, that it posits a “female essence,” and many other such im- plications in recent feminist literature are in danger of simplistically “colonizing” first-generation feminism into {an essentialist camp. Such categorical closure is certainly in opposition to the proclaimed aims of a dismantling and deconstructing Postmodern feminism.” Contemporary art critics among this second generation bring a feminist perspective to their use of new Postmodern methodologies of poststructuralism, semiotics, and psy- choanalytic criticism. Such critics are growing in number and include Craig Owens, particularly with his essay, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,” and a number of women, often artist themselves, such as Mar- tha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Jane Weinstock, Kate Linker, Tickner, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, among many oth- cers. Feminist Postmodern criticism has even entered the ‘mainstream art magazines, although it is still under-rep- resented." Such criticism generally deals with a particular artistic content that, not surprisingly, is concerned with po- litical, Postmodern theoretical issues, such as political de- constructive tactics, or psychoanalytically structured works that are concerned with desire, and the way women are imaged and ideologically constructed. Such art is quite prevalent and growing at a rapid pace, as is its criticism. ‘The situation at the moment seems to favor the new meth- ‘odological criticism and thus the art it supports, while leav- "7 See especialy the large paintings from her work, Ordinary/Extaor inary, 1977-198, reprediced in the catalogue May Strvons: Ordinary’ Extrornary: A Summation, 1977-1984, Boston University Gallery, 1984 For a discussion ofthese aspects of the work, see Patricia Mathews, “A, Dialogue of Silence: May Stevens's Ordinary Extraondivary 19771886,” forthcoming in Art Criticism "In er introduction tothe Difference catalogue, Kate Linker once again points toa distinction between “sexuality asa cultural constrction” and the “opposing... perspective based on a natural of biological truth” (p. 5). The latter may refer to the T9th-entury concept of inherent fem- ininty, but certainly also refers othe dichotomy within feminism today that waters take advantage af to infer a totally new perspective, First ‘generation feminism is not so simply categorized, and the diferences are more subtle and more important. This antagonistic positon isnot the ‘only position taken by second- generation feminist, of course © Published inthe widely read anthology of Postmodern thought, The AntiAestheic: Essays om Postmodern Culture, ed, Hal Foster, Port ‘Townsend, WA, 1983, 57-82 "© For several among many examples, see the feminist critiques of the collaboration ofthe photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the body builder and artist Lisa Lyons by the artist Silvia Kolbowsk. "Covering Mapplethorpe’ Lady" Artin America, Summer, 1983, 10-11 ofthe co: laboration of David Salle and Karole Armitage, by fill Johnston, "The THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY 349 ing a whole range of art by active first-generation feminist artists working in a different though still important arena of feminism without enough solid criticism. It thus falls on critics who, from the beginning, dealt with women’s art in its social contexts to carry the entire burden of all other criticism of women’s art. The exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Artin New York, “Difference: On Representation and Sex- ality.” exemplifies many of the new tendencies in meth- odology and art. Since it was curated by both an art critic, Kate Linker, and a film critic, Jane Weinstock, it included film and video along with more “traditional” art; such a breakdown of categories is characteristic of current ten- dencies. Through both the art works and the catalogue, the exhibition represented poststructuralist, psychoanalyti- cally informed thinking on both art and film." Catalogue ‘essays were written by members of the same “radical es- tablishment,” including Owens and Tickner. As its ttle as- serts, the exhibition was concerned with sexuality and rep- resentation, emphasizing the female gender. The show was ‘composed mostly of feminist artists and critics, including deconstructionist artists such as Barbara Kruger, Martha Rosler, Sherrie Levine, Silvia Kolbowski, and Hans Haacke from America, and Mary Kelly, Yve Lomax, Marie Yates, and Victor Burgin, residents of Great Britain. Typical of the new methodological focus of feminism on difference and gender rather than the female per se, the exhibition was not separatist. Not only were both male artists and critics represented, but Tickner, among others, brought a discussion of male sexuality into her feminist discourse on representation and sexuality." Despite its rising influence, a critique of these new meth- odologies in relation to feminism has been undertaken, al- though itis still inadequately developed. In his assessment of them, Owens first noted a point of conjunction between “the feminist critique of patriarchy and the postmodernist critique of representation,” in that both reject a totalizing Punk Princess andthe Postmodern Prince,” Art in America, Oct, 1986, 28:25, and a critique of at and the mecia's depiction of violence against ‘women, by Leslie Labowitz and Suzanne Lacy, "Mast Media, Poplar Culture, and Fine Ar.” Socal Works, exh. cat. Los Angels Insitute of Contemporary Aet, 1979, repr. in Richard Hertz, Theories of Conte porary Art Engleviood Clifs, NJ, 1985, 171-78 2 Feminist fil theory and eiticism is highly develope. especially in its use of psychoanalytic theory. a5 seen inthe work of Laura Mulvey. "Vi sual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Seren, xv, Automn, 1975, 618 (repr. in Wallis, a5 in n. 68, 361-73); Annette Kuhn, Women’s Pictures, Fominism and Cinema, London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley, 1982 land The Poscer of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality, London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley, 1985; and E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera, New York, 1983, among. many others. Photography criticism, too, incorporates sophisticated Feminist perspective. For example, sce the writings of the British artist, Victor Burgin, such as Thinking Photography, London, 1982. Several magazines support such research, and publish a numberof feminist anal- ses of film and photography. including Screen and Afterimage 3 Tickner, “Sexuality” (as in n. 67,24. Fora eitiqueof this show, see Paul Smith, “Difference in America,” Artin America, Apr, 1985, 190- 59. Although he generally praises the exhibition, he also crtcizes its “the retical passivity” (p. 194,