'Why have there been no great women artists?' is the title of a now-famous article written by feminist art historian Linda Nochlin in 1971. The provocative piece pointed to – and sought to examine – the structural inequities and unspoken conditions of production underlying art and its histories. It addressed generations of art historians, curators, teachers, and textbook writers (such as HW Janson, author of the canonical A History of Art), whose grand surveys of art, ancient to modern, included barely, if any, women, on the basis that they either did not exist or were not worthy of critical attention.
This course will examine art production through the lens of the lives and work of women artists across centuries (and, where possible, geographies, though the course will focus mostly on Europe and North America), including famous figures such as Artemesia Gentileschi and lesser-known pathbreakers such as Hilma af Klint (the true pioneer of abstraction?). It will also address artists such as Zanele Muholi, who challenges received conventions around the construction of sexuality, race, and gender. Together we will examine the social, economic, religious, and political conditions under which women have always made art, yet have been largely marginalised in its formal histories, institutions, and markets. We will discuss women’s strategies around artistic production, their relationships to art institutions, social and institutional change, and consider questions of (in)visibility, recognition, reception, and reevaluation. And, we’ll reflect on “how far we’ve come” on the back of a 2022 YouGov survey revelation that 70% of the British population still cannot name three women artists.