Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader

by Linda Nochlin, Maura Reilly (Editor)

Overview

The first comprehensive anthology of art historian Linda Nochlin’s work, including her landmark essays on the position and influence of women artists

Linda Nochlin is one of the most accessible, provocative, and innovative art historians of our time. In 1971 she published her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”—a dramatic feminist call-to-arms that called traditional art historical practices into question and led to a major revision of the discipline.

Women Artists brings together twenty-nine essential essays from throughout Nochlin’s career, making this the definitive anthology of her writing about women in art. Included are her major thematic texts “Women Artists After the French Revolution” and “Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History,” as well as the landmark essay and its rejoinder “‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ Thirty Years After.” These appear alongside monographic entries focusing on a selection of major women artists including Mary Cassatt, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Miwa Yanagi, and Sophie Calle.

Women Artists also presents two new essays written specifically for this book and an interview with Nochlin investigating the position of women artists today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500772836
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	06/30/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	472
File size:	100 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Linda Nochlin is Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art Emerita at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Her publications include The Body in Pieces; Women, Art and Power; The Politics of Vision; Representing Women; Courbet; and Women Artists. Her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” is considered one of the most influential texts in modern art history.
Maura Reilly is a curator and arts writer, and executive director of the National Academy of Design in New York. As the founding curator of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, she launched the first exhibition and public programming space in the USA devoted entirely to feminist art, where she organized multiple exhibitions, including the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party and the blockbuster Global Feminisms (co-curated with Linda Nochlin.) Reilly has authored and edited many books and articles on contemporary art, including most recently Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader (Thames&Hudson, 2015). She is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and in 2015 was voted one of the 50 most powerful people in the art world by both Blouin Art Info and Art+Auction. She received her MA and PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Editorial Reviews

Women Artists collects 30 essays written over five decades of Nochlin's formidable career as an art historian and critic. As a specialist in 19th-century realism, she has a preference in contemporary art for representation and works that investigate the messy realm of physical experience. Nochlin writes with a dazzling mix of erudition and candor, but what's most remarkable about her work is that it's driven by an exhaustive investigation as to why and how certain artworks have been meaningful to her…None of these essays seem dated. An inventor of feminist art history, Nochlin took the '60s precept that "the personal is political" to heart, but it's her commitment to clarity, investigation and active thought that makes her work so contemporary today.

The New York Times Book Review - Chris Kraus

Nochlin writes with a dazzling mix of erudition and candor, but what’s most remarkable about her work is that it’s driven by an exhaustive investigation as to why and how certain artworks have been meaningful to her. Meditations on fashion, exclusion, decoration, bodies and touch run throughout Nochlin’s work. Ideas arrived at through scholarship recur in personal correspondence and anecdote. None of these essays seem dated. An inventor of feminist art history, Nochlin took the ’60s precept that ‘the personal is political’ to heart, but it’s her commitment to clarity, investigation and active thought that makes her work so contemporary today.

The New York Times Book Review

Perhaps the best introduction to art historical analysis on the ‘social construction’ of the women artist, Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader is also an outstanding overview of feminist art practice since the 1970s … an essential resource and a pleasure to read.”

Women's Art Journal