by: Ellen C. Caldwell
for JSTOR Daily
Celebrated art historian and critic Linda Nochlin, who died last fall, was perhaps best known for her 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
In this essay, Nochlin laid foundational groundwork for a public understanding of how systemic social, cultural, and political barriers barred women from partaking in the art world in numerous ways. She helped people to understand that it was not that there was an artistic male style or aesthetic that was privileged over some sort of feminine style, but that women had been kept out of the academy, and hence away from art production and the art market itself.
Art historian Whitney Chadwick describes the impact of Nochlin’swork, writing that Nochlin’s essay “signaled the beginning of a critical feminist art history.” Chadwick argues that “the questions Nochlin raised in the early 1970s remain central to current feminist art historical projects addressing issues of gender, production, and representation.”