Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin (born 1931) is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"^[1]

Early life

Nochlin was born in New York.^[2] She received her BA from Vassar College, an MA in English from Columbia University, and her PhD in the history of art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1963.

Career

After working in the art history departments at Yale University, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (with Rosalind Krauss), and Vassar College, Nochlin took a position at the Institute of Fine Arts, where she continues to teach.^[3] In 2000, Self and History: A Tribute to Linda Nochlin was published, an anthology of essays developing themes that Nochlin has worked on throughout her career.

Nochlin has also been involved in publishing other essays and books including Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays (1988), The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (1989), Women in the 19th Century: Categories and Contradictions (1997), and Representing Women (1999).

Her critical attention has been drawn to investigating the ways in which gender affects the creation and apprehension of art, as evidenced by her 1994 essay "Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins".^[4] Besides feminist art history, she is best known for her work on Realism, specifically on Courbet.

Complementing her career as an academic, she serves on the Art Advisory Council of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR).^[5]

Women in Art

Nochlin deconstructs art history by identifying and rejecting methodological presuppositions.^[6] Across an arc of decades, she has been an advocate for "art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit."^[7]

In 1971, the magazine ArtNews published an essay whose title posed a question that would spearhead an entirely new branch of art history. The essay — "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" — explored possible reasons why "greatness" in artistic accomplishment have been reserved for male geniuses such as Michelangelo. Nochlin argues that general social expectations against women seriously pursuing art, restrictions on educating women at art academies, and "the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure upon which the profession of art history is based "^[1] have systematically precluded the emergence of great women artists.

The thirty-year anniversary of Nochlin's ground-breaking inquiry informed a conference at Princeton University in 2001. The book associated with the conference, "Women artists at the Millennium", includes Nochlin's essay ""Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Thirty Years After". In the conference and in the book, art historians addressed the innovative work of such figures as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Francesca Woodman, Carrie Mae Weems and Mona Hatoum in the light of the legacies of thirty years of feminist art history, appeared in 2006.

Curator

Nochlin was the co-curator of a number of landmark exhibitions exploring the history and achievements of female artists.

• 2007 — "Global Feminisms" (with Maura Reilly) at the Brooklyn Museum.
• 1976 — "Women Artists: 1550-1950" (with Anne Sutherland Harris) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Selected works

Nochlin's published writings encompass 156 works in 280 publications in 12 languages and 20,393 library holdings.^[8]

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• 2007 — Courbet. London: Thames & Hudson. 13-ISBN 9780500286760, 10-ISBN 0500286760; OCLC 174138772
• 2006 — "'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' Thirty Years After" in Women Artists at the Millennium, edited by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher. Cambridge: MIT Press . 10-ISBN 026201226X, 13-ISBN 9780262012263; OCLC 223446291
• 1999 — Representing Women. London: Thames & Hudson. 10-ISBN 0500280983, 13-ISBN 9780500280980; OCLC 185808272
• 1994 — "Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins" in Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, edited by Thomas Crow, Brian Lukacher, Linda Nochlin and Frances K. Pohl. London: Thames & Hudson. 13-ISBN 9780500286838; 10-ISBN 0500286833; OCLC 137221626
• 1983 — The Imaginary Orient
• 1971 — "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" ARTnews January 1971: 22-39, 67-71.
• 1971 — "Realism." New York: Penguin Books. Library of Congress 71-149557.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Nochlin, Linda. "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" ARTnews January 1971: 22-39, 67-71.
2. ^ Chinese University of Hong Kong, Linda Nochlin
3. ^ Pierce, Richard (2007-01-29). "CAA Names Linda Nochlin 2007 Distinguished Scholar". NYU Today. http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/archives/20/07/Stories/nochlin.html. Retrieved 2007-02-12. 
4. ^ Nochlin, Linda. (1994). "Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins" in Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, pp. 255-273.
5. ^ International Foundation for Art Research, about IFAR
6. ^ Nochlin, Linda. (1999). "Memoirs of an Ad Hoc Art Historian" in Representing Women, pp. 6-33.
7. ^ "Book Overview," Representing Women.
8. ^ WorldCat Identities: Linda Nochlin

References

• D'Souza, Aruna. (2000). Self and History: A Tribute to Linda Nochlin. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
• Nochlin, Linda. (1999). "Memoirs of an Ad Hoc Art Historian" in Representing Women. London: Thames & Hudson. 10-ISBN 0500280983, 13-ISBN 9780500280980; OCLC 185808272

External links

• NYU: Linda Nochlin
• Linda Nochlin biography and c. v. provided by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in conjunction with the International Congress on Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: "The Future of Human Values", 8–10 January 2000, Hong Kong

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Name	Nochlin, Linda
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Date of birth	1931
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