TWenty-eight ofthe thirty essays in this book have been

previously published over a period of forty-five years.

While the author and editor have resisted the temptation
to correct errors of fact or interpretation, it has not always
been possible to include aÌl ofthe illustrations that
originally accompanied the essays.

First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by

Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1814 High Holborn,
London WClV 7QX

Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader Gt 2015 Thames & Hudson
Essays O 2015 Linda Nochlin
Preface @ 2015 Maura Reilly
Interview Linda NocÌrlin by Maura ReilÌy @ 2015 Linda Nochiin
and Maura Reilly

Al1 Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording
or any other information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN 978-0-500-23929-2

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2'2

"Why Have There Been No Great

Women Artists?" ThirLy Years After
Wtnnen Artists ttt tlrc Millenrúum, zoo6

I'd like to roÌl the clock back to November 1,970, a time when there were no women's
studies, no feminist theory, no African American studies, no queer theory, no post-
colonial studies. What there was was Art I or Art 105-a seamless web of great art, often
called "The Pyramids to Picasso"-that unrolled fluidÌy in darkened rooms throughout
the country, extolling great (male, of course) artistic achievement since the very dawn
of history. Inartjournalsof record, ltì<eARThews.loutof atotalof eighty-onemajor\
articles on artists, just two were devoted to women painters. In the following year, ten i
out of eighty-four artìcles were devoteci to women,z but that inclucles the n ine articies in
!
the special Woman Issue inJanuary, in which "Why Have There Been No Great Women I
Artists?" appeared; without that issue, the total would have been one out of eighty-four. I
Artforurn of 1.g70-71did a little better: flve articles on women out of seventy-four. i
Things have certainly char-rged in academia and the art world, and I wouÌd like to
direct my attention to those changes, a revolution that no one article or event could
possibiy have achieved, but that was a totaÌly communal affair and, of course, over-
determined. "Why Have There Been No Great women Artists?" was conceived during
the heady days of the birth of the Women's Liberation movement in 1970 and shares
the political energy and the optimism of the period. It was at least partially basecl on
research carried out the previous year, when I had conducted the first seminar at Vassar
College on women and art. It was intended for publication in one of the earÌiest scholarly
\
texts of the feminist movement, Women in Sexíst SocíetJ,' edited by Vivian GornicÌ< and í ".
Barbara Moran, but appeared first as a richly iliustrated article in the pioneering, and t-Á t{'
f
controversial, issue of .ARThelus edited by Elizabeth Baker and dedicated to women's f
issues.t J

What were some of the goals and aims of the women's movement in art in these
early days? A primary goai was to change or displace the traditional, almost entirely
male-oriented notion of "greatness" itself. There had been a particular and recent
historicaÌ reconsecration ofthe cultural ideal ofgreatness in the United States in the
1950s and 60s, a reconsecration that, I must admit, I was not consciously aware of when
I wrote the article, but which surely must have colored my thinking about the issue.
As Louis Menand pointed out in a recent Neru Yorker artícle dedicated to the Readers'
 WOMEN ARTISTS: THE LINDA NOCHLIN READER

Subscription Book club, initiated in 1951, "what dates the essays

lused to preface the \\:as nor
book club seÌections and written by such certified experts as Lionel Trilling,
WH Auden, greatÌ1e
and Jacques Barzunl is not that they are better written or less given to ,the Theoretical,
tion. th
than contemporary criticism. It is their incessant invocation of 'greatness., It is almost
of .1ohar
a crutch, as though 'How great is it?' were the only way to begin
a conversation about a Fugue'
work of art."s Tied to the idea of greatness was the idea that it was immutabÌe and
that Eran cie:
it was the particular possession of the white male and his works, although the latter
nriohr:
was unstated. In the post-Second World Waryears, greatness was constructed
as a sex- Ìmpre.st
linÌ<ed characteristic in the cultural struggle in which the promotion of ,,inteÌÌectuals,,
In ii
was a cold war priority, "at a time when a dominant strategic concern was the
fear of a 1Ì-:a i::
losing Western Europe to Communism.,,6
- iir:à1Ì1
Today, I believe it is safe to say that most members of the art worÌd are far Ìess
ready .'. : rk :,
to worry about what is great and what is not, nor do they assert as often the necessary
', . rlll-l-,
connection of important art with viriÌity or the phallus. No longer is it the case that the
-. 8r.'
boys are the important artists, the girls positioned as appreciative muses or groupies.
-.1.,,11,
There has been a change in what counts-from phaÌlic "greatness" to being innovative,
-:- -::.' -
: mal<ing interesting, provocative work, making an impact, and making one,s
voice heard. : -:1 -:
; There is less and less emphasis on the masterpiece, more
on the piece. while ,,great,' r:-: ---.-
, may be a shorthand way of talking about high importance in art, it seems to me always
I to run the risl< of obscurantism and mystification. How can the same term ,,great,,_or
"genius," for that matter-account for the particular qualities or virtues of an
artist like
MicheÌangelo and one lihe Duchamp, or, for that matter, within a narrower perimeter,
Manet and Cézanne? There has been a change in the cliscourse about contemporary
art.
Greatness, Ìike beauty, hardly seems an issue for postmodernism, with whose
coming
of age "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,, coincided.
The impact of theory on art discourse and especially feminist and/or gender-based
discourse is another change. when I wrote ,,why Have There Been No creat
women
Artists?," theory in its now accepted form did not exist for art historians,
or if it did, I was
not aware of it: the Frankfurt school-yes; Freud-up to a point; but Lacan
and French
feminism were Ìittle dots on the horizon, as far as I could telÌ. within acaclemia,
and
in the art worÌd to a certain extent, that impact has since been enormous. It,
of course,
has changed ourway of thinking about art-and gender and sexuality
themselves. what
effect it has had on a feminist politics of art is, perhaps, more ambiguous,
and needs
consideration. It has certainÌy acted to cut the wider public off from a great
deal of the
hot issues discussed by in-the-Ì<now art historians and critics.
If the ideal of the great artist is no ionger as prominent as it once was, there
have nev-
ertheless been some extraordinary, large-scaÌe, and long-lasting careers
in art to be dealt
with, some oÌd-style grandeur that has flourished in the worÌ< of women artists
in recent
years. First of aÌ1, there is the career of
Joan MitcheÌI. Herwork has sometimes been
dismissed as "second-generation" abstract expressionism, with the impÌication
that she

312
 ..WHY HAVE TF{ERE BEEN NO GREAT \^/OMEN ARTISTS?'' THIRTY YEARS AFTER

was not an inventor or that she lacked originality, the cardinal insignia of modernist
greatness. Yet why should it not be possible to consider this belatedness as a cuÌmina-
tion, the culmination of the project of painterly abstraction that had come before? ThinÌ<
of Johann Sebastian Bach in relation to the baroque counterpoint tradition; the 'Art of
Fugue" might have been created at the end of.a stylistic period, but surely it was the
grandest of grand finales, at a time when originality was not so highly prized' Or, one
might think of Mitchelt's position as parallel to Berthe Morisot's in relation to classical
Impressionism: a carrying farther of all that was implicit in the movement.
In the case of r,gqrs-e--pg-glgç.9js*-another major figure of our era, we have quite a I,
Àif*
different situation: nothing less than the transformation of the canon itself in terms of i
certain feminist or, at least, gender-related priorities. It is no accident that Bourgeois'
làc'. work has given rise to such a rich crop of critical discourse by mostly theory-based
women writers: Rosalind Krauss, Mignon Nixon, Anne Wagner, Griselda Pollock, Mieke
: ii! Bal, Briony Fer, and others. For Bourgeois has transformed the whole notion of sculp-
ture, including the issue ofgendered representation ofthe body as central to the work.
In addition, the discourse on Bourgeois must confront two of the major "post-greatness"
::C, points of debate of our time: the role of biography in the interpretation of the artwork;
and the new importance of the abject, the viscous, the formless, or the polyform.
ç â1'S Bourgeois'work is characterized by a brilÌiant quirÌ<iness of conception and imagi-
-
_t: nation in relation to the materiality and structure of sculpture itself. This, of course,
't __
--\c problematizes the viewing of her pieces. Indeed, as Alex Potts (whom I will take as an
honorary woman in this situation) has stated, "One of the more characteristic and
intriguing features of Louise Bourgeois' work is the way it stages such a vivid psycho-
dynamics of viewing." And he continues, "There seems to be an unusual atten.rveness
on her part to the structure of a viewer's enôounter with three-dimensional art works
in a modern gaìlery setting as well as to the forms of psychic phantasy activated in such
interactions between viewer and work."7
It is important to reaÌize that although Bourgeois had been worÌ<ing since the ì
1940s, she did not really come into prominence and recognition until the 70s, in the I Èt{
Ì
waì<e of the women's movement. I remember walking to my seat with her at one of the r

early, large-scale women's meetings and telling her about my plan to match a 19th-
century photograph, Buy My Apples [p. 195] with a male equivalent-weìI, maybe, Bay
My Sausages. Louise said, "Why not bananas?" and an icon was born-at least I think
it happened that way.
A younger generation of women artists often engages with ways of undermining
ll;-' - the representational doxa that may be subtle or violent. Not the least achievement of
Mary KelÌy, for example, in her innovat\ve Post-Partum Document [p. 314], was the way it
desublimated Clement Greenberg's famous dictum, that the flnal step in the teleology
of modernist art is simply the stain on the surface of the canvas, by reducing that stain
:-
:_-: to a smear of baby's shit on the surface of a diaper. Cindy Sherman, to take another
 WOMEN ARTISTS: TIìE I,INDA NOCHLIN READF]R ..WHY Ì

the phenomenr
like Dorothy R
represented wo
workers, denlz(
of the pubiic s1
literary or othel
But, itwas n
rather than mel
a woman's righ
vote. And, not cr
"Discourses of ;

space" itselfbe1
Mary I(elly, cians atjust this
Post-Partum Document: to a shift at the
Documentation I,
projectwith the
Anallsed Faecal Stains
and Feedíng Charts, L974. 70s." It is witl-rir
Perspex unit, white card, woman not mer
diaper linings, plastic,
sheeting, papeq ink,
visible and origi
1 of31 units, 11 x 14 in. the constructior
(zs x :s.s cn-r)
Cindv Sherman,
example, sent up the movie stilÌ, making strange this most conventional of genres, untitled #261,199)
Chromogenic coÌcr
and Ìater shattered the idea of the body as a whole, nâtural, coherent entity with an print, 6B x '15 in.
imagery characterized by grotesquery, redundancy, and abjection. yet, I would venture (l.tz.l x 114.3 cmi.
that sherman's photographs also create a flerce new anti-beauty, making Bellmer look edition of c

positively pastoral, but in particular pulling the carpet out from under such admired
painterly subverters of canonicaÌ femininity as de l(ooning or Dubuffet.
Another profound change that has taken place is that of the reÌâtion of women to
public space and its public monuments. This relationship has been problematic since
the beginning of modern times. The very asymmetry of our idiomatic speech teÌls us
as much; a public man (as in Richard Sennett's The Fall of eubtíc llanJ is an admirabÌe
person, politically active, socially engaged, Ì<nown, and respected. A public woman,
on the contrary, is the lowest form of prostitute. And women, historicaÌly, have been
conflned to and associated with the domestic sphere in social theory and in pictorial
representation.
Things certainly began to change, if at a slow pace, in the 20th century, with the
çÂì
{ {\r
advent of the "New Woman": the working woman and the suffrage movement, as
./r_"1
well as the entry of women-in limited numbers to be sure-into the public world
'!
of business and the professions. Yet this change is reflected tnore in literature than
in the visual arts. As Deborah Parsons has demonstrated in her important study of

314
 ..Ì'l/HYH,{VETHEREBEENNoGREATwOMENAR.fIS.IS?''THiRTYYÌ]ARSAF-I.ER

novels
thc phenorne i1ot1, streettl)Gikíng'the Metropolís: wonten, the cíty and Moclet'nlty'
'lhe Years
iike Dorothy Ricl-rarcison's Pílgrínuge or Virginia Woolf'-c NQ'ht and Dai or
re pre sentecl woflÌen eugaging with the city in newer,
frecr wavs-as watchers, waìÌtcrs,
ancl pcgotiators
workers, clenizens of cafïs aricl c1ubs, aPâÍtment dwellers, obsei:vers
tradition,
of the pubìic space of the city-Ìrreakitlg neu' sround n'itÌ-rout ti-re help of
iiterar"v or otherwìse "

But, it was ì1ot Llntil the late 1960s :rnd e arlv 70s thal women âs à
gÍollp' as activists
marching for
r:rlher thtrn rnereflât'LelLses, reallv took over public splce Íor theirrselves,
had maiche d fbr t1-re
a wom:ìn's right to control ber own body as the ir grandmotìrcrs
clissert:rtion,
And, ncit coincidenlalì;,,, as Luc NarÌaÌ points ollt ìn his 2000 Coltin'rbia
'ote"
,,Discoursr.s A Historical critiqtle ," the telm "pubiic
of Public space: usA 1960-1995:
and theoreti-
spàce,' itsclf began to be usecl by architects, '.lrban clesignet's, historians,
ciar-rs atjust this time. Says N;rclaÌ, "The rise of 'pr-rbÌic space' ii-i tÌrc 1960s corre sponcie cÌ
connccts tl-ris
to a shift at the center of tìrc discoursc of pìar-rrriirg and design.'' Nadal
and ear11'
projectwith tlt(r "vast movclr-Ìent of iibe ratory cultr-lrc ancl poiitics of the 1960s
70s.,' ii is wititìn this col-itext of Jiberatorv cr'riture ancl poìitics
th:rt we must cotrsicier
practice as a highll"
wonlan not me rely as ;i visible pÍe scncc ilr ptlbiie sp:rce, iir:l in l-rcr

visibÌe :rnc1 origir:a1 shapel ancl coirstructcr of it. For 1Ã'olrle

n tocÌay pÌav a majtlr t'oie iu
ilìonulÌìe ììts
the constrriction of public scr-rlptlire ancl uLban nrotrumeills. Ancl, ttr-rcse

Cincìv Shcrtuait,
íJtliitled i)61 ,1992.
Chlomogetrìc color
pÍiÌrt, 68 x .1; ir.
(.tl z.; 1 1.i.3 cnì1,
"
ecÌitior-r oi t-

rËi
*&

#
-'q*iÈ..
 WOMEN ARTISTS: THE LINDA NOCHLIN READER

are of a new and different sort, inassimilable to those of the past, often centers of
controversy. some have called them anti-monuments. Rachel whiteread, for exampÌe,
recreated a condemne d house on a bìeak plot in London, turnìng the architecture inside
out and creating a storm of reaction and public opinion. A temporary anti-monument,
it was later destroyed amid equal controversy. Whiteread's recent Holocaust Memoríal
in vienna at the Judenpìatz also turns both subject and form inside out, forcing the
viewer not oniy to contemplate the fate of the Jews, but to rethink the meaning of the
monumental itself by setting the memorial in the heart of Vienna, one of the major
sites of their extermination.
Jenny Holzer, using both words and traditional and untraditionai materials, also
created scandaÌs in Munich and Leipzig with her provocative pubÌic works . ]Her 1.gg7
Memorial Cafe to Oskar María Graf, a German poet, exists as a functional cafe at the
Literaturhaus in Munich. This is, to borrow the words of doctoral student Leah Sweet,
a "conceptual memorial fthat] refuses to present its subject...through a likeness or a
biographic account of his life and work." Rather, Graf is represented through excerpts
of his writing selected by Holzer and scattered throughout the café. Shorter excerpts
appear on dishes, place mats, and coasters-an ironic use of what one might call the
domestic-abject mode of memorializationl
Maya Lin is probably the foremost and best known of these women inventors of new
monuments with new meanings and, above aÌI, with new, untried ways of conveying
meaning and feeling in public places. Lin's own words best convey her unconventional ABovE RacheÌ \\
intentions and her anti-monumental achievement in this most pubiic of memoriais: Concrete, 150 r .l
"I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, an initial violence
BEr,ow Jennv Hc
and pain that in time would heal. The grass would grow back, but the initial cut would
remain a pure flat surface in the earth with a polished mirrored surface...the need for
the names to be on the memorial would become the memoriaì; there was no need to
embellish the design further. The people and their names would aÌÌow everyone to
respond and remember."s Still another unconventional public memorial ts Lin's The
women's Table lp.31B], a water table created in the heart of yale's urban campus in
1993, commemorating with words, stone, and water the admission of women to yaÌe
in 1969. It is a strong but gentle monument, asserting women's increasing presence at
Yale itself, but also commemorating in more general terms women,s emergent place
in modern society. Yet, despite its assertive message inscribed in facts and figures on
its surface, The Women's Table is at one with its surroundings. Although it constitutes a
criticai intervention into public space, its effect vis-à-vis that space is very different from
thatof aworkliì<eRichardSerra'scontroversiaÌ TílteclArcof L9B1.Lin'syalepro.ject, like
her Vietnam memorial, establishes a very different relationship to the environment and
to the meaning and function of the public monument than Serra's aggressive confron-
tation with public space. I am not coming out for a "feminine" versus a ,,masculine,,
style of public monumentwith this comparison. I am merely returning to the theme of 't-.- - -..
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 ..WHY

emphasis on t
ity, and the re
are certainlv t

been doing. Y
most radical :
felt the impac
women artistr
metamorphos
caÌ, seem to n

art. Would thr

artists have br
and the mean
women's inno
Women ar
then, over the
the discourse
::i.;..::"lt:i!;t:::!lr:'rai
.... : .a:,:::..4::.::),t:, 1971 forwon-re
I'r*.,.- ::1i::ìì;li::l;
ing area ofgen
that engages u
Maya Lin, The Women's Table,l-993. aÌl kinds, are t
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
artists of color
Yet, there ir

this session and suggesting that now, in the 1 9th century, although in very different
as heart of our er
circumstances, women may have-and wish to construct-a very different experience
of pubÌic space and the monuments that engage with it than their male counterparts. Critique hi
I would next like to consider very briefly the dominance of women's production in do not cor-r
a wide variety of media that are not painting or sculpture in the traditional sense, and way of sir.r.r1

above all, the role of women artists in breaking down the barriers between media and although s
genres in exploring new modes of investigation and expression. These are all women has its olvr
artists who might be said to be inventing new media or, to borrow a useful phrase from the conver:
critic George Baker, "occupying a space between mediums.", The list wouid include discussing
installation artists like Ann HamiÌton, who has made the wall weep and the floor sprout ' Bonheur. i'
hair, and the photographer Sam Taylor-Wood lpp.27a-81], working with the enlarged and often r

and/or aÌtered photo, who produces "cinematic photographs orvideo-like fìlms.',r0 This apparatus \
list of innovators would include innovative users of photography like Carrie Mae Weems, the structu
video and film inventors such as Pipilotti Rist aqdShirin-NeshaÇperformance artists production
Ìike Janine Antoni, or such original and provocative re'cyclers of old practices as Kara
Walker, who has created the postmodern silhouette with a difference. The role of ide
Finally, although I can only hint at it, I would like to indicate the impact, conscious tion and has. a
or unconscious, of the newwomen's production on the work of male artists. The recent such analysis

318
 *wHYHAVETHEREBEENNoGREATwoMENARTISTS?''THIRTYYEARSAFTER

of psychosexual-
emphasis on the body, the rejection of phaìlic control, the exploration
the domineering
ity, and the refusal of the perfect, the self.expressive, the Íìxed, and
what women have
are certâinly to some degree implicated, however indirectly, with
beencloing'Yes,inthebeginningwasDuchamp,butitseemstomethatmanyofthe
way or another,
most radicai and interesting male artists working today have, in one
generated by
felt the impact of that gender-bending, body-conscious wave of thought
with their insistent
women artists, overtly feminist or not. william I(entridge's films,
personal and the politi-
metamorphoses of form, fluidity of identity, and melding of the
cal, seem to me unthinkabÌe without the anterior presence of
feminist, or women's,
or decorative
art. would the work of male performance and video artists, abjectifiers,
artists have been the same without the enormous impact and
alteration of the stakes
that were produced by
and the meanings of art production in the 1970s, 80s, and 90S

women's innovations?
a difference,
women artists, women art historians, and women critics have made
together-changed
then, over the past thirtyyears. We have-as a community, working
of our field. Things are not the same as they were in
the discourse and the production
There is a whoÌe flourish-
1971 forwomen artists and the people who write about them.
of critical representation
ing area of gender studies in the academy, a whole production
that engages with issues of gender in the museums and art galleries.
women artists, of
includes women
all kinds, are talked about, looked at, have made their mark-and this

artists of color.
I thinÌ<' remain at the
Yet, there is still, again, a longway to go' Critical practice must'
Power,I wrote'
heart of our enterprise. In 1988, in the introduction to women, Art and

I
critique has always been at the heart of my project and remains there today'
do not conceive of a feminist art history as a "positive" approach
to the field, a
painters and sculptors to the canon,
way of simply adding a token list of women
although such recuperation of lost production and lost modes of productivity
has its own historical validity and...can function as part of the
questioning of
discipline' Even when
the conventional formulation of the parameters of the
discussing individual artists, like Florine Stettheimer or Berthe Morisot
or Rosa
. Bonheur, it is not merely to vaiidate their work...but rather' in reading them,
and often reading them against the grain, to question the whole art-historical
to reveal
apparatus which contrived to "put them in their place"; in other words,
the structures and operations that tend to marginalize certain kinds of artistic
production while centralizing othe,rs'
!. :::
canon forma-
The role of ideology constantly appears as a motivating force in all such
that
tion aiid has, as such, bee n a constant object of my critical attention, in the sense
work on ideology was basic to
such analysis "makes visible the invisible." Althusser's

319
 WOMEN ARTISTS: THE LINDA NOCHLIN READER

this undertaking, but I have never been a consistent Althusserian. On the contrary,
I have paid considerable attention to other ways of formulating the role of the ideologi-
cal in the visual arts.
or to put it another way: when I embarÌ<ed on "why Have There Been No Great
women Artists?" in 1970, there was no such thing as a feminist art history. Like all
1
i other forms of historicai discourse, it had to be constructed. New materials had to be
-f I sought out, theoreticaÌ bases put in pÌace, methodologies gradually developed. since
i,,, óì:Ji
i.

that time, feminist art history and criticism, and, more recently, gender studies, have
ï
become an important branch of the discipline. perhaps more importantly, the femi-
i
nist critique fand of course allied critiques including colonialist studies, queer theory,
African-American studies, etc.) has entered into the mainstream discourse itself: often,
it is true, perfunctorily, but in the work of the best scholars, as an integral part of a
I neW more theoretically grounded and socially and psychoanalytically contextuaÌized
ihistorical practice.

': of one of the most conservative of the intellectual disciplines. This is far from the
: case. There is still resistance to the more radical varieties of the feminist critique in
the visual arts, and its practitioners are accused of such sins as neglecting the issue of
quality, destroying the canon, scanting the innately visual dimension of the artwork,
t' and reducing art to the circumstances of its production-in other words, of undermin-
ing the ideologicaì and, above all, esthetic biases of the discipÌine. AlÌ of this is to the
good; feminist art history is there to make troubÌe, to call into question, to ruffle feath-
ers in the patriarchaÌ dovecotes. It shouid not be mistaken forjust another variant of
or supplement to mainstream art history. At its strongest, a feminist art history is a
transgressive and anti-establishment practice meant to call many of the major precepts
of the discipline into question.
I would like to end on this somewhat contentious note: at a time when certain
patriarchal values are making a comeback, as they invariably do during periods of
confiict and stress, women must be staunch in refusing their time-honored role as
victims, or mere supporters, of men. It is time to rethink the bases of our position and
strengthen them for the fight ahead. As a feminist, I fear this moment's overt reversion
to the most blatant forms of patriarchy, a great moment for so-called real men to assert
their sinister dominance over "others"-women, gays, the artistic or sensitive-the
return of the barely repressed. Forgetting that "teÍrorists" operate under the very same
sign of patriarchy [more blatantly of course), we flnd in the Ner.u yorlc Times, under the
rubric "Heavy Lifting Required: the Return of Manly Men," "The operative word is men.
Brawny' heroic, manly men." On it goes: we need father figures-forget heroìc women,
of course' What of the murdered airline hostesses-were they feisty heroines or just
"victims," patriarchy's favorite position for women? Although the female writer of the
article admits thât "part of understanding terrorism...often involves getting to the root

320
 ..wHYHAVETHEREBEENNoGREATwoMENARTISTS?''THIRTYYEARSAFTER

of what is masculine," ancl that "the darì< side of manliness has been on abundant
display as information about the lives of the hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden
himself comes to light, revealing a society in which manhood is equated with violent
conquest and women have been ruthÌess1y prevented from participating in almost every
aspect of life," and, in quoting Gloria Steìnem, contends that "the common thread in
violent societies is the polarization of sex roles," and even though lhe Tím.es felt uncom-
fortable enough about "The Return of Manly Men" to append at its base an article, "Not
to Worry: Real Men Can Cry," the implications of the piece ring out loud and clear'11
Real men are the gooci guys; the rest of us are wimps and whiners-read "womanish.''
In a simiiar but more specifically art-oriented vein, a recent Nett Yorlcer prohle of
departing MoMA curator l(irì< Varnedoe brings the call lor the return of manly men
directly into the art world-Varnedoe is described as "handsome, dynamic, flercely intel-
Iigent and dauntingly articulate."12 He made himself into a footbaÌl player. At Wiìliams
College, whose art history department would shortly become famous as an incubator
of American museum directors, he found that what his remarkabÌe teachers, S Lane
Faison, Whitney Stoddard, and WilÌiam Pierson, did "in the first place, was to take the
curse of effeminacy off art history."ir Stoddard went to aìl the hockey games and came
to class on skis in the winter-a sure anti-feminine qualification in an art historian. At
the Institute of Fine Arts, "legions of female students felì in love with him. One of them
wrote him a love letter in lieu of an exam paper."lr
Of course, this description is over the top in its advocacy of mascttìine dominance
in the art worÌd. It is not, alas, totally exceptional. Every time I see an all-male art panel
talking ,,at" a mostly female audience, I realize there is still a way to go before true equal- r{
ity is achieved. But I think this is a critical moment for feminism and women's place in
the art world. Now, more than eveq we need to be aware not only of our achievements but
of the dangers and difficulties lying in the future. We wili need ail our wit and courage
to make sure that women's voices are heard, their work seen and written about. That
is our task for the future.

Notes
1 . ARIhews 68, MarcÌ-Ì 1969 F'ebruary 1970. 8 NeÌ, York Revíew of Book.s, November 20,
2 ARThews 69, March 1970 February 1971. 2000, p.33.
3 Vivian GornicÌ< and Barbara Moran, ed. 9 Arforttm, November 2001, P. 143.
(tolt),womenin SeÍlsÍ Society, New York, 10 rbid.
NY Balk Books. LL New York Times, October 28,2001 ,
i lnrnews
' section 4, p. 5.
ag, January 1971.
Y Louis Menand 12001'), New Yorlrcr, 12 New Yorker, November 5, 2001, P' 72
october 15, p. 203. 1l Ìbid., p. 76.
6 rbid., p.210.
v rbid.. p:78.
7 Alex Potts (looo), "r,ouise Bourgeois-
ScuÌptural Confrontations," Ox|òrd Art
Journal, 22, no. 2, p. 37.

321.