Representing Women

Description

Women - as warriors, workers, mothers, sensual women,even absent women - haunt 19th- and 20th-century Western painting: their representation is one of its most common subjects. Representing Women brings together Linda Nochlin's most important writings on the subject, as she considers work by Miller, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt and Kollwitz, among many others. In her riveting, partly autobiographical, extended introduction, Nochlin documents her own pioneering approach to art history; throughout the seven essays in this book, she argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological assumptions, and for art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.

Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) was Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. She wrote extensively on issues of gender in art history and on 19th-century Realism. Her numerous publications include Women, Art and Power, Representing Women and Courbet, as well as the pioneering essay from 1971: 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?'

'Fascinating ... Nochlin is a woman of learning and accomplishment' - Andrea Dworkin 'A joy to read ... blunt, funny, mischievous, learned, anything but dull and dogmatic' - London Review of Books 'Outstanding ... rich and methodologically sophisticated' - Art in America 'Invaluable' - Art Journal 'If you care about the representation of women, you need to read this ... Nochlin's direct, provocative and personal tone is a radical rewriting of women in art history' - Elephant