Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists Analysis

Kyle Hevey | Linda Nochlin | “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” The first part of Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” focuses on trying to understand the answers to why there have not been any great women artists and the mentality behind the question and the various answers. Many of the answers attempt to combat the question with practicality, impracticality, philosophy, and common logic. She also attempts to answer the question from various points of view, for example, feminists, men, women, etc. An answer she formulated to solve the feminist’s interpretation of the question is, “…there is a different kind of ‘greatness’ for women’s art than for men’s, thereby postulating the existence of a distinctive and recognizable feminine style, different both in its formal and its expressive qualities and based on the special character of women’s
Although I found the essay very hard to follow along to, the parts I could understand were informative and fascinating. I had difficulty following Nochlin’s style because it was often repetitive (constantly asking the same question time and time again), and she used, for lack of a better term, unusual vocabulary. This connects well to our lecture material because after following our lectures for months now, I asked myself the same question as the title of the essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists”. We have covered many great artists, such as Picasso, Michelangelo, and da Vinci, but never any women. I enjoyed the part on page 148 where she talks about the members of the Danube School and how their pieces did not share qualities of femininity. As for what I disliked, many of her points seem to be extremely similar, as if I am just reading the same thing repeatedly just rephrased, this might be due to my difficulty understanding most of her