Representing Women

by Linda Nochlin

Women--as warriors, workers, mothers, sensual women, even absent women--haunt nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western painting. This book brings together Linda Nochlin's most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art, as she considers works by Millet, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt, and Kollwitz, among many others. In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions 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.

Genres: Art, Feminism, Nonfiction, Art History, History, Philosophy, Essays

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Linda Nochlin was an American art historian, university professor and writer. A prominent feminist art historian, she was best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", in an essay of the same name published in 1971.

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". Besides feminist art history, she was best known for her work on Realism, specifically on Gustave Courbet. Complementing her career as an academic, she served on the Art Advisory Council of the International Foundation for Art Research. In 2006, Nochlin received a Visionary Woman Award] from Moore College of Art & Design.

Reviews

[ally baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

« This is the unreal allegory, and perhaps the never real one as well: an allegory of what can never be as long as we live in the land where Oedipus rules. The absurdity of my paraphrase of Courbet’s real allegory could only be paralleled by rephrasing Freud’s famous question ‘What does a woman want?’ as ‘What do men want?’ It is absurd because what men want is what want is; men’s want defines desire itself. »

« Surely I cannot simply take over viewing positions offered to me by men—either the creator of the picture or his spokesmen—nor can I easily identify with the women in the picture as objects of the gaze, which would necessarily involve a degree of masochism on my part; nor can I easily invent some other, alternative, position. Once more, I find myself at once invited into, but shut out of, the house of meaning; uneasily hovering on the brink of, moving into, withdrawing from the potentialities of the painting: the familiar, shifty, feminine-subject position. Ultimately, though, such work would seem designed to put me—the viewer who is a woman—in her place…. Why must transgression—social and artistic alike—always be enacted (by men) on the naked bodies of women? »

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of 7 essays previously published, which have been reunited mainly by way of illustrations, with some of them shared among the essays; the essays focus on specific artists, like Gericault or Mary Cassatt, or specific paintings notable for its representation of the woman and their body: like the “Study of the artist” by Courbet, or “The Poseuses” by Seurat. The 19th century in France gets most of the attention, since it was the cradle not only of Impressionism, but also of the modern representation of woman.
Since it’s a collection of essays, it’s by no means a historical account, or a complete theory of the fact. I’m not totally sure it detracts or adds; the analysis “à tout court” of every (mostly) paintings is, as the cover says, “methodologically sound”, and it will help students of art history as well as art. Will not say that it’s required reading, but it’s quite useful.

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nochlin is an absolute joy to read. Her writing is brilliant, apt and wonderfully mentally stimulating.
To me it seems where she truly shined were in the case studies of specific authors or in specific artworks, these were kept coherent and had a clear line throughout. The other texts, while still having a clear line seemed to become slightly difficult to follow at times due to a high amount of examples. I'm sure others will find this only beneficial, but to me it became confusing at times.

With that said I don't think anything really hampered my enjoyment of her writing, however I do find it quite a shame that the artworks are not reproduced in clear colour and instead are presented in a dull black and white. The images are clear, but a lot of the impression of the paintings are lost due to this decision.

[Rachel Loh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda Nochlin gave me so much vocabulary as a woman artist and I really enjoyed the way she discussed the themes of the book. In particular, I loved the way she spoke about the flaws and limitations of art history then going on towards finding meaning for women in a more contextual, psychological sense. A joy to read and I hope more people can be exposed to the ways in which art in the past as well as today represent women.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to read more non-fiction books y'all