Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?: 50th Anniversary Edition

The fiftieth-anniversary edition of the essay that is now recognized as the first major work of feminist art theory, published together with author Linda Nochlin's reflections three decades later. Many scholars have called Linda Nochlin's seminal essay on women artists the first real attempt at a feminist history of art.  In her revolutionary essay, Nochlin refused to answer the question of why there had been no "great women artists" on its own corrupted terms and instead, she dismantled the very concept of greatness, unraveling the basic assumptions that created the male-centric genius in art. With unparalleled insight and wit, Nochlin questioned the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art history. And future freedom, as she saw it, requires women to leap into the unknown and risk demolishing the art world's institutions in order to rebuild them anew. In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlin's essay is published alongside its reappraisal, "Thirty Years After." Written in