Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists  

Incipit:

While the recent upsurge of feminist activity in this country has indeed been a liberating one, its force has been chiefly emotional--personal, psychological, and subjective--centered, like the other radical movements to which it is related, on the present and its immediate needs, rather than on historical analysis of the basic intellectual issues which the feminist attack on the status quo automatically raises.[1]

Conclusions

I have tried to deal with one of the perennial questions used to challenge women's demand for true, rather than token, equality, by examining the whole erroneous intellectual substructure upon which the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" is based; by questioning the validity of the formulation of so-called problems in general and the "problem" of women specifically; and then, by probing some of the limitations of the discipline of art history itself. By stressing the institutional--that is, the public--rather than the individual, or private, preconditions for achievement or the lack of it in the arts,I have tried to provide paradigm for the investigation of other area in the field. By examining in some detail a single instance of deprivation or disadvantage--the unavailability of nude models to women art students-I have suggested that it was indeed institutionally made impossible for women to achieve artistic excellence, or success, on the samr footing as men, no matter what the potency of their so called talent or genius. The existence of a tiny band of successful, if not great, women artists throughout history does nothing to gainsay this fact, any more than does the existence of a few superstars or token achievers among the members of any minority groups. And while great achievement is rare and difficult at best, it is still rare and more difficult if, while you work, you must at the same time wrestle with inner demons of self-doubt and. guilt and outer monsters of ridicule or patronizing encouragement, neither of which have any specific connection with the quality of the art work as such.

What is important is that women face up to the reality of their history and of their present situation, without making excuses or puffing mediocrity. Disadvantage may indeed be an excuse; it is not, however, an intellectual position. Rather, using as a vantage point their situation as underdogs in the realm of grandeur, and outsiders in that ideology, women can reveal institutional and intellectual weaknesses in general, and at the same time that they destroy false consciousness, take part in the creation of institutions in which clear thought--and true greatness--are challenges open to anyone, man or woman, courageous enough to take the necessary risk, the leap into the unknown.[2]