User:AmandaEHamilton/Linda Nochlin

Contributions

Global Feminisms

In March 2007, Nochlin co-curated the feminist art exhibition Global Feminisms alongside Dr. Maura Reilly at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, United States. It was the first international exhibition that was exclusively dedicated to feminist art, and it featured works from approximately eighty-eight women artists from around the world. The exhibit featured art in all forms of media, such as photography, video, performance, painting and sculpture. The goal of the exhibit was to move beyond the dominating brand of Western feminism, and instead showcase different understandings of feminism and feminist art from a global perspective.

Representing Women

In "Memoirs of an Ad Hoc Art Historian," which is the introduction to Nochlin's book of essays Representing Women, Nochlin examines the representation of women in nineteenth-century art and the ways in which the ad hoc methodology is at play, as she writes, "What I am questioning is the possibility of a single methodology—empirical, theoretical, or both, or neither—which is guaranteed to work in every case, a kind of methodological Vaseline which lubricates an entry into the problem and ensures a smooth, perfect outcome every time" and "[Although] the 'methodology' of these pieces might be described as ad hoc in the extreme, the political nature of this project is far from ad hoc because there is a pre-existing ethical issue at stake which lies at the heart of the undertaking: the issue of women and their representation in art". Here Nochlin is looking at the intersection of the self and history between the middle of the 18th century and the early decades of the 20th, as she analyzes the different ways artists portray women and how these portrayals are representatives of their gender.

Lost and Found: Once More the Fallen Woman

In March 1978, Nochlin looked at the sexual asymmetry of the word "fallen" and how it is used in regards of gender. For men, it depicts an act of heroism, but for women the term is applied much more negatively and is understood in terms of any sexual activity that is performed out of wedlock. The same differentiation appears in art as well, as fallen in a masculine sense inspired sculptural monuments, versus fallen in a feminine sense struck fascination of nineteenth-century artists. This fascination with the theme of fallen women can be said to have inspired some of the works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, where he devoted a number of poems and pictorial works to the subject, which resulted in his most notable work: the painting Found.

Why Have There Been No Great Women Chefs?

Nochlin’s essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” not only impacted the way we view feminist art, but it has also impacted how we view women’s recognition in other careers. Nochlin’s work inspired the essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Chefs?” by Charlotte Druckman, in which the author analyzes the terms cook and chef, and how each one is attributed to an individual based on their gender. A cook is often associated with a woman whereas a chef is associated with a man. Druckman argues that "In theory, we’ve come a long way from the notion that a woman’s place is in the domestic kitchen, and that the only kitchen appropriate for a man is the professional one. But in practice, things can be pared down to the following equation: woman : man as cook : chef." By using Nochlin's argument in "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", Druckman follows in her footsteps by arguing "It becomes clear that we need to ask not why these semantic nuances exist but where they come from, and whether we might be complicit in perpetuating them."