In this important work, renowned art historian Griselda Pollock engages passionately in a debate that lies at the heart of feminist art history : should the traditional canon of the “Old Masters” be rejected, replaced or reformed? ? What “difference” can “feminist interventions in art histories” make? Should we simply reject the all-male succession of "great artists" in favor of an all-female litany of artistic heroines? Or should we displace present gender demarcations and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire to shape our interpretations of art?
"Differentiating the canon. Feminist desire and the writing of art histories" moves between feminist rereadings of the canonical modern masters —Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Édouard Manet— and the “canonical” artists of history art feminist, Artemisia Gentileschi and Mary Cassatt. Griselda Pollock eschews both an unvarnished critique of male canons and an unqualified celebration of female artists . She draws on psychoanalysis and deconstruction to examine “inscriptions on the feminine”, and wonders what the signs of difference might be in a work of art made by an artist who is “a woman”.
Pollock argues that to understand difference as more than the patriarchal Male/Female binary, we must acknowledge the differences between women that are shaped by the racist and colonial hierarchies of modernity. Pollock recovers Gayatri Spivak's precept , according to which we must always ask ourselves "Who is the other woman?", and explores issues related to sexuality and cultural difference in modern art representations of black women such as Laure in Manet's Olympia and in the work of the contemporary artist Lubaina Himid.
Author: Griselda Pollock
Format: 17 x 24 cm
Binding: Rustic with flaps
Pages: 456
Spanish Language
