Differencing the canon: feminist desire and the writing of art's histories

Abstract

In this book, art historian Griselda Pollock makes a compelling intervention into a debate at the very centre of feminist art history: should the traditional canon of the 'Old Masters' be rejected, replaced or reformed? What 'difference' can feminist 'interventions in art's histories' make? Should we simply reject the all-male succession of 'great artists' in favour of an all-woman litany of artistic heroines? Or should we displace present gender demarcations and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire to shape our readings of art?

Contents

About canons and culture wars -- Differencing: feminism's encounter with the canon -- The ambivalence of the maternal body: re/drawing Van Gogh -- Fathers of modern art: mothers of invention: cocking a leg at Toulouse-Lautrec -- The female hero and the making of a feminist canon: Artemisia Gentileschi's representations of Susanna and Judith -- Feminist mythologies and missing mothers: Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, Artemisia Gentileschi and Cleopatra -- Revenge: Lubaina Himid and the making of new narratives for new histories -- Some letters on feminism, politics and modern art: when Edgar Degas shared a space with Mary Cassatt at the suffrage benefit exhibition, New York 1915 -- A tale of three women: seeing in the dark, seeing double, at least, with Manet.