ABSTRACT

WRITERS AND ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE:

HISTORICAL FICTION ABOUT
WOMEN PAINTERS

Cortney Lois Cronberg Barko, Ph.D.

Department of English
Northern Illinois University, 2011
Amy Levin, Director

My dissertation explores issues of male spectatorship and the importance of

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biography for art criticism in the work of Tracy Chevalier, Eunice Lipton, Anna Banti,

Kate Braverman, and Susan Vreeland. Drawing upon feminist concepts on the male and
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female gaze, I examine how these authors challenge androcentric models of reading by
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demonstrating women‘s powers as readers and writers. My dissertation reveals that

authors working within the genre of fictionalized biographies of women painters

reconstruct art history to create a new canon for women artists and invent a rhetoric about
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art that empowers women.

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 NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
DEKALB, ILLINOIS

AUGUST 2011

WRITERS AND ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE:

HISTORICAL FICTION ABOUT

WOMEN PAINTERS

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BY

CORTNEY LOIS CRONBERG BARKO

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©2011 CORTNEY LOIS CRONBERG BARKO
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A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

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FOR THE DEGREE

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Doctoral Director:
Amy Levin
 UMI Number: 3472993

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My dissertation committee has contributed greatly to this project, and I wish to

express my gratitude to them for their time, expertise, and support. I would first like to

thank Dr. Amy Levin. This dissertation has benefited tremendously from Dr. Levin‘s

knowledge of feminist theory and feminist approaches to art history, and I have learned

much from her. Dr. Levin is a dedicated professor and mentor who has challenged my

thinking and helped me to grow as a scholar and writer. Next, I would like to thank Dr.

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Bradley Peters whose interest in my dissertation and support of my work has been

invaluable. Dr. Peters‘ knowledge of feminist rhetorical theory has greatly advanced the
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analytical approach I have taken in the study of my selected novels. Dr. Barbara Jaffee
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has also been wonderfully supportive and enthusiastic about my project. Her expertise in

art theory and criticism, her suggested readings on Edouard Manet and Frida Kahlo, and

her suggested revisions have informed and enhanced my understanding of feminist art
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theory. Dr. Levin, Dr. Peters, and Dr. Jaffee are all exceptional scholars and mentors,

and their genuine investment in my dissertation and future success has been a blessing.
 DEDICATION

To my mother Kristine and my grandmother Lois, with all my love.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………. v

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….. 1

2. TRACY CHEVALIER AND EUNICE LIPTON‘S FEMALE GAZE:

NEW NARRATIVES ABOUT WOMEN PAINTERS………………….. 32

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Tracy Chevalier‘s Girl with a Pearl Earring………………… 34

Eunice Lipton‘s Alias Olympia………………………………. 52

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3. INTERPRETING THE PAINTINGS OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI:
BIOGRAPHY AS FEMINIST ART CRITICISM………………………. 70
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4. THE INSEPARABILITY OF FRIDA KAHLO‘S LIFE AND ART:
THE IMPORTANCE OF BIOGRAPHY FOR FEMINIST ART
CRITICISM………………………………………………………………. 111

5. SUSAN VREELAND‘S EMILY CARR: INVENTING A NEW

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RHETORIC ABOUT ART FOR WOMEN………………………………. 143

6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………… 177

WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………... 184

 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Girl with a Pearl Earring, c.1665. Oil on

canvas. Mauritshuis, The Hague………………………………………….... 33

2. Edouard Manet (1832-1883). Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas. Museo

d‘Orsay, Paris……………………………………………………………….. 51

3. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652/1653). Judith Slaying Holofernes, c.1620.

Oil on canvas. Uffizi Gallery, Florence........……………………………..... 84

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4. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652/1653). Cleopatra, c. 1611-1612. Oil on
canvas. Amadeo Morandotti, Milan..............……………………………… 92

5.
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Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652/1653). Self-Portrait as the Allegory of
Painting. c. 1638-1639. Oil on canvas. Collection Her Majesty the Queen,
Kensington Palace, London…………………………………………………. 94
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6. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Roots, 1943. Oil on metal. Private Collection,

Houston, Texas………………………………………………………………. 123

7. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). The Little Deer, 1946. Oil on board. Private
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Collection, Houston, Texas………………………………………………….. 124

8. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Broken Column, 1944. Oil on canvas, mounted

on board. Dolores Olmedo Patiño Museum, Mexico City………………….. 125

9. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). My Birth, 1932. Oil on metal. Private Collection,

USA…………………………………………………………………………… 129

10. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Henry Ford Hospital, 1932. Oil on metal. Dolores
Olmedo Patiño Museum, Mexico City……………………………………….. 130

11. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). My Dress Hangs There, 1933. Oil and collage
on board. Hoover Gallery, San Francisco………………………………….. 137

12. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). The Two Fridas, 1939. Oil on canvas. Museo
de Arte Moderno, Mexico City……………………………………………… 138
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Figure Page

13. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Totem Walk, Sitka, 1907. Watercolor. Art
Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria............................................................ 148

14. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Indian Hut, Queen Charlotte Islands, 1925-1935.
Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa………………………… 149

15. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Tanoo, Queen Charlotte Islands, 1913. Oil on
canvas. BC Archives, Victoria…………………………………………… 151

16. Emily Carr (1871-1945). The Crying Totem, 1928. Oil on canvas.
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver………………………………………… 153

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17. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Totem Mother, Kitwancool, c.1928. Oil on canvas.
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver……………………………………… 155

18.
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Emily Carr (1871-1945). Indian Church, c.1928. Oil on canvas. Vancouver
Art Gallery, Vancouver…………………………………………………….. 157
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19. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Cumshewa, c.1912. Watercolor. National Gallery
of Canada, Ottawa……………………………………………………………. 159

20. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Big Raven, 1931. Oil on canvas. Vancouver Art
Gallery, Vancouver………………………………………………………… 160
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21. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Old Time Coast Village, c.1928-1929. Oil on
canvas. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver………………………………. 161

22. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Above the Gravel Pit, 1927. Oil on canvas.
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver……………………………………… 162

23. Emily Carr (1871-1945). The Red Cedar, 1933. Oil. Vancouver Art Gallery,
Vancouver…………………………………………………………………... 163

24. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Red Tree, 1938. Oil on paper on board. Art
Gallery of Ontario, Toronto……………………………………………. 164

25. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Wood Interior, 1909. Watercolor on paper on

masonite. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver…………………………….. 166
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Figure Page

26. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Forest, British Columbia, 1932. Oil. Vancouver
Art Gallery, Vancouver……………………………………………………... 167

27. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Tree Trunk, 1936. Oil. Vancouver Art Gallery,
Vancouver…………………………………………………………………… 168

28. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Odds and Ends, 1939. Oil on canvas. The Greater
Victoria Public Library, Victoria………………………………………… 169

29. Emily Carr (1871-1945). Guyasdoms D’Sonoqua, 1928-1930. Oil. Art

Gallery of Ontario, Toronto………………………………………………… 170

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30. Chitra Ganesh (1975-present). Tales of Amnesia, detail (Godzilla).
2002-2007. Saatchi Gallery: London Contemporary Art Gallery…………. 180
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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The dialogue of the woman artist with her society; the writer’s dialogue with the
painter…and, more broadly fiction’s dialogue with painting are unfinished stories no
matter what sort of closure the novelist may attempt to put upon them.

Roberta White, A Studio of One’s Own (31).

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In Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own
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Desire, art historian Eunice Lipton describes her search for details about the life of
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Victorine Meurent, an artist in her own right and the subject of Edouard Manet‘s Olympia

(1863). As Lipton sets out on her quest, she engages in a dialogue with Meurent:

Even now as I write her [Victorine‘s] name, she draws me into a state of wonder
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and reverie. She looks at me wistfully and brushes the hair from my face. She
whispers in my ear and hints at marvelous discoveries. She smiles. Then,
straightening up a bit she says, half tease, half entreaty, ‗Find me Eunice.‘ How,
Victorine? (42)

Lipton envisions Meurent as a woman who is anxious to be discovered because

Meurent‘s real identity is lost to art history. Meurent‘s position as Manet‘s model

overshadowed her life and artistic output. In order to find Meurent, Lipton conducts

extensive research into Meurent‘s life and searches for clues that will allow her to ―sketch

a new picture‖ of Meurent, ―anything that will distinguish [her] from the tragicomic
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cartoon figure drawn by the Art History literature‖ (45). By researching Meurent‘s life,

Lipton restores Meurent to art history not as Manet‘s famous subject but as an artist.

Recent feminist interventions in art history, such as Lipton‘s Alias Olympia,

reveal the need for authors to move outside the traditional structures of the discipline to

write about the lives and work of women artists. Contemporary women writers, like

Lipton, are using the lives and work of women painters as inspiration for their novels,

constituting a newly popular sub-genre of historical fiction. Fictionalized biographies of

women painters invite readers to contemplate women‘s artistic creativity and place in the

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world of art. Additionally, the act of writing historical fiction about women painters

allows feminist authors to engage in a form of art criticism countering traditional art
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historical interpretations. In the novels I am investigating, the authors use historical
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fiction to engage with the issue of male spectatorship within feminist theory and the

problems of biography for art criticism in order to create new plots and rhetorics about art

for women.
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Novels featuring completely imaginary women artists are the subject of extensive

literary scholarship. In Literary Sisterhoods: Imagining Women Artists, Deborah Heller

explores George Eliot‘s Daniel Deronda and Alice Munro‘s Friend of My Youth, which

feature women characters as opera singers and poets. In A New Mythos: The Novel of The

Artist As Heroine, Grace Stewart analyzes female artist/writers such as Anna Wulf in

Doris Lessing‘s The Golden Notebook and Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath‘s The Bell

Jar. Linda Huf‘s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman includes chapters on Kate

Chopin‘s The Awakening and Willa Cather‘s The Song of the Lark, both of which feature
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women artists: Edna Pontellier is a painter in The Awakening and Thea Kronborg is a

singer in The Song of the Lark. These critics‘ studies confirm Roberta White‘s

observation in A Studio of One’s Own, namely that ―Although much has been written

about portraits of artists in novels by women, most of these critical studies interpret the

term ‗artist‘ broadly, to include writers and musicians as well as painters‖ (13). In

contrast, White‘s 2005 study concentrates on novels featuring fictional women visual

artists, including Jane Austen‘s Emma and Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, whom most

people consider dilettantes. White also addresses Kate Chopin‘s The Awakening and Iris

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Murdoch‘s The Sandcastle. Exploring the dialogue between the writer and the artist

character and the dialogue between the fictional artist and her art, White‘s work could be
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usefully applied to fiction based on the lives of real women painters. Indeed, real women
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painters become fictional constructs in novels about their lives and work. Similarly,

dialogues frequently take place between authors and their female artist subjects in fiction

about real women painters, and critics have yet to explore the full significance of these
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dialogues.

Novels about real women painters include Anna Banti‘s Artemisia (originally

published in 1947 in Italian, translated into English in 1988). Artemisia is recognized as

Banti‘s greatest literary achievement (Heller 99), and it is the only fictionalized

biography of a woman artist that has generated extensive critical study by literary

scholars. Following Artemisia are Eunice Lipton‘s Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search

for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own Desire (1992) and Alexandra Lapierre‘s

Artemisia: A Novel (1998). Since the early 2000s, a spate of novels about real women
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painters has appeared in bookstores—Susan Vreeland‘s The Passion of Artemisia (2002),

Kate Braverman‘s The Incantation of Frida K. (2002), Carole Maso‘s Beauty is

Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo (2002), Harriet Scott Chessman‘s Lydia Cassatt

Reading the Morning Paper (2002), Vreeland‘s The Forest Lover (2004), and Alma H.

Bond‘s Camille Claudel: A Novel (2005). These works tell the stories of women artists‘

lives and address the obstacles these women faced in their efforts to paint. Men‘s

sexualizing gazes proved to be among the most significant barriers to success that women

painters faced.

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In feminist theory and art history, male spectatorship is a longstanding issue of

scholarly discussion. Laura Mulvey‘s often cited ―Visual Pleasure and Narrative
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Cinema‖ is an important text in feminist analyses of the male gaze. According to
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Mulvey, the male‘s gaze is active and controlling, and he transforms the subject of his

gaze into an object of erotic desire (436). In Reading National Geographic, Catherine

Lutz and Jane Collins refer to Laura Mulvey and John Berger‘s assertion that ―it is the
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social context of patriarchy, rather than a universal essential quality of [a painted] image,

that gives the gaze a masculine character‖ (189). Our patriarchal culture then places

women into the role of sexual objects who are looked at and displayed for the viewing

pleasure of men (Mulvey 436). Women are taught to see themselves as the objects of

men‘s desiring gazes, and they become situated as ―the Other‖ (Felman 14).

Feminist scholars also acknowledge the presence of a female gaze. Laura Mulvey

notes that ―in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split

between active/male and passive/female‖ (―Visual Pleasure‖ 436). In ―Women, Art, and
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Power,‖ Linda Nochlin acknowledges the universal acceptance of women as objects of

the male gaze in the visual arts, but she also argues that we need to think of women as

spectators and consumers of art (29-30). Women who write about art and artists take on

active roles; they claim the authority to observe and analyze a work of art and produce

explanations of art which challenge androcentric interpretations of artists and their work.

When they analyze artwork with a female gaze, women writers may form their own

interpretations of art based on a feminist perspective.

Since the publication of Mulvey‘s and Nochlin‘s texts in the 1970s, critics have

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continued to consider the female gaze and its impact on feminist theory. In Vision and

Difference, Griselda Pollock explores the female spectator and the possibility that ―texts
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made by women can produce different positions within [a] sexual politics of looking‖
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(85). When a woman looks actively, she is the spectator, not the object of desire. She

has the opportunity to take on the traditionally powerful male position. Conversely, Lutz

and Collins cite scholarship on women as spectators and suggest that ―looking need not
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be equated with controlling‖ (190); they refer to Fredric Jameson, who argues that ―there

may be legitimate pleasures in looking at others that are not predicated on the desire to

control, denigrate, or distance oneself from the other‖ (190).1

Pollock considers the female gaze as one that transforms femininity ―so that it

ceases to function primarily as the space of sight for a mastering gaze, but becomes the

locus of relationships‖ (Vision and Difference 87). One can interpret the female gaze as

1 For instance, Lutz and Collins claim that photographers for National Geographic magazine, along with
the magazine‘s diverse readership, look upon the beauty of the non-Western world with awe (190).
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capable of reversing the objectifying effects of the male gaze on women and creating a

space in which relationships between women, as well as between men and women, have a

chance to develop. Specifically, Roberta White considers relationships that develop

between women authors and women artists in fiction: ―When she [the woman author]

creates a visual artist as perhaps, a rather mysterious sister, the novelist begins an implicit

or explicit dialogue between herself as a writer and the fictional painter‖ (13). The

woman author‘s gaze upon the woman artist in fiction can result in the formation of a

friendship or sisterhood between women. This relationship is explored in studies such as

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Diane Filby Gillespie‘s The Sisters’ Arts and Deborah Heller‘s Literary Sisterhoods.

Theories on gender differences in reading similarly take into account notions of

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the male and female gaze. David Bleich, Elizabeth Flynn, and Patrocinio Schweickart
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demonstrate through their research that the interaction between text and reader largely

depends on gender. Bleich argues that the need to objectify is more urgent for men than

it is for women (265). When men read a text, they keep their distance from it and
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perceive it as an object or an ―other‖ (Bleich 264). In ―Gender and Reading,‖ Flynn

supports Bleich‘s assertions about male readers, namely that male readers tend to be

dominating, detached readers who typically remain disengaged from texts (273).

While the text remains an object for male readers, the act of reading allows a text

to become a subject for women readers (Schweickart ―Reading, Teaching, and the Ethic

of Care‖ 89). Bleich suggests that a text ―loses its distinct otherness‖ for women readers

because, unlike men, women have been acculturated to identify with figures, feelings,
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and situations in narratives (264-265). A woman considers what she wants to learn from

a text, the author‘s purpose in writing a text, and her opinion of the author when she reads

a text (Crawford and Chaffin 11). Women are interactive and receptive readers, and they

make the effort to understand a text before imposing judgments or rejecting it (Flynn

―Gender and Reading‖ 285). According to Flynn, ―To read as a woman is to avoid

reading as a man, to be alerted to the pitfalls of men‘s ways of reading‖ (―Composing as a

Woman‖ 123-124). Not reading like a man requires the woman reader to listen to the

text and try to determine the message the author is conveying; this is an active approach

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to reading for her (Schweickart ―Reading, Teaching, and the Ethic of Care‖ 90).

The gender of a text‘s author can also influence the way in which women read
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texts. In ―Reading Ourselves,‖ Schweickart observes several differences between
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feminist readings of male texts and feminist readings of female texts. Schweickart argues

that feminist readings of male texts, at first, are typically resisting, adversarial, and

detached from the content of the texts (45-46). The androcentric nature of a male text
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predisposes women readers to be ―vulnerable to its designs‖ and read like men; however,

women readers must fight this predisposition and undermine it in order to transform the

reading process into one where they control their own reactions (50-51). When a woman

reads a female text, however, she may feel the need to defend the woman writer. She

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In order to avoid essentializing, it should be noted that references to women and men in this discussion
refer to women and men as they are socially constructed along a gender binary. Another problem of
essentializing is suggested by Wendy Leeks in ―Ingres Other-Wise,‖ who uses Lacanian theory to critique
aspects of representation in J.A.D. Ingres‘ Odalisques. Leeks distinguishes between an historically female
imperialist gaze and a male gaze by noting that Lady Mary Whortley Montagu‘s writings were among
Ingres‘s sources for his bather paintings. Whortley, who was actually allowed in the baths, wrote about her
observations. As a female, her experiences were neither secretive nor non-reciprocal; the women looked
back at her as she looked at them, making her gaze nothing like the male voyeuristic gaze.
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takes into account the context in which the work was written, she considers the text as the

―voice‖ of the author, and she tries to feel the author‘s ―personal dimensions‖ (47).

In ―Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading,‖ Schweickart

proposes that the relationship between the feminist reader and the woman writer is an

intersubjective encounter, where the boundaries between reader, writer, and subject of the

text are less strictly defined and more fluid. Intersubjectivity occurs when the feminist

reader ―encounters not simply a text, but a ‗subjectified object‘: the ‗heart and mind‘ of

another woman‖ (52). The act of reading removes the barrier between subject and object

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and allows for an intersubjective connection to develop between a reader, or writer, and

her subject. As this connection develops, ―the dialectic of control (which shapes feminist
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readings of male texts) gives way to the dialectic of communication‖ that allows
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relationships to develop (53). Schweickart notes that women find it easier than men to

enter a text written by a woman or with a female character and hear the ―voice‖ of

another woman because they can ―recognize themselves in her story‖ (51).
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Supporting Schweickart‘s ideas, Adrienne Rich suggests that feminist readings of

female texts ―are motivated by the need to connect, to recuperate, or to formulate the

context, the tradition, that would link women writers to one another and to the larger

community of women‖ (Schweickart ―Reading Ourselves‖ 48). Feminist readings treat a

text as a subject with the potential of uniting women. Thus, feminist readings of texts

written by men and women will continue to challenge the model of reading in which the

text is an object that everyone interprets in the same way (Flynn & Schweickart ix). This
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recognition of difference is the recognition of the female perspective, or the ―female

gaze‖ at work in the interpretation of texts.

Mary Crawford and Roger Chaffin credit the women‘s movement for developing

a uniquely female perspective not only on reading, but on writing as well (25). Flynn

credits feminist theorists with demonstrating how ―men have chronicled our historical

narratives and defined our fields of inquiry,‖ causing women‘s perspectives to be

―suppressed, silenced, marginalized, written out of what counts as authoritative

knowledge‖ (―Composing as a Woman‖ 114). In order to rectify this suppression of

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women‘s perspectives, feminist theorists, such as Elaine Showalter, began to shift their

focus from women as readers to women as writers. In ―Feminist Criticism in the

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Wilderness,‖ Showalter notes a shift from ―feminist critique‖ (concern with the woman
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as reader) to ―gynocritics‖ (the study of women as writers); this shift is important because

it draws attention to the ―history, styles, themes, genres, and structures of writing by

women; the psychodynamics of female creativity; the trajectory of the individual or

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collective female career; and the evolution and laws of a female literary tradition‖ (qtd. in

Schweickart ―Reading Ourselves‖ 38). By focusing on women as writers, Showalter

answers Nochlin‘s call for the consideration of women not only as consumers, but also as

producers of art.

Traditionally, art history has largely ignored women‘s role in the production of

art, and instead it is a discipline associated with biography and the celebration of men as

heroic creators of art. Giorgio Vasari‘s Lives of the Artists, first published in 1550,

inserted the tradition of biography into the discipline of art history (Salomon ―The Art
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Historical Canon‖ 222-223). In Lives, an account of the history of Western European art,

Vasari compiles generations of artists‘ stories in order to demonstrate that ―great art is the

expression of individual genius and can be explicated only through biography‖ (Salomon

222-223). The geniuses to whom Vasari refers are white male artists, so it is no surprise

that critics interpret Vasari‘s book as having ―produced and perpetuated the dominance of

a particular gender, class, and race as the purveyors of art and culture‖ (Salomon 222).

Vasari‘s practice of using biography to create a tradition of heroic male artists carried

over into other influential art historical texts, including Raffaello Borghini‘s Il Riposo,

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Ernst Gombrich‘s Story of Art, and H.W. Janson‘s The History of Art.3 Griselda Pollock

describes the standard ―plot‖ of the biography, noting that these biographies typically
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depict ―a heroic journey through struggles and ordeals, a battle with professional fathers
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for the final winning of a place in what is always his – the father‘s – canon‖ (Differencing

14). In Western art history, the image of the artist as a ―great man‖ continues to be

pervasive (13). Consequently, many in our culture still consider art to be ―an
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inexplicable, almost magical sphere to be venerated‖ (21). Biography, as art historians

use it, thus perpetuates the traditions of the artist as hero and the patriarchy; the artist‘s

trajectory toward success creates and reinforces a rhetoric of progress.

The use of biography is a root of debate in the field of art history. Some feminist

critics and art historians contend that women artists‘ biographies must be attended to in

order to understand how sex affects their careers. In Old Mistresses, Rozsika Parker and

Griselda Pollock remind us of the significance of biological sex for women, namely that

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John Ashbery adopts the tradition of the heroic male artist ironically in ―Self-Portrait in a Convex
Mirror.‖
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in the late nineteenth century, ―women artists were represented as different, distinct, and

separate on account of their sex alone‖ (44). Because sex will always be an issue, in

Vision and Difference, Pollock contends that the goal should not be to ignore an artist‘s

sex. Rather, ―the sex of the maker should not automatically penalize women artists and

celebrate men artists‖ (Vision and Difference 36). Pollock posits a scenario in which

biographical factors, such as sex, are not detrimental to a woman‘s status as an artist. In

Three Artists (Three Women) Anne Wagner asserts that biographies of women artists

indicate the need for a canon of women‘s art:

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Does feminist art history really need its own canonical roster, its pantheon of
great artists? The answer is yes and no…The yes is first of all the response of
rediscovery and reversal: of telling ―herstory‖ and diving into the ―hiddenstream‖
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of female endeavor and production…Yes is also the answer of the artist‘s
biography, the monograph and monographic exhibition, and the National Museum
of Women in the Arts. (23)
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For Wagner, the rediscovery of women artists‘ lives and careers is necessary for the

development of a feminist art history canon. Biographies, monographs, and single-artist

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exhibitions reinforce the need to include women in the canon because they highlight the

accomplishments of individual women artists. Wagner explains: ―More is to be gained

from detailed examination of a few exemplary cases than from a broad-brush account

if…the purpose is to explore the hypothesis that gender is an actively determinant factor

in the production and reception of art (4). For Wagner, a thorough examination and

analysis of a few exemplary cases would contribute more to the theorizing and

understanding of the effect of gender on canon formation than would the mere addition of

a large number of women to the canon who are treated superficially. Wagner conflates

the biographical and the social very intentionally, and she argues that the gendered
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biography is exactly what a feminist art history must produce, as she does in Three Artists

(Three Women).4

Feminist critics often do consider social factors, such as gender, in their analyses

of women artists‘ work. Wagner contends that ―gender is an actively determinant factor

in the production and reception of art‖ (4). The details of women artists‘ lives and their

experiences as women influence their careers; to disregard the importance of women‘s

biographies is to ignore sexual difference [as a result of social and cultural factors], how

this difference looks, and how difference affects the production of art (Wagner 27). For

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instance, Wagner interprets the work by artists Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, and Georgia

O‘Keeffe to be ―symptomatic of their social and historical position as women‖ (14).

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Wagner demonstrates how the women‘s biographies have been sensationalized based on
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gender. Male authors of their biographies have shaped the narratives about Hesse,

Krasner, and O‘Keeffe to the detriment of our understanding of their work. Similarly,

Mary Garrard reads Artemisia Gentileschi‘s 1610 Susanna and the Elders through the
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lens of Gentileschi‘s gender difference, contending that her interpretation of the subject is

uniquely female (Gouma-Peterson and Mathews 337). These artists‘ career paths and the

nature of their artwork are shaped by their female identities (10). Parker and Pollock in

Old Mistresses concur that ―…social, not biological factors account for women‘s choice

of art forms‖ (10).

Conversely, postmodern proclamations of the ―death‖ of the author or painter

discount authorial intention and thus negate the importance of sex/gender. In ―The Death

4
Wagner became the leading edge of a feminist rehabilitation of biography as gendered when Three Artists
(Three Women) was published in 1996.
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of the Author,‖ Roland Barthes claims, ―To give a text an author is to impose a limit on

that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing‖ (147). Barthes objects to

the ―reign‖ of biography in discussions of art/writing because ―it is language which

speaks, not the author‖ (143). For Barthes, writing is a neutral space ―where all identity

is lost,‖ including the gender identity of the author (142). Once the author is ―dead,‖

biography and the social factors that caused the author to create a particular work become

irrelevant. Barthes further claims that the death of the author liberates the reader, who is

also without her own history, biography, or psychology (148).

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In ―What Is An Author,‖ Michel Foucault explores the consequences of the death

of the author. Foucault claims, ―it is not enough to declare that we should do without the
IE
writer (the author) and study the work itself‖ (226). Because texts always contain signs
EV
that refer to the author, such as personal pronouns and adverbs of time and place, the

―author function‖5 of discourses are significant (227-228). As Foucault explains, the

author ―provides the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a
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work, but also their transformations, distortions, and diverse modifications‖ (230).

Through the author‘s biography, his perspective, and his social position, readers come to

understand a text.

Eunice Lipton, an art historian and the author of Alias Olympia: A Woman’s

Search for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own Desire, enters the conversation

between Barthes and Foucault about authorship by addressing art historical concerns

5
Wagner is more Foucauldian than Barthian; that is, she critiques the ―author function‖ in relation to the
biographies of Hesse, Krasner, and O‘Keeffe. In fact, in this respect, art history as a discipline is more
Foucauldian than Barthian.
 14
about women and biography, arguing that we cannot fully understand women artists‘

work unless we know information about their lives. In Alias Olympia, Lipton questions

the fundamental teachings of art history that she learned in college in the 1950s. She was

taught ―never [to] pay attention to a painting‘s literal content,‖ never to ―[read] historical

events into the style of works‖ and to see works of art as ―things of beauty‖ only (Alias

Olympia 1). When looking at Edouard Manet‘s painting Olympia, however, Lipton finds

herself unable to ignore the woman in the painting. She is unable to ―shake the feeling

that there was an event unfolding in Olympia and that the naked woman was staring quite

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alarmingly out of the picture. I could not make her recede behind the abstract forms I

knew—I had been taught so fervently to believe—were the true content of the work‖
IE
(Alias Olympia 2). Thus, through fiction, Lipton creates a narrative about Meurent‘s life,
EV
de-objectifies her as the subject of the male gaze, and through an intersubjective

connection accounts for her frequently debated expression in Manet‘s painting.

Some of the critics who advocate for the consideration of gender in art history
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also identify the pitfalls of taking women‘s gender into account. Parker and Pollock

claim that it is wrong to assume a ―fundamental link between women artists down the

ages simply because they are of the same gender‖ (48). In Vision and Difference, Pollock

observes that feminist art history treats almost all women artists as representative of their

gender, ―[reinstating] the artist as a special kind of spokesperson – visionary or seer‖

(28). One woman cannot speak for all women, and we cannot deem her artwork as

representative of all women‘s ideologies (28). Elizabeth Grosz extends the arguments by

Parker and Pollock, viewing the consideration of women artists‘ gender as a form of