Differencing the Canon: Feminism and the Writing of Art's Histories

by Pollock; Griselda

• ISBN13: 9780415067003
• ISBN10: 0415067006
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1999-03-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this major new book, renowned art historian Griselda Pollock enters the debate at the very center of the culture wars: Should the traditional canon of the Old Masters be rejected, replaced or reformed? And what difference can a feminist approach to art history make? Differencing the Canonmoves between feminist re-readings of modern masters--Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet--and the canonical artists of feminist art history Artemisia Gentileschi and Mary Cassatt. Avoiding both an unrelenting critique of masculine canons and the unquestioned celebration of women artists, Pollock asks both how women read and what might be different about art made by a woman. She unpacks the representations of culturally resonant female figures in a range of texts, from Manet's depiction of the model Jeanne Duval in his paintingOlympia, to Charlotte Bronte's Lucy Snowe, artists representations of Cleopatra and Angela Carter'sBlack Venus, and argues that it is not enough simply to read as awoman; we must also acknowledge the differences between women shaped by racism and colonialism. Inspiring and original,Differencing the Canonoffers an intervention that attempts to make difference a creative and dynamic process, opening up the possibilities of reading the complexity of visual art.

Author Biography

Griselda Pollock is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art, and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, at the University of Leeds.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. x
Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xviii
Firing the canon
About canons and culture wars	p. 3
Theoretical models for the critique of the canon: ideology and myth	p. 6
What is the canon - structurally?	p. 9
Psycho-symbolic investment in the canon, or, Being childish about artists	p. 13
Differencing: feminism's encounter with the canon	p. 23
Three positions	p. 23
About difference and differance	p. 29
Thinking about women ... Artists	p. 33
Reading against the grain: reading for ...
The ambivalence of the maternal body: re/drawing Van Gogh	p. 41
A feminist reading of Van Gogh?	p. 41
Bending women	p. 43
Inside a studio behind the vicarage in Nuenen	p. 46
Sexuality and representation	p. 50
What are they really talking about?	p. 53
Class, sexuality and animality	p. 55
Freud, Van Gogh and the Wolf Man: Mater and nanny	p. 57
Who's seeing whose mother? Feminist desire and the case of Van Gogh	p. 60
Fathers of modern art: mothers of invention: cocking a leg at Toulouse-Lautrec	p. 65
Late-coming and premature departure	p. 65
Debasement and desire: registers of social and sexual difference	p. 67
Looking up to dad	p. 70
When small is not enough	p. 75
Whose [who's] missing [the] Phallus? What's in the gloves?	p. 77
Deconstructing the derriere: the physical other	p. 81
Loving women	p. 87
Conclusion	p. 90
Heroines: setting women in the canon
The female hero and the making of a feminist canon: Artemisia Gentileschi's representations of Susanna and Judith	p. 97
Seeing the artist or reading the picture?	p. 98
Feminists and art history: what women?	p. 98
Susanna and the Elders	p. 103
Trauma, memory and the relief of representation	p. 108
Decapitation or castration: Judith Slaying Holofernes	p. 115
Feminist mythologies and missing mothers: Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, Artemisia Gentileschi and Cleopatra	p. 129
A feminist myth of the twentieth century: murdered creativity and the female body	p. 129
Lucy Snowe meets Cleopatra: the resistant feminist reader and the female body	p. 132
Missing mothers: inscriptions in the feminine: Cleopatra	p. 138
Coda: rapish scenes and Lucretia	p. 158
Revenge: Lubaina Himid and the making of new narratives for new histories	p. 169
A post-colonial feminist revenge on the canon?	p. 169
On some painting in Revenge	p. 173
History painting	p. 186
On mourning and melancholia	p. 189
Covenant versus terrorism	p. 191
Who is the other?
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	p. 201
On the question of I and non-I	p. 201
On the social other	p. 213
On the jouissance of the other	p. 226
On the mortality of the other	p. 230
On the exhibition with the other	p. 234
A tale of three women: seeing in the dark, seeing double, at least, with Manet	p. 247
Introduction: Laure, Jeanne and Berthe	p. 247
Berthe	p. 258
Jeanne	p. 261
Laure	p. 277
Conclusion	p. 305
Epilogue	p. 317
Bibliography	p. 318
Index	p. 328
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