“Why have there been no great women artists?” It is a silly question, really, and the art historian Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) certainly thought so when a male gallerist put it to her. She responded with a passionate and provocative essay published in 1971 as part of a controversial issue on “Women’s Liberation, Women Artists and Art History” in the journal
ARTnews. The essay was preceded by the strapline: “Implications of the Women’s Lib movement for art history and for the contemporary art scene or, silly questions deserve long answers.” In roughly 4,000 words, Nochlin dismantled the question to reveal the assumptions that lie behind it, as well as the answer it surreptitiously supplies: “There are no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness.”