ࡱ> XZW'` 27bjbjDD *N&&2/lllllllHHHH4|$`(> '''''''$)h~+(l(ll(!!!ll'!'!!V&@ll& |H& '40(0`(& H,|H,&&&H,l'!(( `( d dllllll Peg Brand Feminism in Context 1993 Stolnitz in the 1950s argued that criticism (talk about art) can be used for reasons for supporting value-judgments, to describe, to explain, or to clarify a work of art. He commented on the need for interpretive criticism during the time of John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and the Minimalists. During that time interpretive criticism took on a life of its own. Stolnitz believed one perceives a work aesthetically while maintaining an aesthetic attitude, enjoying the work of art for its own sake, the aesthetic experience giving rise to evaluative statements. Only after giving up the aesthetic attitude can the viewer adopt a critical attitude towards the work, to probe and analyze it. Stolnitz however seems inconsistent when he says both that criticism can enhance the appreciation of a work of art and that criticism is irrelevant to appreciation. He thought that criticism must illuminate our understanding of the work of art and provide criteria of evaluation. He also thought that contextual criticism, such as Marxist and Freudian criticism, can be useful in interpretation, but that these forms are highly suspect in relation to evaluation: Marxist and Freudian judgments are moral, not aesthetic. So Stolnitz is really only claiming that some forms of criticism enhance aesthetic appreciation. He thinks that contextual critics transfer concepts used to describe the work to concepts used to evaluate it. In resolving the apparent inconsistency mentioned above, he believed that only noncontextual criticism is acceptable as evaluative criticism. He thought that only internal data may be used for aesthetic judgments. From his argument [which Brand analyzes in detail] he concludes that only aesthetic judgments determine aesthetic value. (Moral and aesthetic judgment are separate!). Monroe Beardsley, like Stolnitz, distinguished the isolationist, who believes to appreciate art we need only experience it [his own position], from the contextualist, who stresses how historical context makes the experience richer. [Ironically] Beardsley rejects Aestheticism as a fanatical reaction that rejects that idea that human products must find their value in the whole context of human life. [More importantly] he then rejects Moralism too. Moralism is the view in which aesthetic objects are judged solely or chiefly with respect to moral standards. Moralists use two arguments: Argument from Reduction: all critical evaluation is reduced to moral evaluation. Argument from Correlation: grants a separate form of aesthetic value but makes it dependent upon or correlated with moral value, a work of low moral value is a work of low aesthetic value, e.g. pornography. If the argument from correlation is plausible then possibly contextual factors that determine so-called moral value are relevant in assessing the aesthetic value of a work of art. [Brand would favor this.] In the first phase of feminist theorizing about the arts, the feminist critique, feminists sought to recapture the past by exposing denigrating stereotypes of women in works by males, discovering female authors and artists previously excluded from the canon, and seeking commonalities in female culture in the various artistic modes. Questioning the dominating ideology of Great Masters led feminists to question how universal and objective criteria of aesthetic value could yield such a biased set of paradigms. The present phase shows interest in metacriticism and metatheory. It seeks to construct an alternative to dominating male criteria for interpreting and evaluating art. This involves rejecting the greatest masterpieces of all time. What is feminist theory? Many say that feminism is untheorizable, that there can be no definition of it. But it might be helpful to think of the guiding principles of feminist theory in general. Janet Richards writes that a feminist is committed to participation in consciousness-raising groups, the inherent equality of the sexes, and the idea that the enslavement of women is the root of all oppression. Brand says this means a feminist seeks to undo wrongs of previous oppression and prevent similar occurrences from happening in the future. Works of art can be an expressive and effective means of actively communicating such principles. Feminism not only advances a world view but prescribes a way of life: it is an ideology. Some art created by feminists has been labeled propaganda. But this need not be negative, for propaganda means propagation of ideas. Feminist theory, as descriptive, is like any other theory, but as prescriptive, it is not confirmable. It is either practiced or not. The personal is the political means that there is no nonpolitical, unbiased perspective. This is the principle of nonneutrality. The single goal for feminists might be a nonsexist, egalitarian, nonhierarchical society. Giselda Ecker says that all investigations into art have to be thoroughly genderised: the sex of artist and critic has to be taken into account. Brand argues that an isolationist approach to art is ludicrous and pernicious: the work of art can never be objectively created, interpreted or evaluated. In sum: knowledge of external, contextual data is relevant to aesthetic value of a work of art, and gender is one aspect of contextual theories that needs to be investigated, and so feminist theory is an essential part of aesthetic inquiry. Questions: Is a work of low moral value necessarily a work of low aesthetic value, as Brand argues? Can propaganda be valuable? Must we reject the greatest masterpieces in order to have a nonsexist society? Linda Nochlin Why Are There No Great Women Artists 1971 [Bear in mind that this article was written in 1971. There are many arguably great women artists who reached maturity since 1971.] Why are there no great women artists? It has been argued that this is because women are incapable of greatness. [Nochlin does not accept this.] The feminist first reaction was to attempt to answer the question as put: dig up examples of worthy women in history, e.g. Berthe Morisot, Artemisia Gentileschi. But this did nothing to question the assumptions lying behind the question. Another option: accusing the questioner of using male standards as a criteria for greatness: claiming that there is a different kind of greatness for womens art. This depends on the notion of a distinctive and recognizable feminine or feminist style. Unfortunately there is no such style: no subtle essence of femininity in the historically known women artists, any more than in the known women writers. It might be argued that women are more inward-looking, more delicate, but male artists Redon and Fragonard seem to refute this, as well as Rosa Bonheur and Helen Frankenthaler. The problem is with a misconception of what art is, with the nave idea that art is the direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms: great art is never that. The making of art involves a self-consistent language of form, involving temporally defined conventions which have to be learned or worked out, and must be embodied in some material. It is a fact that there are no great women artists. But the question Why are there no great women artists? is based on shaky received ideas about the nature of art and the role of the social order in human excellence, which goes beyond the specific issues of womens subjection. It makes uncritical assumptions about the making of art and of great art, linking artists under the title Great Artist as one who has genius, which itself is seen as an atemporal and mysterious power embedded in the Great Artist. So the question of the conditions generally productive of great art is rarely investigated: art historians avoid sociology. Yet a sociological approach would reveal the entire romantic, elitist, individual- glorifying substructure upon which professional art history is based. Underneath the question is the myth of the unique, godlike subject of a hundred monographs, bearing the mysterious essence, the golden nugget, called genius. This magical aura gave birth to myths: supernatural powers or create being out of nothing: the boy wonder discovered in pastoral circumstances. But what if Picasso had been born a girl? Stressed in these stories is the apparently miraculous, non-determined, and asocial nature of artistic achievement: true hagiography in the nineteenth century, substitute religion, mad Van Gogh etc. The art history monograph accepts the notion of the Great Artist as primary and the social and institutional forces as secondary influences. [Here is the argument Nochlin opposes] If women had the golden nugget of artistic genius, then it would reveal itself, but it never revealed itself, thus women do not have the golden nugget. But look at the actual situations in which important art has been produced. Ask from what social classes etc. artists were most likely to come at different periods of art history. For example, transmission from father to son was a matter of course. Why have there been no great artists from aristocracy, even though they provided most of the patronage and audience for art, even though, like [middle-class] women, they had leisure and other advantages? It is not because they were missing the golden nugget of genius but because the demands placed on them, as well as on women, made total devotion to art unthinkable. We also need to see the development of reason and imagination in young children as a dynamic activity rather than a static essence: it happens in a situation. The characteristics of impressive child artists may only appear to be innate. Scholars will have to abandon the notion of individual genius as innate. Sum: art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker, and the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occurs in a social situation, and mediated by social institutions, including mythologies of the divine creator. Barbara A. MacAdam Linda Nochlin on the many faces of contemporary feminist art Art News Feb. 2007  HYPERLINK "http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2216" http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2216 [accessed May 12, 2011] BAM: Your 1971 article is a comprehensive, very eloquent assessment of the state of womens art at the time. Where do you believe feminism stands today? LN: I think weve made a lot of progress. I know its not fashionable to admit it, but Im just stating a fact. I think women artists occupy a better position today than they did 30 or 35 years ago. Some of the best artists in every medium are women. The problem is to make collectors, museums, and curators who arent really up on things see that there are many great women artists. There are collectors and curators whoout of habit, laziness, or even misogynysimply dont bother with women. But thats happening less and less frequently as women begin to occupy the most prominent places in the art world as creative artists. I mean, who wouldnt think of collecting Louise Bourgeois? Youd be crazy if you didnt. Or if you were interested in video artists, youd be foolish not to consider the videos of Sam Taylor-Wood or Pipilotti Rist, not to speak of women working in various media from other parts of the worldShahzia Sikander, for example, or Ghada Amer, or some of the Latin American women, or the Japanese. They are major figures. Theyre the ones who are doing the most interesting and challenging work. It isnt that people have to be charitable toward women in general or to people of other ethnicities, as they often were in the past. Questions: 1. Does Nochlin reject the idea of greatness as well as the idea of genius? 2. What would Nochlin recommend that feminists do now? 3. Is Nochlin herself a feminist? 4. Which theories of art we have studied would Nochlin favor more than others? 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