The Feminist Critique of Art History

Art criticism and art history from a feminist perspective are recent phenomena, emerging only during the last fifteen years. They have, in their short history, moved from a first generation in which “the condition and experience of being female” was emphasized, to a second generation, beginning in the late 1970s, influenced by feminist criticism in other disciplines and offering a more complex critique of both art and culture through an investigation of the production and evaluation of art and the role of the artist. In this survey, we propose, first, to outline the history of feminist art and art history, then to discuss the interrelated themes in each, and, finally, in the concluding and pivotal sections (IV and V), to discuss various feminist art-critical and art-historical methodologies.