Close Reading Exercise: Nochlin_great_women_artists

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Close Reading Exercise
The writer of the article` why has there been no great women artist`, Linda Nochlin has written several facts as to why there have been no great women artists in history. After a keen analysis of the situation, she wrote the article in 1988 under Harper and Row as the producers (Nochlin, 1988). Nochlin wrote the article to help curb the male chauvinism that had influenced most of the men during that time in history. She was so worried that there were few women who had done great things in history. She attributed this to the male domination over most of the faculties and professions and, therefore, wrote this as advice to the men who looked down upon women in society (145). She says that for a just society to be created during that time there was a need to break the male dominion over the women. This notion was seconded by Mill in his article giving his view point of how a just society should be like (155). Her article was directly addressed to the leaders in society to sensitize them to start looking into the cultural beliefs that revealed biases` and limitations towards the issues concerning women. She strongly disagrees with the notion that women are incapable of greatness (148).This is in fact true, and I fully agree with her argument.
Nochlin, in her article, argues against the notion that we have not realized any great women in history. She is trying to spot out that, even if there have been great women in history, they have not been recognized. Her point of argument is that there have been great women in history, but have been neglected by the feminists; which is very true (155). She cites Artemisia and Angelica Kauffmann as some of the great women in history, but has not been recognized in any way in the society. She emphasizes that such great individuals who are supposed to be used as role models are not in any way recognized as being important (169). It is seen that, feminists will look for negativity from such great women cases instead of looking for positive things that can be recorded in history as the role models for upcoming young women (149).
In her article, it is also seen that some feminists look for other ways of isolating women by stating that there are differences between the men`s and women`s greatness in art (168). The feminists state that the great women in art should be rated among themselves such that the unique features of their artistic presentations are the key points to earn them greatness. This is not in any case possible because, every woman down in history has unique artistic presentations which cannot be seen to resemble each other in any way (163).From the article, it is clear that feminists should now sit back and settle for the same measures that are used to rate males art presentations. Women in society have no problem in their nature that causes the feminists to act in the ways depicted. The problem lies in nature the society has...