Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art

180 Pages·2008·9.083 MB·English

by  Griselda Pollock

Griselda
Pollock
Vision and Difference
Feminism, femininity and the histories of art
ex !!!:.ris
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,. ,~ DAVID
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With a new introduction by the author
London and New York
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First published 1988
by Routledge
First published in Routledge Classics 2003
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX'4 4RN
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Reprinted 2006, 2007, 2008
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor a[ Francis Croup, an informa business
© 1988 Griselda Pollock
Introduction to Routledge Classics edition © 2003 Griselda Pollack
For Tony, Benjamin and Hester
Typeset in Joanna and 5caJa Sans by RefineCatch Ud, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
AII rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other mean s, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBNlO: 0-41S-308so-X
ISBN13: 978-o-41S-308so-2
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CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
ACKNOWLEOGEMENTS XV
INTRODUCTION TO THE ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS
EOITION xvii
Feminist interventions in the histories of art:
an introduction
2 Vision, voice and power: feminist art
histories and Marxism 25
3 Modernity and the spaces offemininity 70
4 Woman as sign in Pre-Raphaelite literature:
the representation of Elizabeth Siddall
(written in collaboration with Deborah Cherry)
5 A photo-essay: signs of femininity
6 Woman as sign: psychoanalytic readings
7 Screening the seventies: sexuality and
representation in feminist practice - a
Brechtian perspective 212
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viii
CONTENTS
NOTES 269
BrSLlOGRAPHY
301
INDEX
3°9
I LLUSTRATIONS
3.1 Cover design of the catalogue for the exhibition
Cubism and Abstraet Art, 1936, Museum of
Modern Art, New York. 71
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, a rainy day 1877; oil
3-2
on canvas; 212.2 x 276.2 cm.; the Art 1n stitute of
Chicago (Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester
Fund). 73
Edouard Manet, A bar at the Folies-Bergere
3-3
1882; oil on canvas; 96 x 130cm.; Courtauld
Institute Gallery, Somerset House,
London. 74
Berthe Morisot, In the dining room 1886; oil on
3-4
canvas; 61 x 50cm.; National Gallery of Art,
Washington (Chester Dale Collection). 79
Berthe Morisot, The mother and sister ofthe artist
3·5
1869-70; oil on canvas; 101 x 81.8cm.; National
Gallery of Art, Washington (Chester Dale
80
Collection).
xi
X IllUSTRATIONS ILLUSTRATlONS
3.6 Mary Cassatt, The tea 1880; oil on canvas; Collection, Courtesy ofthe Maryland Commission
64·8 x 92·7cm.; Museum ofFine Arts, Boston on Artistic Property of the Maryland State Archives,
(M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund). on loan to The Baltimore Museum of Art MSA SC
81
3·7 Mary Cassatt, Yaung girl at window 1883; oil on 4680-10-0010. . 90
canvas; 100·3 x 64·7cm.; Corcoran Gallery of Art 3.17 Mary Cassatt, Little girl in a blue armehalr 1878;
Washington (Gallery Fund). ' oil on canvas; 89 x 130cm.; National Gallery of
82
3.8 Mary Cas.satt, Lydia seated at an embroidery fmme Art, Washington (collection ofMr and Mrs Paul
e. 1881; 011 on canvas; 65.5 x 92cm.; Collection Mellon).
of the Flint Institute of Arts, Gift of the Whiting 3.1 8 Constantin Guys, Afamily walking in the park, n.d.,
Foundation, 1967. 22.5 x 18.75cm.; Paris, private collection. 102
83
3·9 Mary Cassatt, Lydia eroeheting in the garden at 3-19 Constantin Guys, Twa caurtesans, n.d., 32.5 x 25cm.;
Marly 1880; oil on canvas; 66 x 94cm.; Paris, private collection. 103
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 3.20 Edgar Degas, Dancers baekstage e. 1872; oil on
Gift ofMrs Gardner Cassatt, 1965 canvas; 24 x 19cm.; National Gallery of Art,
83
3.10 Mary Cassatt, The bath 1892; oil on canvas; Washington (Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection). 106
99.2 x 66.1 cm.; The Art Institute ofChicago 3-21 Mary Cassatt, Women in a loge 1891-2; oil on
(Robert A. Waller Fund). canvas; 80 x 64cm.; National Gallery of Art,
84
3·11 Berthe Morisot, On a summer's day 1880; oil on Washington (Chester Dale Collection). 107
canvas; 46 x 75 cm.; National Gallery, London. 3. Pierre Auguste Renoir, La lage 1874; oil on canvas;
85 22
3.12 Berthe Morisot, The harbour at Lorient 1869; oil on 80 x 53-5cm.; Courtauld Institute Gallery, Somerset
canvas; 43 x 72 cm.; National Gallery of Art, House, London. 108
Washington (Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection). 85 3.23 Mary Cassatt, At thefranqais, a sketch 1877/78; oil on
3.13 Berthe Morrsot, On the terraee 1874; oil on canvas; 81 x 66cm.; © 2002 Museum ofFine Arts,
canvas; 45 x 54cm.; Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo Boston (Hayden Collection). 110
86
3.14 Berthe Morisot, On the baleony (overlooking Paris 3.24 Berthe Morisot, Psyché 1876; oil on canvas;
near the Trocadéro) 1872; watercolour; 20.6 64 x 54cm.; Lugano, Switzerland, Thyssen
116
x 17·5 cm.; The Art In stitute of Chicago (gift of M rs Bornemisza Collection.
Charles Netscher). 3-25 Robert Doisneau, An oblique laok 1948;
87
3.15 Claude Monet, The garden oft he prineess 1867; photograph; Victoria and Albert Museum,
011 on canvas; 91.8 x 61.9 cm.; Allen Memorial Art London. 121
Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio (R.T. Miller Jr. 3.26 Berthe Morisot in her studio, photograph. 125
Fund,48.296). 88 3.27 Mary Cassatt, Woman bathing 189'; colour print
3.16 Mary Cassatt, Portmit ofMadamej., 1879/80; oil with drypoint and aquatint, fifth state;
on canvas; 80.6 x 64-6 cm.; The Peabody Art 35.5 x 26.2cm.; Worcester Art Museum. 126
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xii
ILLUSTRATIONS
xiii
ILLUSTRATIONS
IIIustrations 5.1-5.9 are all by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The
6.2 Bocea bacciata 1859; oil on canvas; 33 x 30cm.;
titles are taken from the catalogue raisonné edited by Virginia
Mrs Suzette Zureher. 177
Surtees. The quotation marks emphasize the tentative nature
of the attributions. Regina cordium 1860; black and red chalk study;
6·3 '9. x 18.7cm.; heirs of Kerrison Preston. 182
5.1 'Elizabeth Siddal(l)' 1860; pencil; 25 x 25 m.; Reg' ina cordium 1866; oi/ on canvas; 58.7 x
c
48.7cm.; Glasgow Art Gal/ery and Museum.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; VS 477.
5.2 'Fanny CornJorth' 1862; penci/; 33 x 37cm.; 6 ·5 Venus verticordia 1864-8; oi/ onII canvas; 92.2 x
68.7cm.; Russel/-Cotes Art Ga ery,
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; VS 288.
Bournemouth.
5·3 'Elizabeth Siddal(l)' 6 February 1855; pen and ink;
12·5 x 11.75cm.; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 6.6 Venus verticordia 1863; red chalk; 76.2 x 60.6 cm.;
VS 472. Faringdon Col/ection Trustees, Buscot Park,
Berkshire. 188
'Emma Brown' November 1860; pencil; 29 x
27cm.; Mrs Oliver Soskice; VS 274. 6 Sibylla palmífera 1866-70; oil on canvas;
5·5 'Elizabeth Siddal(l)' 1854; penci/; 11.8 x 11.25 m.; ·7 92.5 x 81.2cm.; Lady Lever Art Gal/ery, Port
c
Sunlight. '94
Victoria and Albert Museum, London; VS 499.
5·6 'jane Morris' October 1857; penci/; 48 x 33 cm.; 6.8 Lady Lilith 1868; oi/ on canvas; 93.7 x 80cm.;
Delaware Art Museum (Bancroft Memorial
Society of Antiquaries, Kelmscott Manor
Oxfordshire; VS 363. ' Col/ection). '95
5·7 'Elizabeth Siddal(l)' 1854; watercolour; 18 x 6.9 Astarte Syriaca 1877; oil on canvas; 180 x 105cm.;
Manchester City Art Gal/ery. 206
16cm.; John Street; VS 471.
5·8 'jane Morris' 1860; penci/ and ink; 21 x 18cm.; 6.10 Study for the head ofA starte Syriaca 1875; pastel
on pale green paper, 53.7 x 44.3 cm.; Victoria and
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; VS 3 5.
6
5·9 'Emma Brown' 10 September 1856; pen and ink; Albert Museum, London. 207
7.1 Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt, Mary Kel/y, part of
12·5 x lOcm.; Birmingham Museums and Art
Women and work: a document on the division oflabour
Gallery, Birmingham; VS 273.
5·10 Advertisements for cosmetic products. in industry, instal/ation multi-media '975.
5·11 The faces of Greta Garbo and Mar/ene (a) instal/ation; (b) hourly paid women
Dietrich. employees; (e) detail of the work processes of
165 women; (d) work diaries. . 228-29
7.2 Mitra Tabrizian, part of On Governmentallty '983;
IIIustrations 6.1-6.10 are all works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
a phototext work on advertising in 17 panels.. 236-37
6.1 7-3 Yve Lomax, 4 panels from Open rings and partlOl
Monna Vanna 1866; oil on canvas; 86.6 x 85 cm.;
Tate, London. lines, a photographic work in 15 panel s each
173 57.5 x 80cm., '983-4
xiv
rLLUSTRATrONS
Marie Yates, The only woman 1985; 12 panels.
(a) Rage, 4 panels; (b) Pain, 2 details' (e) Gaze
6~nels. "
7·5 Mary Kelly, part of Interim, Part 1: 'Corpus' 19 4-2~6-49
8
30 panels, 90 x 120em, laminated photopositiv 9 ,
sereenprlnt and aerylie on perspex. (a) three pa e'l
from 'M é' . h ne s
. enae, Wlt materials from the artist's
archive for Interim; (b) Supplieation (No 1)'
(e) Appel (No. 2); (d) Extase (No. 3). "
ACKNOWLEDG EM ENTS
Thde author and publisher are grateful to all those ind"d I
an organlzations listed above who h IVI ua s
ave granted perm' .
to repro d uee pietures. Every effort h b Isslon
. . as een made to bt'
permlsslon to use copyright material but 'f D o arn
request has not been reeeived th .1 or any reason a
eontaet the publisher. e copYright holder should
It is normal to take this space to thank colleagues and friends
who have helped in the making of a book. There have been so
many contributions to the development and excitement of femi
nist art history that the list of names would and should be long. 1
hope those whose example and practices have helped me will
find themselves acknowledged in due place throughout the texto
It is also comInon for authors to leave untillast their families,
as if the domestic backup is less valuable than the intellectual
input of academic colleagues and friends. This is not so. The
people who have given generously of their time, patience and
support to make this book possible are my children and their
father. The book is dedicated to them with deepest thanks. 1 have
not yet found the balance between the passions of motherhood
and the thrills of feminist scholarship. It is my children and their
father who live out the painful effects of the struggle which
feminism has brought to uso It is they above all and by name
who must be acknowledged as my ca-producers, Tony Bryant,
Benjamin Pollock Bryant and Hester Pollock Bryant.
I NTRODUCTION TO ROUTLEDGE
CLASSICS EDITION
Vision and Diflerence was my fifth feminist book thinking about and
analysing culture for inscriptions 'in, of and from the femi
nine'.l Its title is typical of rny project. It conjoins two issues:
looking, seeing and representing visuaHy with the problematic
of difference. It does not mentian gender at aH. The subtitle:
Feminism, lemininity and histories 01 art, links three terms. One stands
for a political movement that is al so an inteHectual revolution.
The second uses a psychoanalytical term for a psycho-linguistic
position within the structuring of sexual difference. 'Femininity'
dces not invoke any empirically experienced notion cf women.
It refers to a position within language and in a psycha-sexual
formation that the term Woman signifies. As a position, there
fore, and not an identity, a fictian produced within that forma
tion, femininity may be something of which its defining Other,
masculinity, speaks, drean1s, fantasizes. Ir signals at the same
time that which subjects living and thinking from that position
labelled 'women' have to cantend as an imposed or created posi
tioning. It is also a structure and realm cf experience women
xviii rNTRODUCTrON TO ROUTlEDGE CLASSICS EDITION xix
INTRODUCTION TO ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION
subjects need to explore since it may not be known to us, given
can continue. undisturbed by the questions feminism poses:
its con/iguration through certain patterns of discourse and
the questions of gender as a continuing axis of power and
psycho-sexual formation under a phal!ic Law.
domination, and of sexual difference as the ambivalent seene of
The pluralization of the histories 01 art is especial!y signi/icant
meaning, fantasy and desire.
since it opens out the /ield of historieal interpretation beyond
1 have been told on more than one occasion that my work is
a selectlve tradition, The Story of Art, a canonieal version
'history' now. That is, the debates have moved on to other ques
masquerading as the only h.istory of arto Whose stories are told in
tions such as internationalism, postcoloniality and post-gender
whose interests? Whose stories will we need to find? How ~an
studies of sexuality and queerness. The possibility and necessity
we read differently?
of opening other investigations around cultural difference and
In the end, all our histories wil! be just that: stories we tel!
globalization in our study and analysis of cultures is unquestion
ourselves, narratives of retrospeetive self-affirmation, fietions of
able. 1 would, however, argue that this is so precisely because of
and for resistanee that are, nonetheless, answerable to a sense of
what we have learnt by the historic feminist interruption: that
the real processes of lived and suffered histories. Thus to enter
knowledge is shaped in relations of power and invested with
eritically into the problenlatic of narrative, representation, his interests, political, ideological and psychological. Feminism was
tory and the politics of meaning, we shal! need self-awareness of
never alone in making this claim; but it made the challenge
who we are when we 'tel! a story', what its effects will be what
central to its politico-intel!ectual project.
is excluded and how contingent it wil! be, however dilig~nt we
Jt was Rozsika Parker' s and my opening salvo, Old Misttesses:
are m our scholarship and research. Situated knowledge, recog
Women, Art and ldeology, in 1981, that /irst tracked what we could
nlzlng our soclally overdetermined positions. do es not create a now caH, pace Fredric ]ameson, 'the political unconscious'2 of art
free-for-all of limitless relativismo That is the slur the canonists
history as a discursive formation institutionalized in museum
wish to cast upon the ethical scholar, the political!y self-aware and academy in the twentieth century. We argued that despite
thmker, arUst or writer who engages with study at the highest
art's deceptive marginality in real material and political terms,
'evels of responsibility but honestly offers her/his interpret
the privileged discourses of and on art served symbolic purposes
atl~ns a: readm8s, as a sltuated work of attempted understanding
that disseminated, beyond their own privileged sphere, concepts
WhICh, m that awareness, is both con/idently creative and mod
of Eurocentrism and masculine suprell1aey. The eore narratives
estly critical of inevitable limitations.
that encode Western phallocentrism' s political unconscious
What has happened between 1988 when Vision and Diffeten" /irst
serve not ll1erely to structure the study of the histories of art, but
appeared and its re-issue as a 'Classic' in 2003' At times I feel as
to establish a story of art as The Story of Art, the canonicallegend
if the waters of' art history as usual' are closing back ove~ the site
of Western masculine Christian creativity which becon1es syn
of what I nalned in Vision and DifIerence 'feminist interventions in
onymous with art, pure and simple. Against this formal creation
art' s histories'. It is as if there is a will to cast feIl1inist work in
of a version of the past that serves to consolidate gender as an
and on, the histories of art back into the momentarily ruffled
axis of power on the one hand and, on the other, as a mark of
surface of the 11lstory of the late twentieth century as an intel
exclusion and devaluation, it is not useful to aim merely te
lectual curiosity, no longer relevant to current practices. These
correct the oversights and ignorance that led art history to
xxi
xx INTRODUCTION TO ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION INTRODUCTION TO ROUTlEDGE ClASS1CS EDITION
ignore the art of almost all women who have participated in women have won, to a still limited degree, general access ra
creative cultural activity. Such a short-sighted, if always neces education. There are now a sufficient number of critically self
sary. objective swings the issue of gender ayer onto the artists conscious women academics for whom the question of sexual
who are women having to make their case far re-incorporation difference is a major academic project. In a radically changed
after dedarations by scholars such as H. W. Janson, the author of situation, the woman question is being posed in the name of
the most widely used textbook in art history, that no woman has women by highly educated professional women forming an
ever made any innovation in art sufficient to justify inclusion in a international intellectual community.
one-volume survey of world art.3 Token women are merely Not a mere moment in a social movement for equal pay or
offered far re-introduction into a canon, whose own construc better employment opportunities, our moment of feminist
tion by exdusion on the grounds of the sex of the artist renders theory is a work that has only just begun with a first generation
that canon already a gendered and gendering discourse and thus of women professors in a quantity sufficient to progress an intel
will always position artists who are women as marked, othered, as lectual revolution through a volume of writings that have
women artists. How essential is fernininity? 1 once asked. The emerged in every academic field, from genetics to art history, and
answer: it is structural to the maintenance of a certain Eurocentric through the training of generations of women scholars who are
masculinist conception of art and artist. Femininity is invoked as allowed to be scholars of women. These women scholars can
the deficient, bnt always named and marked other, that which confront the full implications of sexual difference as a complex
then allows art to be understood as inherently what men make, structuration of subjectivity and social relations in perpetual play
without having to spell out that blatantly false narcissism. with other determining and over-determining relations of
Many people misrecognize feminism as a merely historical power and formations of subjectivity, notably, in the modern
phenomenon, limited to a certain time and place. The work of period, of 'race' and dass.
feminist theory is a radical questioning, a way of thinking and Feminist thought has never meant limiting women tD the
not just a short-lived partisan advocacy. There have been study of women's issues. Thus feminist work in and on art his
moments of feminist challenges to patriarchal and phallocentric tDry is not just about the restitution of women artists tD official
thought and formations throughout history, for example in the histories (although given the almost complete annihllation of
late medieval period, during the Protestant Reformation and in theír histories by Art History (the discipline) we have a really
the revolutionary period of the late eighteenth century. Politic exciting job to do there as my first book Old Mistresses (1981)
ally and militantly, feminism raok on the modern bourgeois demonstrated). It must mean broadening the entire field of
state at the end of the nineteenth century and continued to battle intellectual endeavour to acknowledge the significance of sexual
i
not only for political emancipation throughout the twentieth and other differences amidst the play of many social, economic,
century but for a deeper sense of the modernization of sexual 1 ideological, semiotic and psychological factors one might con
difference. After a quiescent period following the reaction ! sider. Feminist thought confronts the entire field of the histories
against women's movements by fascism from the 1930s to the of artistic and cultural practices with questions about difference,
1950s, feminist theory after 1960 became a major intellectual formulating new theories and methods of analysis with wltich
force because, for the first time in the hisrary of the West, more to rewrite Western phallocentric monoculture in a way that
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