With the paperback reissue of Vision and Difference , Griselda Pollock's essays are at last widely available. No one interested in feminism or the arts can avoid facing her challenge to art history. Feminist art histories Among other things, art history explains why some artists have mattered so much. Its weapons are historical categories, such as Modernism , and art interpretation. Works say something, too, because of how anyone today has learned to hear.
Artists have long-buried aims and influences, while the present day has freshly buried prejudices.
Looking back at the artists' life and times, historians find the reality they represented and the forms they used. Looking at the past and the present, historians find other voices more rarely heard. I mean the voices surrounding artists, the voices that gave them life. That is why art history takes some training and some work. A feminist like Pollock finds art history full of exclusions.