The Woman Question

On masterpieces and gender politics.

By Shreya Khullar

Illustration by Emily Wells Bennett

A few weeks into Art Humanities, I felt the urge to preempt my questions with a dreaded caveat: “Don't worry, I’m a feminist.” After several classes simmering with buildup, this uncomfortable feeling culminated in one particularly uneasy occurrence. It was a hazy February afternoon when the post-lunch drawl was settling in, and my professor was running through his usual slideshow. Then, two images were presented to the class side by side. On the left: Michelangelo’s David, a 17-foot-tall marble statue whose fiery gaze seems to be embedded into the marrow of Western art consciousness. On the right: the 4.2 x 2.3 cm Carved Cherry Stone Pendant by Properzia de’ Rossi, a delicately engraved piece I had never encountered before. When asked to name something that differentiated de’ Rossi’s work from Michelangelo’s, I raised my hand and in an annoyed (and perhaps slightly misguided) fashion said, “Well, it’s not as good.” 

To me, the question itself was a misfire. How does one compare an icon of Western art to something that seems like little more than a household trinket? Why should we be juxtaposing men and women Renaissance artists in the first place? Was it not a disservice to the feminist movement to place these images side by side to illustrate the rather obvious point that women in the 16th century didn’t have access to 12,000 pounds of marble? 

The aim of the exercise, my professor later revealed, was to help us think through Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” When I first encountered this article, it struck me with almost religious force. Nochlin’s perceptive examination of the condition of women artists leads her to argue that it was institutions and education—including “everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs and signals”—that has prevented women from achieving the same levels of artistic greatness as men. She explains that the instinctual, incorrect response to the “woman question” was to “dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history” in an attempt to rediscover deserving, but undervalued “minor masters.” In other words, to attempt to rewrite the Western canon by inserting women. Another misstep by feminists, Nochlin writes, would be to assert that since women were clearly not presented with the same opportunities there should be a different standard of “greatness” for women’s art than for men’s. Nochlin’s perspective began to color my vision of the entire course, and the incongruities between her position and the Art Humanities curriculum are staggering.

What was the study of Luisa Roldán if not the insertion of an underappreciated “minor master” into a canon that has historically excluded her? What was the pairing of Sofonisba Anguissola with the household names Michelangelo and Raphael if not the creation of a new set of standards that would allow her to be represented? With the semester inching toward a close and my curiosity only growing, I began to form my own version of the so-called “women question,” albeit one whose disputation takes place on a much more micro scale: What are women doing in the curriculum of Masterpieces of Western Art? 

The course itself seems to be confused about its philosophy. Some view Art Hum as a history class, others as a foundation for students to develop their own artistic preferences, and still others as a course on visual literacy. When speaking with professors in the department, each term within the title “Masterpieces of Western Art” was thrown into question.

“We were discussing even last week how the Core, in general, is getting rid of the designation of masterpieces,” says Professor Zoë Strother, Program Chair for Art Humanities. She believes the term has been weaponized in order to prevent women artists—and other artists working from the margins—from being incorporated into art history courses. This sentiment seems to prevail across the discipline and is one echoed by Griselda Pollock, renowned art historian and fierce critic of Nochlin, along with several professors in the department. “I think there's a general sense that that concept has outlived its usefulness,” Strother continued. “Masterpiece,” and its often paired term “genius,” are constructs many faculty believe are doing more harm than good due to their centrality within the curriculum. The solution? Democratize the study of art history by removing the term “masterpiece” from the course’s framework.  

As discourse continued throughout the semester, it became clear the question of women was inextricably linked to the broader question of the validity of the word “masterpiece.” The term itself invokes exclusion. It places certain works of art on a pedestal, deeming them categorically superior to others. By rendering that term null, it would open up the study of art in a way that doesn’t reinforce all the hierarchies and power structures embedded in the word.  

Yet, the foundation of this renegotiation of terms is constantly under scrutiny. In 2018, long-time frustration with Art Humanities and pressures from the political landscape at the time converged and came to a head. Columbia’s graduate students were on strike, Black Lives Matter protests were materializing across the country, and the aftermath of the #MeToo movement had opened up a range of feminist questions within universities. The following year, there was a comprehensive curriculum upheaval for the first time since the course’s addition to the Core in 1947. Professor Noam Elcott, CC’ 00, was at the forefront of these changes after volunteering to take on the role of chair in 2018 with the explicit mandate of reforming the curriculum along the lines of gender and race. “People on the more conservative end were dismissive of efforts to diversify the curriculum and, to say it bluntly, questioned whether the works and artists we were looking at warranted the designation ‘masterpiece.’ … On the more progressive side, there were calls for doing away with the Western focus altogether,” Elcott remarked.

While the motion to remove the term “Western” from the course title was outside the purview of Art Hum coordinators, several changes were made. Five years ago, the most salient demand was to introduce women into the course. Now, Art Humanities has more women represented than any other branch of the Core. Seven of the 21 artists taught in the curriculum are women, when previously Art Humanities was an entirely male-focused course. 

While increasing the number of women artists taught in Art Hum was undoubtedly an achievement, a new swath of problems is now bubbling to the surface. The course is currently structured in a way that breeds comparison. Each of the 10 units only highlights two to four artists, and the inclusion of women within these small groupings makes it almost impossible not to pick out what differentiates their work from the rest. While this is occasionally insightful (for example, the addition of women provided insight into the home-sphere, something all humans engage with but is rarely represented in art except in works by women), in my experience class discussions were geared towards constant remarks on women’s lack of education and resources, something hardly revelatory or productive. 

Moreover, wanting to negate the idea of geniuses and masterpieces while simultaneously incorporating women into the curriculum creates a glaring contradiction. If we separated art from artists’ biographies (biographies which led to the myth of the “genius,” the creator of “masterpieces”), then we would, in theory, view art as entirely independent from the identity of the artist. Yet, isn’t the incorporation of women specifically because of their identity doing exactly the opposite? While the term “masterpieces” appears to be universally frowned upon as a framework for the course, professors are increasingly vexed about whether masterpieces exist in the first place. 

Like most Core classes, professors have their own, often jarringly divergent, approaches to the topic. To Professor Ioannis Mylonopoulos, all art must be understood within its historical confines. “We are not art critics. We are art historians,” he said. This sentiment is echoed by many professors in the department. “The idea that there's a timeless, universal group of objects is not something that many people can buy into anymore. So every canon is going to be historically situated,” Strother remarked. When asked whether art can be studied outside of its temporal context, the answer was a resounding no.

Upon first reception, this idea rattled me. It seems that the rejection of the term “masterpiece” implies a rejection of aesthetic standards altogether. The logic is as follows: masterpieces are works of art that transcend their historical context, but since no art can be studied atemporally, the concept of a masterpiece ceases to exist. Therefore, all art becomes worthy of study as anthropological objects, and critiques of art can no longer be made on aesthetic grounds. Any judgment passed then becomes a mere matter of “taste.” 

Was my entire perspective on art based on a misconception? Are there no standards for art that cut across temporal and geographical boundaries? Must everything be historicised, rationalized, and contextualized into oblivion? These questions swirled within me like a storm. Intuitively, it felt wrong. What else, if not art, is capable of capturing something so essential to the human condition that it is meaningful regardless of the gender, race, nationality, or any other identity category, of the person viewing it? This internal whirlwind was only tempered when Professor Elcott explained to me that, in his opinion, constant historicization was only the “easy answer” to the question of whether art can capture the transcendent aspects of the human experience:

“There are elements of human experience that transcend time and place. There are elements of experience that transcend species. So what humans find beautiful is not consistent across time and space, but it's also not completely circumscribed by time and space. The people considered beautiful within their own culture tend to be considered beautiful by people outside that culture as well. And many of the works considered beautiful within a culture are recognized as beautiful outside that culture. Now, beauty is only one element within aesthetic experience and only one aspiration of art. And not necessarily the most important. But as Kant and many philosophers have recognized, these are not entirely culturally specific. And if you ask me, ‘Can art and artworks transcend its time and place and speak across generations and cultures?’, the answer is yes… I think we deceive ourselves and do ourselves a double disservice by pretending otherwise. I think that we misunderstand the capacities of art and we limit the possibilities of reaching across time and across cultures to make deep, aesthetic, intellectual, and ethical connections.”

So, why has it been so hard to let go of the idea of a masterpiece? 

My entire artistic education—whether it be the visual arts or my own area of study, literature—has been predicated on the belief that certain objects can illuminate something essential about the human condition, that objects that defy the boundaries of historical context and geographical divisions both exist and deserve to be studied. There would be a great irony, as Professor Elcott said to me, in revoking the word “masterpieces” right at the moment when women are deemed capable of achieving all the greatness that the word entails. Despite the countless setbacks women artists have faced, they have still managed to produce great art, because human beings are fiercely, endlessly creative. Even when an entire sect of humanity is constantly repressed in terms of resources and undermined in terms of skill, there are some “masterpieces,” although much fewer, that still have a way of making it to the surface. Perhaps it is this, along with my belief that the “golden nugget” of artistic genius can reside within human beings if we only excavate it out of ourselves, that keeps the allure of the masterpiece pulsing. No matter how romantic, childlike, or fantastical, the dream that a masterpiece could reside within anyone has become far too precious to me to be stamped out.