The Study Of Linda Nochlin’s New Art History View

The domestic research on Linda Nochlin is basically based on her feminist art history view,ignoring her books and articles in the 1980s and 1990s,which leads to the lack of an overall view of her art history theories.This paper attempts to place Linda Nochlin in the context of new art history and starting from the perspective of visual politics,centers on the principle of image interpretation and the production of meaning,presenting her new art history view in a comprehensive and three-dimensional manner.This paper is divided into four parts:Nochlin’s critical inheritance of traditional art history view,critical iconology,feminist art history view and the view of social history of art.Based on traditional art history view,Nochlin combines formal criticism with specific social situation to revitalize art history writing;she points out the shortcomings of iconology,especially the lack of reflection and criticism,and develops critical iconology on the basis of it,aiming at explaining the internal logical relationship between image and power,and revealing the ideology implied in images.The general idea of Nochlin’s critical iconology is as follow:First,expound and question the artistic conventions of gender,class,race,etc.;second,analyze how traditional visual representation strategies are set up and reveal the hidden intention behind them;third,provide a thinking and critical perspective through brand-new or diversified visual representation.From the perspective of feminist art history,Nochlin focuses on female situation in the education and professional system of artists,sponsorship system of art production,visual representation of art consumption and the discourse of art criticism,in order to expose power relations and ideology in traditional art history view and construct the basic framework of feminist art history.From the perspective of social history of art,Nochlin starts from the artist in the specific historical and social situation,focusing on the dynamic relationship between the artist and the ideology and how the relationship is expressed in images.She opposes the direct connection between artist’s artistic creation and his political belief,establishes a mediation system for artist’s political ideas and visual expression instead,and revives the creative process based on substantial and authentic historical facts.Nochlin fully considers the specific and complex historical and social conditions behind the artist’s creation and image interpretation,and explores the uniqueness and differences at specific historical moments,instead of treating history as a continuous macro narrative or a single interpretation.This is exactly the new historical consciousness displayed by the new art history.