“Why have there been no great women artists?” is the question Nochlin’s attempts to answer in her argument, Nochlin offers several different approaches to answering the question: women have created great art but it has gone unrecognized, women do not have the intellectual art genius to create great art, intellectual art genius is nit innate to men but women have not been in the right circumstances to obtain intellectual art genius. I am not an expert on art and even after reading this article I am still not sure why there have not been any female equivalents to the likes Picasso and Matisse as Nochlin argues.

I do not want to accept simply that there really has never been a great female artist. However, I have never known of a female artist to be held in the same esteem as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso, or Matisse. Is the intellectual genius to create great art really only exclusive to men? I am not sure, but my pride certainly will not let me buy into that argument. Are women less great because the assumption is women have never created great art? Or is it more reasonable to say just because women and men may not be great in all things, the ability to not be great in one field does not negate their greatness. For example, as mentioned in the article the art of ballet it is commonly believed women are greatest at ballet dancing, but still even in this field some men have been declared great ballet dancer. But no woman ever had been titled a great women artist is the basis of Nochlin’s argument. .

I agree with Nochlin’s concluding argument that intellectual genius is not innate, and perhaps she is right when she argues women have simply not had the right circumstances to obtain the intellectual genius to create great art. However, even as I wrote that sentence my pride in my womanhood nudged and pulled at me once again and I am still not able to even really accept Nochlin’s final conclusion. This article leaves me unsettled, dissatisfied and perplexed.