In this major new book, renowned art historian Griselda Pollock makes a compelling intervention into a debate at the very centre of feminist art history: should the traditional canon of the Old Masters be rejected, replaced or reformed? What difference can a feminist approach to art history make? Differencing the Canon moves between feminist re-readings of modern masters - Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet - and the canonical artists of feminist art history Artemisia Gentileschi and Mary Cassatt. Pollock asks both how women read and what might be different about art made by a woman. Pollock unpacks the representation of culturally resonant female figures in a range of texts, from Manets depiction of the model Jeanne Duval in his painting Olympia, to Charlotte Brontes Lucy Snowe, artists representations of Cleopatra and Angela Carters Black Venus . She argues that it is not enough simply to read as a woman; we must also acknowledge the differences between women shaped by racist and colonial hierarchies.
