Whose history 2

We have come to realise that the way we make sense of things - the way we frame and organise and understand knowledge - is fundamentally dependant on who we are.  If I am a black man living in Australia I will see the world in a very different way to a white woman living in Finland. If I am a gay woman living in Riyadh, I will see things differently to a straight man in San Francisco. 

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There is no innocent eye.

We bring the whole of our being to the world - our ethnicity, our nationality, our education and so on -  and see it through that lens. Those diverse perspectives include the way we construct art history. So one might speak of a number of different art histories, each characterised by a particular viewpoint. For example:

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Black Art History - which looks at art in relation to various Black Movements, including those of emancipation and civil rights. Black art historians will give prominence to artists who might have been excluded by white-dominant perspectives. They will also redefine what constitutes 'art', to embrace cultural works which have special significance for black people and people of colour.

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Feminist Art History - which seeks to redress the exclusion of women artists and women's perspectives in the interpretation of art. In 1971 Linda Nochlin published her essay "Why have there been no great women artists?", which ironically pointed out that of course there always had been great women artists - they had simply been ignored by dominant art histories. Feminist art history also 're-reads' accepted understandings of paintings and sculptures, especially in terms of how the either suppress or idealise women. Furthermore, there are a number of artists who have produced work which sets out specifically to challenge patriarchy:

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As well as what we might call identity perspectives, there are also ideological or theoretical perspectives that produce their own art histories. For example

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Marxist Art History - not a history of, say, Soviet Union or Cuban art. Instead, Marxist art historians consider art in terms of commodification and the class struggle. Here, the circumstances of production and consumption of art will be important, as will the status conveyed by the possession of art.