1The Women’s Art History Collective (WAHC) was created in 1973 in London to start a reflection about the place and role of women in art, its history and institutions. Faced with the dispossession of women artists’ history and the absence of women artists in traditional art spaces (museums, galleries, art schools), the collective was interested in debunking the role of institutions, as well as individuals, in consolidating gendered hierarchies in art history: they questioned the canon and challenged the masculine construction of the discipline, aiming at creating a real transition in the ways the discipline was conceived and practised. The collective, organised on the loose model of feminist groups of the period, did not have a proper manifesto, or a fixed list of members during its three years of existence: Anthea Callen, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock were core members, and others joined punctually—Denise Cale, Pat Kahn, Tina Keane, Alene Strausberg, Anne de Winter, and Lisa Tickner later in 1974. The collective has been little documented both in France and the UK, few archives and articles mention it, and the former members have not addressed the subject in their various publications. Therefore, to collect information about the collective, some interviews were conducted with Anthea Callen, Griselda Pollock and Lisa Tickner. Resorting to oral testimonies anchors this research in feminist practices and interrogates the notions of memory and history writing.

2The collective organisation of the WAHC is typical of the 1970s, when people organised in small groups both in the academic context with avant-garde intellectual groups such as the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham or the History Group at Oxford University (Dworkin 125), as well as in the feminist sphere with groups of activists and the development of Women’s Centres since the early 1970s. The WAHC belonged both to feminist activism and intellectual practices since it combined feminist actions with a will to renew the discipline of art history. The collective aligned with feminist revendications of artists and scholars such as the American Linda Nochlin, and aimed at an epistemological and political revolution within the field of art history. The WAHC also integrated socialist-Marxist frameworks that helped analyse the context of production of women artists. The collective believed that re-examining history could improve the position of women at the time, and their focus on the past aligns with a broader British feminist interest in historical revisionism that developed in the 1970s (Rowbotham 2018). These feminist outbursts in society and academia aimed at creating a deep epistemological revolution and a paradigm shift in the way (art) history was written.

3At the same period, art history as a traditional masculine and elitist discipline was much questioned by new generations of thinkers, among whom John Berger, leading to the development of a new current: New Art History. However, male scholars seemed to have overlooked the feminist issue, thus leaving female scholars—Griselda Pollock and Lisa Tickner—in charge of that matter. The WAHC therefore defined the feminist branch of the New Art History movement during the late 1970s, and more generally contributed to a renewal of British feminist art history.

4This article is interested in the WAHC’s trajectory as an illustration of the processes through which feminist activism can challenge and reshape the epistemologies and dominant discourses of a discipline—art history. While aiming at a true revolution of the discourses and practices of art history, the WAHC and British feminist art history in general rather managed to create a mere transition in the discipline since these progressist approaches are still compartmentalised and reduced to ‘feminist’ takes rather than epistemological inputs.

A Political Formation Rooted in the Women’s Liberation Movement

Creation of the Collective in a Feminist Context

6The WAHC was created during a feminist meeting organised to support Swedish artist Monica Sjöo, following the ‘scandal’ around her work God Giving Birth (1968) exhibited at the Swiss Library Cottage during the 1973 Women Power exhibition (an evangelist group filed a complaint for ‘blasphemy’ against Sjöo’s painting God Giving Birth). This feminist meeting united women artists who sought freedom in their work, art students, critics and historians interested in feminist practices and theories around the gender division in art and its history. Several future members of the WAHC were present there, among them the art history students Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker along with some artists, Alene Strausberg, Tina Keane and Denise Cale. This meeting revealed the necessity for the collective to (un)formally unite and reflect about the place of and for women in art history,

We formed this group to study the absent history of women’s art, to consider the representation of women by women, particularly through self-portraiture, and to document the discrimination against women. We took this project around to art colleges, and we did a collective performance of all of us researching this material, having meetings to discuss it and then presenting it. It was out of that that the book Old Mistresses eventually percolated, as it were. (Pollock and Candida Smith 72)

7It was therefore in response to the negative reactions to Sjöo’s work, but also in a fertile political and theoretical context leading to the development of new protest movements that the idea arose to form a feminist collective to reflect on the question of female representation in Western art. For Anthea Callen, this moment was chosen symbolically, but the very idea of the collective had coalesced earlier, through a greater awareness of the situations of women in art (Callen). The exhibition of Sjöo’s painting probably worked as a trigger for the WAHC to realise that academic production and feminist activism could go hand in hand. Thus, the creation of the WAHC and the committed work of Monica Sjöo illustrate a major step in the convergence of feminist activism and artistic struggles. Art therefore became a tool for protest and liberation, but also a space for imagining new forms of female identity and power. This moment marked a cultural revolution whose impact continues to be felt in contemporary debates on gender, sexuality and representation.

From the New Left to the Women’s Liberation Movement

8The WAHC’s creation occurred in a politically rich context, that of the rise of student protests in the UK, fuelled by New Left ideas, along with the rise of the second wave of feminism, under the umbrella of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). The student movement developed in the UK in the aftermath of May 1968, and it is the first form of large-scale social revolt conducted by students in British history. New Left activists contributed to the democratic and humanist awakening of many students (Hoefferle 120), thus grounding the movement in socialism and in New Left ideas. Students were interested in broad political questions such as their own rights, peace in Vietnam, but also concrete elements such as the university curricula and the changes in the UK higher education system. The New Left developed a socialist discourse that emerged in the humanities and social sciences in universities and spread among academia. However, while the New Left and student unions supported the fight against colonialism and racism, the issue of feminism was left aside. Indeed, the New Left was not a breeding ground for feminist thoughts; the group was predominantly male, its leading figures remained male, and sexism was present in its organization (Kenny 47). Thus, both the student movement and the New Left failed to accept women into their ranks or to champion their demands and ideas. The question of women’s rights was always put aside, postponed or ignored, toxic and repressive forms of masculinity were also present within these groups thus leading women to leave them and turn to feminist groups. Consequently, although members of the collective—who attended university broadly from the 1960s to the 1970s—were influenced by New Left theories, they never truly fit in these political and intellectual groups (Tickner) and rather turned to the WLM.

9In 1970s UK, feminism was conceived and practised mainly, if not exclusively, through the WLM. In a recent interview conducted with Pollock, she indicated that during the 1970s feminists did not define themselves as such, but rather as ‘members of the Movement’ or ‘libbers’ (Pollock 2024), a view supported by Callen as well (Callen). The WLM became so influential for feminists that, at that time, the vast majority of feminists were WLM activists. In the 1970s, the term feminism was replaced by activism, and the idea of belonging to a movement of activists grew: ‘We didn’t talk about feminism. . . . We talked about being in the Women’s Movement’ (Pollock 2024). Thus, affiliation or membership to the WLM was characteristic of the period and was seen as a political commitment. The women organised in small groups or collectives all around the UK, which acted under the umbrella of the WLM, developing all sorts of concerns and topics of interests. The WAHC was unique in this regard since it was primarily interested in feminine representations in Western art and the importance of symbols and language in art history as vehicles of male domination. The WLM was itself more concerned with concrete and materialist matters such as equal pay, creches, nurseries, battered women (during the first National Conference of the WLM at Ruskin College, four demands were made: equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand and free nurseries). However, the WAHC strongly believed the way Western art treated and represented women influenced women’s conditions at large.

Feminist Reading and Reflection Groups

The Feminist Press: Sharing Feminist Perspectives in Art History Outside the Academia

11The feminist press became a springboard for feminist ideas, and especially that of the WAHC regarding art and its history. In the 1960s press had become easier and less expensive to make thanks to new techniques, thus contributing to the development of the underground press in the UK and to the expansion of teenage, feminist, homosexual and punk countercultures. Following the model of the underground press with fanzines and magazines, feminists produced periodicals of all kinds, ranging from professional magazines such as Spare Rib to more artisanal productions such as Women’s Report, allowing them to share and spread feminist ideas and theories. Members of the WAHC contributed actively to both Women’s Report and Spare Rib from 1972.

12Women’s Report was a bimonthly magazine founded by the Women’s Lobby, that existed from 1972 to 1979 in the UK, to which Pollock contributed from 1972 to 1975. Her reviews dealt with the place of women in the art world (galleries, museums) and promoted the work of feminist artists such as Eva Hesse (1936–1970), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) and Mary Kelly (1941–), who are dear to Pollock and whom she worked on later in her career. Although the articles are not signed, these clues lead us to believe that they were written by Pollock. All these articles and reviews provide a glimpse into the beginnings of Pollock’s theoretical training through topics that remained dear to her throughout her research career: she questioned the idiosyncrasies of female work and their conditions of production, trying to reinsert them into movements or currents of the general history of art, thus showing the relationships and influences with male artists.

13Members of the WAHC also contributed to another feminist magazine, Spare Rib. Founded in 1972 by Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott, it had a very wide circulation and existed for over twenty years (1972–1993). Spare Rib played a crucial role in the feminist movement. It therefore quickly attracted the attention of many feminists. Rozsika Parker discovered the magazine project in a 1972 Guardian article and contacted the women already involved to join them. She appeared in the list of contributors from the third issue of Spare Rib. Parker’s columns and reviews focused almost exclusively on artistic events, thus contributing to the popularisation of access to art and highlighting the contemporary female artists of her time. Other members of the WAHC contributed to Spare Rib through articles or interviews: Lisa Tickner contributed several times to Spare Rib, offering articles on fashion through the ages and the place of women. Artists Tina Keane and Alene Strausberg are mentioned in issue 28 of the magazine in an article on the Women’s Workshop of the Artists’ Union, and Tina Keane is interviewed in issue 65 in the article ‘Shadow women, talking to Tina Keane, Performance Artist’. Feminist magazines appear as a safe space for the WAHC as well as a space where to sharpen their view on art history. A 1973 article written by Pollock in Spare Rib is a perfect example of that. Pollock wrote an article for the twentieth issue of the magazine entitled ‘Underground women: Griselda Pollock unearths painters in the National Gallery basement’ (1973) in which she mentions the existence of the collective, and explains its work and methodology,

I belong to a Women’s Art History Collective which is working on a feminist critique of cultural history. One obvious project is to find out about women artists of the past, and I decided to do some research into Old Mistresses in the National Gallery. With a certain amount of detective work, I discovered seven named women painters. (Pollock 1973, 36)

14This statement is very important for the WAHC since it foreshadows the publication of Old Mistresses some ten years later, thus showing that the very idea of ‘old mistresses’ was already addressed by the collective. Pollock’s article states the ambitions of the collective—which never had a proper written manifesto: excavating women artists of the past and giving them a place in the general art history. Considering the absence or scarcity of books, seminars or archives, the WAHC explored museums and galleries, to discover the actual place of women artists in art, thus turning their intellectual inquiries into actual ones. Pollock explored the National Gallery and discovered that all the paintings by women were in the basement of the museum, even though its director had assured Pollock that two paintings of women had recently been exhibited on the first floor, while also insisting that he never considers the gender of the artists for his scenography choices. She thus writes,

Works by women receive the same treatment that women themselves receive from society at large. Since women are almost universally second-class citizens, their works have second class status and the National Gallery, probably unthinkingly, perpetuates this state of affairs. (Pollock 1973, 37)

15Women’s conditions are often unthought and reproduced without reflecting on the inequalities and discriminations they produce. The collective aimed at repairing that by shedding light on women artists of the past. However, saying that they existed does not necessarily imply saying that they were all exceptional or great artists, as Pollock underlines, thus making an implicit reference to Nochlin’s article ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1972). Pollock writes,

We don’t have to prove that all women artists of the past were great, but we need to know that they were more numerous than we are led to believe if we are to explode the individualistic-genius-will-win-through-myth that abounds today in art history. (Pollock 1973, 37–38)

16She tackles the myth and stereotypes constructed along the centuries around the male artists, that socially and historically exclude women since the paradigm of the artist is first and foremost male, isolated, living and exploring the city, financially independent and without a family to support. All these, therefore, intrinsically exclude women. They also highlight the unconscious reproduction of male domination in art language and symbols. The WAHC demonstrates that the exploration of cultural and artistic institutions as well as the role of individuals seems crucial in the understanding of women’s oppression in the art world and in society at large, proving that masculine standards in art history reinforced the male domination.

Transitions or Revolution in the Discipline?

The Absence of Women Artists in the Institution

17In the early 1970s, British academia was organised in such a way that the absence of women in history, official discourses and in many disciplines appeared as normal, unquestionable and impossible to change. In an interview, Pollock explains that during an MA final test at the prestigious Courtauld Institute, the class was shown artworks and had to associate them with the artist, year and current. Faced with an unknown post-impressionist painting, the entire class could not identify it. Pollock explains that it was a painting by the French artist Suzanne Valadon. She recalls:

We had no possible name to attach to it, because at no point did we search our databases for the name of a woman, and had we searched the database for women artists, there would have been nothing in it. It was actually a piece by Suzanne Valadon. I think that my shock at the profundity of the willed ignorance that was passing for knowledge began to make me think, ‘Maybe there’s a political problem here, and it’s not just in the model of the vote and political equality.’ (Pollock and Smith 71)

18This episode, occurring approximately around the same period during which the WAHC was created, is crucial in the epiphany of the WAHC: women had been willingly ignored from the mainstream narrative of art history and this construction was highly political. To compensate for this absence, Pollock, then a Courtauld Institute student, invited the American Art Historian Linda Nochlin for a conference. The Courtauld’s board accepted her venue, not knowing that she had developed some feminist approaches in her work—they only knew her for her work on Courbet. Nochlin’s conference appeared as a way to counter the invisibilisation of women in art history. According to Pollock, ‘it was the first feminist lecture ever given there, the first time women artists were named and considered seriously’ at the Courtauld (1996, 13). Teachers at the Courtauld were truly horrified by Nochlin’s presentation and almost had Pollock fired from the school (Pollock 2024), thus showing the institutional resistance to a feminist revolution or even transition in art history.

The Birth of New Art History; Towards more Inclusiveness?

19At the same period, the field of art history underwent a revival. Faced with traditional teaching methods, following the epistemological and political consequences of the students’ revolts and the spreading of New Left ideas, as well as avant-garde French theories, many students and young teachers were renewing their approaches to the discipline. They questioned the traditional positivist approach, centred on Western productions and focusing mainly on male artists. The Marxist, socialist and feminist art historian—as he describes himself—John Berger contributed to a revival of the discipline with his 1972 BBC4 show Ways of Seeing which appeared as a revolution in the discipline and on screen since it presented a modern and renewed vision of art history. The use of Marxist methods and analyses allowed Berger to look at the conditions of production of the works and he demonstrated how this could guide the analyses in art history. Berger appears to be an important influence for the WAHC, helping them to create a feminist and Marxist frame in order to reflect on the patriarchal views of art history. In the article ‘What’s Wrong with Images of Women?’ (1977), Pollock acknowledges the influence of Berger on the collective’s theoretical orientations. By analysing images, Berger broke with the British tradition and ushered in a movement of interest in representations, symbols and what they stand for—a method also adopted by the WAHC in their work. In the second episode of the show, Berger insists on the idea that women in pictorial representations are always a ‘sight for men’: along the centuries male artists have always depicted women as passive objects subjected to their own male desires and flaws—and, ironically, at the same time blaming the women in their paintings for that. The introduction of these questions, methods and avant-garde theories were revolutionary, and created a real transition from a traditional vision of art history towards a renewed one, thus leading to the birth of a new movement in British art history: New Art History.

20New Art History emerged in the early 1970s, in a strong socio-political context, in the wake of the events of May 1968, the growing influence of the New Left and critical Marxism, as well as the spreading of the WLM, which explains its political and theoretical anchoring. New Art History was inspired by Marxism, semiotics and the French structuralists. The movement was theoretical but also influenced by political activism (Harris 46). The WAHC developed its theories at the very same period, and was soon integrated in the movement. Later on, Pollock and Tickner played a crucial role in the academic development of the feminist branch of the movement at University of Leeds—where Pollock began to teach in 1977—and at Middlesex Polytechnic, where Tickner began to teach in 1977 (Harris 8).

21The main innovative idea of the current was to reveal the subjectivity of the art historian and therefore their viewpoint. Proponents of New Art History, as well as the WAHC, considered art history to function as a discipline articulating ideas and theories, but also as an institution that brings together museums, galleries, curators, and collectors, all of whom participate in an ideological system. The movement, and the WAHC, were interested in debunking the logics at work under the makings of art history. The WAHC was fully committed to New Art History, adhering to its methods and analyses but adding a feminist perspective that her male colleagues did not initially have. For the collective, the feminist approach was a methodological tool. The art historians of the WAHC have always put the emphasis on women artists and their place in art history, thus anchoring their reflections into a constructionist approach—based on the idea that femininity is socially constructed and not a biological difference (Dumont 2007). The discoveries and investigations carried out by the WAHC proved essential in the development of the feminist branch of New Art History. Inspired by Foucault and his archaeological methodology as developed in Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), the collective questioned hegemonic discourses in art history and explored alternative sources, archives and discourses to create a feminist art history. Women artists were not to be considered as a theme in art history, but rather as a way of seeing and analysing the general art history discourse, because the treatment of women in art history was telling of an ongoing male domination, a subject addressed early on by the collective. However, some of their male colleagues overlooked the subject. Pollock recalls that art historian Fred Orton invited her to give a seminar on Contemporary American Art at the University of Leeds, and while preparing it, she noticed he excluded women artists:

And I [Griselda Pollock] said, ‘you’re not mentioning any women. You can’t do that anymore’. You know, once Linda Nochlin said, ‘why are there no women artists [sic]?’ But there are lots of them, and we’ve had all these beginnings of these exhibitions and these books. You can’t not include them. You can’t continue that exclusion. So, he [Fred Orton] says, ‘Well, I know nothing about them, so you better do it’. So, I had to then work out how to do three lectures on effectively contemporary artists. So, I chose Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler and Eva Hesse. (Pollock 2024)

22This underlines the gender perspective and feminist commitment of Pollock, and that of the WAHC, in opposition to male art historians who did not analyse their masculine perspectives, ultimately leading to the perpetuation of the exclusion and invisibilisation of women artists. By doing so, they also chose to ignore the female reception of art and the impressions women can have when facing artworks. The WAHC was indeed interested in the reception of artworks, especially when it came to the representation of women or the female body. They established a sharp critique of Western art, in coherence with Berger’s theory in Ways of Seeing, that underlines the male predominance and the reproduction of a masculine ideology through symbols and signs enshrining female characters into objects, and not subjects.

British Feminist Art History

23The WAHC contributed to the development of a Feminist art history in the UK. Harris notes: ‘Feminist art history, like social history of art, had its roots in a social and political radicalism that wished to see the world transformed’ (96), thus emphasising the militant and political aspect of this theoretical approach that stems from the adhesion to the WLM. The history of British feminist art in the 1970s is indeed rooted in militant practice: artists and art historians were greatly influenced by feminist theories but also by an actual feminist commitment. Therefore, British feminist art historians, mainly Pollock and Callen, claim to produce analyses that were more political than American ones (Callen). Stemming from this political and social commitment, the WAHC developed a theory resorting to Marxist ideology, in the sense that they considered the material context of production of the artworks and the socio-economic context of the artist to analyse their work. British feminist art history anchored its analysis into material aspects, and considered both the categories of class and gender. They envisioned the latter not only as a distinctive category but as ‘an axis of power’ (Pollock 2024) creating hierarchies within society and gendered roles, thus impacting—most of the time negatively—the work of female artists. By highlighting the social and political structures that constrained the lives of women artists, they both contributed to creating a richer and more complete history of art, which not only includes women but questions the canons and the ways the history of art is written and passed by. They also explained women’s under-representation in anthologies, museums and art history curricula: it was more complicated for female artists to create due to material and family constraints, as opposed to most male artists, and yet they created art. The British feminist approach in art history considers that works and artists must be contextualised in order to better understand and analyse their productions.

24By documenting the lives of female artists and explaining the scarcity or absence of women artists in history and its writing, the WAHC contributed to challenging traditional conceptions of the discipline and aimed at modifying the canon. They were especially interested in the negotiation women artists operated with their contexts of production (social class, family, education and artistic training) to succeed in being artists, whereas American theorists (Nochlin 1972) seemed more fatalistic in considering that women artists were bound to be failed artists barely recognised by posterity because of the patriarchal institutions (Nugent 2023). However, according to the WAHC and as developed later on by Pollock, women cannot belong to traditional or mainstream art history insofar as the canon has been defined by and for men (Pollock 2006). The WAHC tried to challenge these conceptions in the early 1970s, and various members of the collective dedicated their lives to that—through academic productions and teaching for Callen, Pollock and Tickner, through art practices for Cale, Callen, Keane and Strausberg, and through media, press and also academic writing for Parker. However, due to the resistances in the field, they did not achieve a revolution in the conceptions and theoretical framing of the discipline: they only permitted a transition from a traditional positivist view to more inclusive and gender-orientated approaches.

25Another specificity of British feminist art history as developed by the WAHC would be their interest in the analysis of the role of language and symbols. Following Barthes’s work in semiotics, they considered that language and symbols perpetuated male domination, not only in art history’s institutions such as museums, galleries or schools, but in society at large by spreading the idea that certain roles and social positions are gendered and that such a situation is anchored both in social practices and in language. The repetitive use of the term ‘old mistresses’ in various articles and conferences of the WAHC, leading to the major publication in 1981 of Old Mistresses, Women, Art and Ideology as a monument of the collective, challenges the very paradigm that artists are solely men. However, the term faces a social, historical and terminological void, as there is no reference for ‘old mistresses’ whereas there is one for ‘old masters’—the great painters of the past. They also resorted to psychoanalysis to interrogate the relationships between words and what they represent, an approach typically anchored in British practices of feminism in art history. They resorted to semiotics to point out the role of language in the reproduction of inequalities and male domination through the writing of history. Old Mistresses therefore appears as an attempt to correct this injustice and historical approximation: by integrating women into the official narrative of art, the WAHC allowed for a complete comprehension of currents, movements and artistic interactions—which appears as a truly revolutionary practice. The first publication of the book in 1981 came at a crucial moment in the history of feminism, but also in the history of art. This book was intended to be the heir to the feminist questions that arose in the 1970s and marked a turning point in the ‘history of Art History’ by focusing on the exclusion of women. It was also the only true written legacy of the WAHC and it has greatly helped to transform the discipline of art history, not through a radical revolution as they have sought, but rather as a slow acceptance of the gendered approaches in the discipline, ultimately leading to a progressive transition from a traditional masculine model to the development of other perspectives that are more diverse and inclusive such as feminism, queer studies, decolonial approaches and so on.

Conclusion

26The WAHC was instrumental in reshaping the field of art history during the 1970s, contributing to a fundamental rethinking of its methodologies, epistemologies, and historical narratives towards the inclusion of feminist perspectives. However important and challenging their approaches were, they did not culminate in a true revolution of the discipline, but rather into a slow and partial acceptance of new practices and methodologies such as feminism and Marxist approaches as epistemological tools useful to rethink the power relations in Art. Although their interventions were initially situated outside institutional frameworks, their academic legitimacy was consolidated in the late 1970s and 1980s as members entered university positions (Callen, Pollock and Tickner). From within the discipline, they challenged the dominant paradigms of a positivist masculinist and imperialist art history, proposing instead a feminist model that foregrounded the structural exclusions shaping the canon. Influenced by their involvement in the New Left and the WLM, the WAHC developed a politically engaged critique that interrogated the discipline’s supposed objectivity and neutrality. They challenged the structural sexism embedded in traditional art historical discourse, arguing that the discipline was far from neutral or objective. Instead, they demonstrated that it functioned as a mechanism reinforcing gender hierarchies and cultural stereotypes. One of the collective’s most significant interventions was the assertion that art history constituted a discursive formation which systematically excluded and marginalised women. By foregrounding this historical erasure, they advanced the claim that the discipline was not merely neglectful but actively misogynistic in its construction. While drawing on British theorists, American feminist theory and French structuralism, the WAHC developed a distinctive methodological approach that emphasised the role of representation and language in reproducing power relations and the exclusion of women. This approach allowed for a critical re-reading of artistic production and reception questioning the masculine canon. By doing so, the WAHC contributed to creating a unique vision in the discipline, making British feminist art history specifically anchored in a strong political commitment, and aiming at a deep transition in the discipline from a traditional model to a more progressive one integrating women as artists and historians. The collective opened up new methodological pathways in art history—ones attentive to inclusion, feminism and the politics of representation—laying the foundations for subsequent feminist, postcolonial, and queer art historical research.