Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art

This just in: Manet, Renoir and Picasso were more than just misogynistic monsters. Though these canonical artists may have sometimes depicted women as passive vessels of sexuality, it's a terrible simplification to see their paintings only as further evidence of patriarchy. Or so argues art historian Harrison in this carefully substantiated but dull work of criticism, which will surprise only the most dogmatic of feminist art critics. Lest he step on even those few toes, however, Harrison immediately assures readers that he does not intend to depart in any essential way from the accepted model of Western art history as a chronicle of female oppression. At times, Harrison takes such pains to avoid offense that he can state his main points only in prose so delicately circuitous as to be almost impenetrable: ""In art as in literature it does often turn out that the painting or the text has got there before us, and that the unreflective attitude we may think we have exposed in it was always a part of the content that it had taken into itself and reflected back in critical form ..."" It's a tactic unlikely to persuade those who don't agree with him, and unlikely to interest those who do.