In this major 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?

Preface PART I Firing the canon 1 About canons and culture wars 2 Differencing: feminism's encounter with the canon PART II Reading against the grain: reading for ... 3 The ambivalence of the maternal body: re/drawing Van Gogh 4 Fathers of modern art: mothers of invention: cocking a leg at Toulouse-Lautrec PART III Heroines: setting women in the canon 5 The female hero and the making of a feminist canon: Artemisia 6 Feminist mythologies and missing mothers: Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, Artemisia Gentileschi and Cleopatra 7 Revenge: Lubaina Himid and the making of new narratives for new histories PART IV Who is the other? 8 Some letters on feminism, politics and modern art: when Edgar Degas shared a space with Mary Cassatt at the Suffrage Benefit Exhibition, New York 1915 9 A tale of three women: seeing in the dark, seeing double, at least, with Manet