Women artists

In 1971 the American art historian Linda Nochlin published the essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ She answered the question not with individual talent but with institutional obstacles: women were long barred from studying the nude model, which kept them out of history painting, then the highest-ranking genre in the academies. What held women back, she argued, was above all the lack of political, social and financial support, not a lack of ability. The essay is regarded as foundational to feminist art history, and it prompted a new focus on women artists, their work and their experiences. In Taiwan, Chen Chin was the first woman to go to Japan to study painting. In 1927 three of her works were selected for the Eastern-style painting section of the first Taiten, and in 1932 she and Liao Chi-chun became the exhibition’s first Taiwanese jurors; born into a gentry family, she came to be called the leading ‘guixiu’ (gentlewoman) painter. The National Museum of History’s exhibition Becoming Visible: Women Artists in the NMH Collection brings together ink painting, calligraphy and Western-style painting by 60 women artists, and tells the development of women’s art in twentieth-century Taiwan as a passage from being ‘the object looked at’ to being ‘the subject who speaks’.

Read the date and the artist’s biography on the label, and think about where she could study and exhibit at that time.

• Taiten 臺展→Chen Chin was selected for the first Taiten, which has its own card.