Are There Still No Great Women Artists? A Feminist Response to Desmond Manderson’s Dance Macabre

Abstract

A feminist critique of law and art as practices and as sites of knowledge, highlights a shared his-torical commonality- the exclusion of women. This paper explores the extent to which women’s artworks are engaged with in Desmond Manderson’s Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts. It is noted that within the book, women artists and their artworks are not central, but instead are peripheral to the case studies, all of which are artworks created by men. As such, this contribution begins by contextualising the question, ‘Are there still no great women artists?’ Following this, the paper then explores the temporality of this question regarding Danse Macabre and uses this as a way in which to reflect on the exclusion of women from artistic and legal spheres. Finally, the position of women in Manderson’s work is explored. The paper concludes that Danse Macabre is an important contribution to many fields, and, in the future, could be revisited and reimagined through women’s artwork.