Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The Aesthetics of Power: Essays in Critical Art History gathers together the key articles and essays by Carol Duncan, one of the pioneers of a new social-political approach to art history and criticism, and one of the strongest feminist voices to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s. These essays, many of which have become classics, explore a wide variety of subjects: images of mothers, fathers, and children in eighteenth-century art and culture; the image of the female nude in the context of the modern museum; and the role of modern art criticism in today's art market. Other essays examine the contexts in which art is seen, taught, and made. Whatever here theme, Duncan treats art as a working part of a larger social reality and a pathway to understanding its deepest tensions, fears, and desires. A final section of this book is devoted to the life and collected critical writings of Cheryl Bernstein, a fictitious writer created by Duncan as parody, but who was taken as a real, and eventually influential, critic." -- Provided by publisher

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