Griselda Pollock

Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock^[1] (born 11 March 1949)^[2] is an art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in visual arts and visual culture. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influential scholar of modern art, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory, feminist art history, and gender studies.^[3] She is renowned for her innovative feminist approaches to art history which aim to deconstruct the lack of appreciation and importance of women in art as other than objects for the male gaze.^[4]

Pollock conducts various studies that offer concrete historical analyses regarding the dynamics of the social structures that cause the sexual political environment within art history. Through her contributions to feminism, Pollock has written various texts exclusively focused on women in order to intentionally drift away from traditional art history that concentrated primarily on the work of male artists. Pollock's initiative enabled appreciation for female artists such as Mary Cassatt, Eva Hesse, and Charlotte Salomon.^[4] Her theoretical and methodological innovations, including her book Vision and Difference 1988, are still influential, and many of her remarks apply to contemporary concerns such as the political subtexts for women portrayed in advertising.^[3][4]

Pollock was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa to Alan Winton Seton Pollock and Kathleen Alexandra (née Sinclair),^[1][4] Griselda Pollock grew up in both French and English Canada. Moving to Britain during her teens, Pollock studied Modern History at Oxford (1967–1970) and History of European Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art (1970–72). She received her doctorate in 1980 for a study of Vincent van Gogh and Dutch Art: A reading of his notions of the modern. After teaching at Reading and Manchester universities, Pollock joined the University of Leeds in 1977 as lecturer in History of Art and Film and was appointed to a Personal Chair in Social and Critical Histories of Art in 1990. In 2001, she became Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds, where she is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art.^[5]

Pollock was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Courtauld Institute in 2019, together with Daniella Luxembourg,^[6] and delivered the graduation speech.^[7] The Estonian Academy of Art also awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in 2019 and gave a keynote lecture: "Why do we still love Vincent?"^[8][9][10] On March 5, 2020, Pollock was named as the 2020 Holberg Prize Laureate "for her groundbreaking contributions to feminist art history and cultural studies."^[11] Pollock was nominated to feature on a public artwork in Leeds, alongside 382 women from the city; Ribbons was unveiled in October 2024.^[12]

Pollock's interest and involvement in the women's movement motivated her to create change in the world of art history and its perception of women. This change was attempted by many researchers before her was only possible due to her innovative approaches observed in her book Vision and Difference, 1988. In this book, she identifies the world's political system to be the main issue with women's depiction. She does this by explaining the relationship between systems of representation and ideology which, in turn, divulge the visual language used by political advertising to depict women in society. The knowledge of these strategies of representation brought the possibility for feminist activists to implement the change necessary to the construction of women in art and as seen today, in society in general.^[4]

Her work challenges mainstream models of art and art history that have previously excluded the role of women in art. She examines the interaction of the social categories of gender, class, and race, crucially researching the relationship between these categories, psychoanalysis, and art, drawing on the work of such French cultural theorists as Michel Foucault. Her theorization of subjectivity takes both psychoanalysis and Foucault's ideas about social control into account.^[13]

A range of concepts developed by Pollock which serve to theorize and practice critical feminist interventions in art's histories are: old mistresses, vision and difference, avant-garde gambits, generations and geographies, differencing the canon and most recently, the virtual feminist museum.

Pollock is the founding director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History at the University of Leeds. Initiated with a grant from the then AHRB in 2001, CentreCATH is a transdisciplinary project connecting fine art, histories of art and cultural studies across the shared engagements with class, gender, sexuality, post-colonial critique, and queer theory. In 2007, with Max Silverman, Pollock initiated the research project "Concentrationary Memories: The Politics of Representation", which explores the concept of an anxious and vigilant form of cultural memory analyzing the devastating effects of the totalitarian assault on the human condition and alert to the persistent not only of this perpetual threat but is invasion of popular culture. The project explored the forms of aesthetic resistance to totalitarian terror. Four edited collections have been produced: Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in Night and Fog by Alain Resnais (London and New York: Berghan 2011), which won the 2011 Fraszna-Krausz Prize for Best Book on the Moving Image; Concentrationary Memory: Totalitarian Terror and Cultural Resistance (London: I B Tauris, 2013), Concentrationary Imaginaries: Tracing Totalitarian Violence in Popular Culture (London: I B Tauris, 2015) and Concentrationary Art: Jean Cayrol, the Lazarean and the Everyday in Post-war Film, Literature, Music and the Visual Arts (Berghahn, 2019).^[14]

• Personal page at the University of Leeds Website
• Interview in Documenta Magazine
• On Psychoanalysis and the Image Archived 27 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine
• Griselda Pollock discusses the life and work of artist Charlotte Salomon Griselda Pollock on Charlotte Salomon
• UCL History of Art: Griselda Pollock – Making Feminist Memories – Part 2 Griselda Pollock on Helen Rosenau at UCL
• UCL History of Art: Griselda Pollock – Making Feminist Memories – Part 1
• Marilyn Monroe | La donna oltre il mito – Griselda Pollock Griselda Pollock on Marilyn Monroe Exhibition in Turin
• Son[i]a #254. Griselda Pollock | Radio Web MACBA | RWM Podcasts Conversation with Griselda Pollock about her involvement in the Women's Movement in England in the seventies, and about the points of convergence between feminism and art history.
• Bow Down: Women in Art Down: Women in Art (Frieze) Podcast on Vera Frenkel
• The Great Women Artists: Griselda Pollock on Alina Szapocznikow on Apple Podcasts Griselda Pollock talking to Katy Hessel on Alina Szapocznikow