ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU
American
Abigail Solomon-Godeau joined the premier ranks of
American art historians of photography almost
before the ink dried on her PhD from the Graduate
Center, City University of New York. WritingCalo-
typomania: The Gourmet Guide to Nineteenth-Century
Photography propelled Solomon-Godeau’s critical
analysis of how museums and collectors were exert-
ing undue influence on the shape of the history of
photography for years to come. In a concluding
passage, she writes of the ill effects she envisioned
this promulgating of a biased reading of the photo-
graphic works would have on future generations:
The historians who promulgate a univocal art history of
photography unfortunately function as hatcheries of the
next generation of photography historians. In their evi-
dent belief that artists exist in the world just as chickens
do (one has only to identify, to recognize, to name it),
they are creating an entirely specious construction,
innocent of its own premises.
(Solomon-Godeau, Abigail, ‘‘Calotypomania: The
Gourmet Guide to Nineteenth-Century Photogra-
phy,’’Afterimage, Summer 1983, 27)Solomon-Godeau sought to correct historians of
photography from venturing further in a direction
she felt was detrimental to the field of study. Solo-
mon-Godeau’s early writing, such as ‘‘Calotypo-
mania,’’ on museums and the formation of a
canon of the history of photography, exposes the
many ways in which art objects are historically,
stylistically, and formally chosen, periodized, pre-
sented, marketed, and consumed, all in order to
conform to a given set of desires.
Solomon-Godeau’s later writing moved from a
focus on the nineteenth century and the origins of
photography into more theoretical analysis of sub-
jects ranging from the role of the male and female
nude in sixteenth-century France, the lesbian subject
and construction of gender as displayed in art, and
the deconstruction of the myth of the ‘‘savage’’ artist
and the primitive as essential to pure artistic expres-
sion. Her text,Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representa-
tion, which grew out of an earlier published essay of
the same title, disrupted the flow of consensual
thought concerning eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen-
tury French painting by focusing on the feminization
of the male image during this period. This text,
which Solomon-Godeau co-wrote with Linda
Nochlin, the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of
Modern Art at New York University’s Institute of
Fine Arts, caused some uproar from other well-
known and well-respected art historians.
Satish Padiyar, who reviewedMale Troublein an
article title ‘‘Crisis? What Crisis?’’ in the June 1998
issue ofArt History, found fault with Solomon-
Godeau for suppressing any discussion of the exis-
tence of eighteenth-century French feminism, the
evidence of women as spectators and patrons, and
the influence these factors may have had on French
neoclassical painting. He argues thatMale Trouble
is a revisionist view of history that wrongly seeks to
uncover a violently negated female self within the
masculine depiction on the painted neoclassical
canvas. Padiyar counters Solomon-Godeau’s thesis
by arguing that both men and women of the eight-
eenth century were complicit in the rise of the
commodification of the neoclassical ephebe in
French painting.
Solomon-Godeau went on to collaborate with
NochlinonthebookRealism and Tradition in Art
and late, in December of 2000, with the publication
in the magazineArt in Americaof their collaborative
piece, ‘‘Sins of the Fathers,’’ which sought to expose
the persistent misogyny of European art. Later,
Solomon-Godeau authored ‘‘Realism Revisited’’ in
Self and History: A Tribute to Linda Nochlin,which
argues that the political optimism inherent to
Nochlin’s early and seminal feminist tracts is mired
in the milieu of the early 1970s.
‘‘Sins of the Fathers’’ praises the exhibition orga-
nized by Regis Michel, chief curator of the
Louvre’s graphics department, which explored
how violence and sexuality are inscribed in the
most exalted works of Western art in the Louvre’s
collection. Solomon-Godeau, whose approach has
frequently been criticized for dwelling too much on
issues of sexual difference and constructions or
inversions of female identity, received validation
of her efforts in that Michel was one of the few
male scholars to make contributions to the field ofSOLOMON-GODEAU, ABIGAIL