Any student of art history quickly realizes that every author has a bias and a spin they want to put on things. This can range from benign to fairly insidious. The author who merely wants to draw a bit more attention to a forgotten artist is one thing, but there are writers who filter the history of art through feminist, racial, sexual, revisionist lenses.
Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't focus on female artists or those of other races, but we shouldn't embrace a re-written, politically correct time line. The reason there are so many white males in our western art chronology is because that's who was mainly making art and having an impact on the wider art world. It's pretty likely that there were a lot more women creating art than are in the textbooks...but they didn't have the influence of their male contemporaries until recently in history.
It bothers me that some try to minimize certain artists' accomplishments and influence simply because they were white and male.We should rightly embrace new discoveries and artists that were forgotten but have recently been re-discovered. But we shouldn't discard those who really did have an impact simply because their race and gender isn't popular today. Re-writing art history in the name of tolerance and diversity is robbing students of a true understanding of what actually happened.
Another modern day trend is making too big a deal about an artist's sexuality in relation to their work. Yes, there were and are homosexual artists. But some writers can make sexuality the overarching focus of their study of a particular artist, even if that didn't affect the work in a major way. Authors interpret every single detail through a sexual lens, even when the artist themselves have said differently what their intentions were. Georgia O'Keefe is one such artist whose work has been over-sexualized by later critics. When they've been recorded, reading an artist's own words about the intentions for their work is very important.
Don't simply take someone's word for it merely because they've managed to get a book published containing their opinions.
