Art criticism in general was in decline because of the increasing dominance of the market, according to Alloway. The situation with feminist criticism was different, although equally worrying. “Women's Art in the Seventies,” a survey article by Alloway for Art in America in 1976, traced the history of the movement and, while fulsome in his praise of women's art, thought it necessary to “draw attention… to what seem to me to be discrepancies between work and theory.” The problem was feminist criticism. Alloway identified two types of discussion of women's art. One was the “polemical-documentary… which recounts male critics’ failings, women artists’ humiliations and all the misunderstandings at the interface of women's groups and the institutionalized art world. These reports possess the urgency of a good cause and the appeal of gossip.” The other was “revisionist art history,” exemplified by Linda Nochlin's “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” and expanded by the work of Elizabeth C. Baker and Carol Duncan. Thus, “the accusatory and analytical functions of art writing have been separated,” and it is between these two poles that the Feminist Art Journal is “stretched.” Both the poles were legitimate but what they did not address was a critical commentary on contemporary practice. Live issues such as the essentialism of the central void were “signaled, then dropped. This is typical of the way in which the only journal of women's art has failed to develop or discuss ideas germane to its constituency.” Feminist critics failed to fulfill a second role: “One function of art criticism, when it is done by writers who are close to artists, is to bring into public use early formulations of the ideas and words originated by artists about their own work.” Lucy Lippard, for example, had performed this role “admirably” in relation to Minimalism. However, the Feminist Art Journal “has never been sensitive to the special articulateness of innovative artists. As a result, the artists who are its subjects have been made to seem (and perhaps to feel) mute.” Not only was a chance for critical analysis missed, but “the early phase of resentment has continued as an inertial weight against speculation of new ideas.”