Women and Art: Contested Territory [Anglais] [Relié]

This is a curiously interesting hybrid with two running commentaries per page. The central space is reserved for a somewhat traditional art historical text on women artists and images of women in art by British art critic/art historian Lucie-Smith. The rest is filled with the writings of one of the most opinionated and surely the most famous U.S.-based feminist artist, Chicago, creator of The Dinner Party. The collaboration is certainly eye-catching, but, despite 200 beautiful color plates, this is no coffee-table decoration. It seems compiled to capture the attention of any browsing reader of college age and above. Many of the ten chapters might startle the average readerAthey're explicit about gender issues, bodily functions, and other oddities that are now a part of contemporary art. For serious academic libraries with feminist and graduate collections.AMary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A thematic overview of women's art that lumps disparate work together in gross categories based on archetype, stereotype, theme, and body part. Although artist Chicago and art historian Lucie-Smith sought to create a book that would delineate the contested terrain between women and art, their collaborative effort only blurs it with clich and generalization. From the opening chapter, which begins with the assertion that goddess imagery has ``seized the imagination of many women and been a continuing source of energy within feminism,'' they celebrate overlooked art based on its suitability to their ideological construct: that male artists, critics, and curators have overlooked and suppressed womens work, which deserves to be seen and addressed. True, but no sustainable argument can emerge from such an a critical approach; all that remains is for the authors to provide a series of examples, which they do. Those examples break down into an unfortunate series of stock types, from the aforementioned goddesses to warrior women, madonnas, whores, martyrs, mothers, and daughters. And everywherestrategically placed throughout the textare images of Chicago's own work. Could she merely be seeking to recontextualize herself in the feminist canon (that of Frieda Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, even Mary Cassatt)? In light of the tremendous scholarship and theoretical insight that have been brought to bear on womens art over the past ten yearsand the riveting arguments about identity politics that have followedthe authors lack of critical sophistication is painful to behold. Even worse, many of the contemporary works pictured are shockingly banalchosen more for their subject matter than their visual, intellectual, or conceptual resonance. Chicago, apparently, is still very much in the grip of essential feminism, and her book suffers for it. As a critical text, Women and Art falls victim to old-style celebratory feminism, lauding without judgment or incisive, original thought. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The works presented--from the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf to Michelangelo's Piet, to paintings by such artists as Picasso and lisabeth Vige-Lebrun, to Hannah Wilke's searing self-portraits of her cancer-ridden body, to photographic records of visceral performance pieces by Carolee Schneeman--are, by turn, beautiful, subtle, explicit, confrontational, and sometimes shocking.These images provoke a wide-ranging, spirited dialogue between the authors as they discuss the various ways women have been portrayed-as goddess, mother, victim, martyr, whore, seductress, and more-resulting in a book full of startling visual illumination that combines a vivid discourse on the female image with a triumphant celebration of the feminine. 200 color illustrations.

Examining the role of women of art, the authors ask difficult questions about male domination and female exclusion in the arts, using the images of female and male painters, artists, and photographers to make her point.