Women and Art - contested territory

[Clive Green]

Just re-reading this book so I thought, in honour of international women's day, that I would share some thoughts by way of a quick review.

Women and Art - contested territory
Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith
1999
Weidenfield & Nicolson
London

A large format book with numerous colour illustrations. Typefont is easy to read, reproductions clear and the writing accessible. Lucie-Smith has written most of the essays with sidebars by Chicago that reference experiences (as a woman artist) and influences.

Some may find the premise of the work challenging - that most of the depiction of women and their lives in art is not actually reflective of women's concerns and experience. Although a case is made for the superior sensitivity of women with a feminist perspective as artists of women the authors are by no means dismissive of works by men - Millet, Degas and Rembrandt for example - that depict women realistically in daily activities.

The book includes introductions from both authors and is organised into bite sized chapters/essays that make for easy reading and contemplation.

[Clive Green]

An apposite quote,

'While working on the Birth Project, one question I was continually asked was how I, as a childless woman, could authentically represent the subject of birth. I always wondered if anyone had ever asked Michelangelo if he felt qualified to render the Pieta, given that he had never experienced the death - or the birth for that matter - of a child. But then, perhaps this experiential lack helps to explain how he could have imagined for one moment that birth takes place by a male God reaching out his finger and creating a full-grown man'