The Other Side

The first major work of art history to focus on women artists and their engagement with the spirit world, by the author of The Mirror and the Palette.

It's not so long ago that a woman's expressed interest in other realms would have ruined her reputation, or even killed her. And yet spiritualism, in various incarnations, has influenced numerous men without repercussion. The fact that so many radical female artists also drank deeply from the same spiritual well has been sorely neglected for too long.

In The Other Side, we explore the lives and work of a group of extraordinary women. While the individual work of these artists is unique, these women loosely shared the same goal: to communicate with, and learn from, other dimensions.

Weaving in and out of these myriad lives while sharing her own memories of otherworldly experiences, Jennifer Higgie discusses the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. A radical reappraisal of a marginalized group of artists, The Other Side is an intoxicating blend of memoir, biography, and art history.