Brushed Aside
The Untold Story of Women in Art
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- $44.99
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- $44.99
Publisher Description
Discover anew the herstory of art that Publishers Weekly calls "illuminating" and Foreword Reviews calls "spirited" for an enlightening art history read.
How many female artists can you name? Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marina Abramovic? How about female artists who lived prior to the Modern era? Maybe Artemisia Gentileschi and then… even a regular museum-goer might run out of steam. What about female curators, critics, patrons, collectors, muses, models and art influencers?
This book provides a 360 degree look at the role, influence, and empowerment of women through art—including women artists, but going beyond those who have taken up a brush or a chisel. In 1971, Linda Nochlin published a famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” This book responds to it by showing that not only have there been scores of great women artists throughout history, but that great women have shaped the story of art. The result is a book that sheds light on the art world in a very new way, finally celebrating the great women artists and influencers who deserve to be much better known. The entire history of art can be told as a herstory of art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this breezy and illuminating survey, art historian Charney (The Devil in the Gallery) spotlights female artists, patrons, curators, influencers, critics, scholars, models, and muses who shaped the art world. He notes that women are thought to have created 75% of cave handprints, making them some of "the very oldest painters in history," while Catharina van Hemessen (1528–1565) was the first person to paint a self-portrait of an artist at work. Louise Jopling (1843–1933), the first woman admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists, was "as important a political figure as she was a painter" and campaigned for women's right to vote; sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962) established in 1932 New York City the first art studio helmed by a "prominent artist" that enrolled Black students. Meanwhile, untrained artist and mother-of-five Janet Sobel (1893–1968) pioneered drip painting—preceding Jackson Pollock's use of the method—though she was often overlooked by art critics who derisively cast her as a "Brooklyn housewife." While some entries are rather cursory (art collector Peggy Guggenheim, for instance, occupies only one page), those seeking an accessible introduction to women's art history will be pleased by Charney's lucid prose and faithful renderings of these often-overlooked figures both as artists and as unique, distinctive personalities. It's worth checking out.
