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Women Artists: 1550-1950
European and American artists active from 1550 to 1950.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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April 22, 2024
I found the Goodreads description of this book lacking so I figured I would also add some context in my review:
Woman Artists: 1550-1950 not only refers to this particular book, but also to the first international exhibition of works by (mostly American and European) women artists of the same name curated by the book's authors, professors Ann Sutherland Harris (1937-present) and Linda Nochlin (1931-2017). In fact, this book was a catalogue ("204 plates---32 of them in full color---illustrating the work of 84 artists") of such event. It begins with a 56-pages-long introduction into women's roles in arts from medieval embroidery and illustration to twentieth century Surrealism and ends with biographies of 84 artists with color plates in-between the two parts.
Since I am not an expert in arts or history (let alone women arts or women history), I could not say more about the introduction than that it was adequate. As for the biographies, this book unfortunately suffers from its exhibition catalogue nature: each artist biography was meant to be a complementary plaque containing information and context as you admired the real painting. So at least for me, reading through all biographies was impossibly dry (black and white pictures of artwork do not help)---make no mistakes, each story is fascinating, this is not a 'rigorous' written biography so the language really absorb you into the artist's life. What I did instead was open a random page and read the random artist's life story I landed on. This method worked well enough that I gave this book 4 stars, both for its content and its history (admittedly, I did get this book from my local used bookstore for 3 CAD so take from that what you will).
Edited 22/04/2024: I originally wrote this review late into the night so I wrote 'bibliography' instead of 'biography' for whatever reason.
Woman Artists: 1550-1950 not only refers to this particular book, but also to the first international exhibition of works by (mostly American and European) women artists of the same name curated by the book's authors, professors Ann Sutherland Harris (1937-present) and Linda Nochlin (1931-2017). In fact, this book was a catalogue ("204 plates---32 of them in full color---illustrating the work of 84 artists") of such event. It begins with a 56-pages-long introduction into women's roles in arts from medieval embroidery and illustration to twentieth century Surrealism and ends with biographies of 84 artists with color plates in-between the two parts.
Since I am not an expert in arts or history (let alone women arts or women history), I could not say more about the introduction than that it was adequate. As for the biographies, this book unfortunately suffers from its exhibition catalogue nature: each artist biography was meant to be a complementary plaque containing information and context as you admired the real painting. So at least for me, reading through all biographies was impossibly dry (black and white pictures of artwork do not help)---make no mistakes, each story is fascinating, this is not a 'rigorous' written biography so the language really absorb you into the artist's life. What I did instead was open a random page and read the random artist's life story I landed on. This method worked well enough that I gave this book 4 stars, both for its content and its history (admittedly, I did get this book from my local used bookstore for 3 CAD so take from that what you will).
Edited 22/04/2024: I originally wrote this review late into the night so I wrote 'bibliography' instead of 'biography' for whatever reason.
Displaying 1 of 1 review