Anthologies of feminist art list by n.paradoxa : international feminist art journal

Review reproduced from Volume 27, n.paradoxa, Jan 2011. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Bojana Pejic, Erste Foundation, MUMOK, Vienna (eds)

Gender Check Reader: Art and Theory in Eastern Europe Koln: Walter Konig, 2010 ISBN: 978-3-86560-883-3 ISBN:978-3-902490-71-1

The Gender Check exhibition (2009-2010) was the result of Erste's substantial research project across the countries of (former) Eastern/Central Europe. This reader of previously published materials is an additional and highly valuable accompaniment to the large-scale telephone directory of the exhibition catalogue which commissioned new essays (See also n.paradoxa vol. 25 p.90-93). While the focus of the reader is an examination of gender theory in Eastern Europe and looks at both masculinity and feminity, feminist art produced by women artists is well-represented. Six essays first published in n.paradoxa have been included.

Review reproduced from Volume 24, n.paradoxa, July 2009. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Rudolfine Lackner (ed) Names are Shaping up nicely! Gendered nomenclature: in Art, Language and Philosophy Vienna: Vereinigung bildender Kunstlerinnen Osterreichs, 2008 ISBN: 978-3-200-01425-1

What is in a name for an artist? How do the names for objects, facts and people identify how we construct the reality of the world around us? How do women artists deal with changes to their name on marriage, after divorce or to create their professional identity, using pseudonyms? Is feminism a name for a movement, an all-encompassing ideology, the name given to an attitude or a means to signal political change? These are some of the intriguing questions tackled by the discussions in this publication which arose from several panel discussions organised by VBKO on art, cyberfeminism and the question of naming: interestingly, strongly influenced by Wittgenstein (e.g. Anna Aloisia Moser's essay). Contributors include academics, artists and writers from Austria, Mexico, Germany and Serbia, Netherlands and USA.

Review reproduced from Volume 22, n.paradoxa, July 2008. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Beatrice Josse and Helene Guenin (eds.)

2 or 3 Things I don't Know about Her: Towards a Post(?)-Feminist Manifesto

Text in English and French Exhibition catalogue

France: Metz, Frac Lorraine ISBN: 978-2-9112-711-44

This exhibition catalogue (from a show of women artists including Natalie LL, Esther Ferrer and Katarzyna Kozyra) contains nineteen short statements from artists, curators, writers, philosophers, social theorists and art historians from Europe examining the state of feminism. These statements are what makes this catalogue so interesting. While there is no consensus offered by both male and female contributors about whether we are in a post-feminist situation, most affirm the necessity of a feminist discourse and practice. In doing so, the essays touch on many issues, globalisation (Juan Vicente Allaga, Ursula Biemann), transgender politics (Stephanie Nicot, Marie-Helene Bourcier), the limits of feminist art histories (Aneta Szylak, Elisabeth Lebovici), definitions of artist and feminist subject(s) (Tania Mouraud, K. Kozyra) - as well as having some light and slightly whimsical touches for example, the curator, Beatrice Josse's glossary of key terms.

Review reproduced from Volume 27, n.paradoxa, Jan 2011. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Karen Frostig and Kathy A. Halamka (eds.) Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007 ISBN: 9781847183767

Although published several years ago, this anthology of American authors deserves some attention. Divided into four sections on Leadership, Criticism, Collaboration and The Work, its 32 essays cover a broad spectrum of debates across second-wave and third-wave US art world politics. Many of the contributions in the anthology arose from the 2006 Women's Caucus for Art conference in Boston, called Digging Deeper to Build New Paradigms. Patricia Hills and Eleanor Dickinson reflect on the history of WCA and throughout there is much discussion of the inclusions/ exclusions within different generations; different groups within the feminist movement and different attempts to act in an activist inclusive and open manner, while establishing new collaborations or opportunities for different groups of women. Personal stories are a strong part of the contributions as the writers speak largely from their own experience, about their own work and often as representatives of particular groups or institutions. Some of the contributions are very short, some quite anecdotal. As Jennifer Colby remarks 'the true test of good scholarship is whether it informs praxis'. (p.298)

Review reproduced from Volume 20, n.paradoxa, July 2007. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Sarah Nuttal (ed) Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics

Durham, North Carolina & London: Duke University Press, 2006 ISBN: 0-8223-3918-8

This book is one of the projects on definitions of beauty supported by the Prince Claus Foundation which draws the perspectives of writers, critics and artists, largely from Africa, on the question of African and Diasporan aesthetics. While there are many interesting arguments about beauty (in public art, posters, literature, sculpture and children's projects and cooking) and many women writers, cultural theorists and art historians within the book, women's cultural production as artists, literary figures, the makers of music and dance in Africa are not discussed. The book leaves the impression that their absence might be due to the presence of their bodies as a topic for discussion but the book also shifts the gaze to queer politics and to looking at representations of African men as much as women.

Review reproduced from Volume 17, n.paradoxa, Jan 2006. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumarkt (eds)

At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet Boston: MIT, 2005 ISBN:0-262 03328-3

This major anthology of 20 essays includes writing by the editors, Johanna Brucker, Maria Fernandez, Heidi Grundmann amongst many others, exporing the roots/ routes of distribution and communication in new media, digital networks, mail art, music, radio and telematics. Linking developments in the 1970s with histories of futurism, the institutionalisation as well as histories of these developments is a major concern throughout.

Review reproduced from Volume 19, n.paradoxa, Jan 2007. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher (eds) Women Artists at the Millennium Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-262-01226-3

The 16 contributors to this volume took part in a conference of the same name in 2001, re-examining the legacy of Nochlin's 1971 essay 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' and the relationship between "women", "artists" and the "milennium". Yvonne Rainer, Martha Rosler, Ann Hamilton and Mary Kelly were invited to speak about their own practice. Art historians and writers offer readings of many more women artists: Louise Bourgeois, Lygia Clark, Ellen Gallagher, Agnes Martin, Mona Hatoum, Bracha Ettinger, Carrie Mae Weems, Anna Maria Maiolino, Rosemarie Trockel, Sally Mann, and Francesca Woodman. de Zegher's introduction stresses how 'co-affectivity, transference, the relational and the transsubjective' all emerge as key themes, hopefully laying a foundation for a transformative politics in reading and understanding women artists.

Review reproduced from Volume 17, n.paradoxa, Jan 2006. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Andrea Fraser Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser

Alexander Alberro (ed. and intro.) Boston: MIT, 2005 ISBN:0-262-06244-5

MIT series of artist's writingscontinues with the collected performance scripts, lectures and published articles of Andrea Fraser bringing together her work in depth for the first time. A foreword from Pierre Bourdieu sets the tone for her critique of the museum as both knowledge-producing and status-conferring institutions. Her critique is carried through essays like 'Creativity= Capital?' and in her performance scripts in which she plays the various roles of autodidact, docent and provider of 'artistic services' to the public. Re-interpretation of assumed values and cultural rituals as a form of translation combined with mimicry and excess are the hallmarks of Fraser's determined sometimes ironic social analysis.

Review reproduced from Volume 16, n.paradoxa, July 2005. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Norma Broude and Mary D.Garrard (eds) Reclaiming Female Agency:Feminist Art After Postmodernism University of California Press, 2005 ISBN: 0-520 24252

This is the third anthology of feminist art historical research edited by Norma Broude and Mary Garrard. Arguing that their selection focuses on women's agency (as the first casualty of 'poststructuralist gender studies') and yet offers an engagement with ( potentially critique of) post-modern thought, they position the anthology against the 'narrow, self-limiting, and self-reflexive concerns of academic theory and [as] a desire to return to real-world issues.' Insisting on the importance of feminist scholarship as making a difference, the editors advocate a clearer analysis of the power and agency women have had and continue to exercise while at the same time using post-structuralist methods as a means to call into question the metanarratives of art history. The collection brings together North American scholars and the introduction makes distinctions about their own position largely by comparison with trends in UK-based scholarship. Sounding at times like they wish to hold on to a history of great women artists, but without prioritising women's cultural production in general, this anthology contains a mixture of analyses of women artists' work as well as feminist or gendered deconstructions of key works in the canon of great art: Rubens, David, Ingres, Daumier, Manet and Picasso. Essays on artists after 1945 include wiriting on Helen Frankenthaler (Lisa Saltzman); Louise Bourgeois's Femmes Maisons (Julie Nicoletta); Minimalism (Anna Chave); Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (Amelia Jones), Hung Liu (Allison Arieff) and Shirin Neshat (John B.Ravenal).

Review reproduced from Volume 14, n.paradoxa, July 2004. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Rosemary Betterton (ed.) Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women's Contemporary Painting

London: IB Tauris, 2004

ISBN: 1-86064-722-3

An anthology which incorporates artists' perspectives (primarily UK-based) as well as critical readings of some contemporary women's painting practices by UK-based and one Canadian writer.

Contents: Rosemary Betterton: introduction 'Unframing' and an essay on the work of Susan Hiller; Alison Rowley on Virginia Woolf's fictional character, painter Lily Briscoe; Marsha Meskimmon on Judy Watson (from Australia); Joan Borsa on Ann Harbuz (both from Canada). Contributions from artists on their own work include: Barbara Bolt, Partou,Rebecca Fortnum, Pam Skelton, Lubaina Himid, and a dialogue with Rose Lee, Jo Bruton, Beth Harland, Nicky May and Katie Pratt.

Review reproduced from Volume 14, n.paradoxa, July 2004. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Gill Perry (ed.) Difference and Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women's Practice

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 1-4051-1202-6

A new anthology exploring women artists' work, largely in an Anglo-American context, and offering detailed readings and critical analysis of individual projects.

Contents: Gill Perry on 'Visibility, Difference and Excess'; David Hopkins on Martha Rosler and Gillian Wearing; Lisa Tickner on Cornelia Parker; Sue Malvern on Rachel Whiteread; Fionna Barber interviews Alice Maher; Michael Corris and Robert Hobbs discuss Kara Walker; Marsha Meskimmon on Christine Borland; Dorothy Rowe on the performance group, moti roti; Jane Beckett on Lubaina Himid.

Review reproduced from Volume 15, n.paradoxa, Jan 2005. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Claudia Reiche and Verena Kuni (eds.) c y b e r f e m i n i s m: next protocols New York: Autonomedia, 2004 ISBN: 1 57027 149 6

A new production, originated through a call for contributions to the Old Boys Network,the first international cyberfeminist alliance. Their definition of cyberfeminism is that it 'carries the fem in its center - fem which hints politically at gender and the female sex, yet exceeds, enjoys, and remodels this relation.' This book contains protocols for the future in the sense that these are both documents and coded commands for digital and human procedures of communication. Contributors include: Marie-Luise Angerer 'Cyber@rexia. Anorexia and Cyberspace'; Irina Aristarkhova 'Femininity, Community, Hospitality: Towards a Cyberethics'; Andrea Sick 'Dream-Machine: Cyberfeminism'; Helene von Oldenburg 'IF [ x ] ... THEN [ y] ...ELSE [XXn]'; Ephemera/Discordia/ Liquid_Nation / Plastique /Efemera_Clone_2 'Thoughts on Submission: Glances from the Warriors of Perception';Yvonne Volkart 'The Cyberfeminist Fantasy of the Pleasure of the Cyborg'; Anne-Marie Schleiner 'Female-Bobs Arrive at Dusk'; Verena Kuni 'Frame/Work'; Shu Lea Cheang 'I.K.U. Seven Pages'; Claudia Reiche 'On/Off-scenity: Medical and Erotic Couplings in the Context of the Visible Human Project'; Julie Doyle/ Kate O'Riordan 'Virtual Ideals: Art, Science and Gendered Cyberbodies'; Prema Murthy 'Ito Ay Panaginip Sa Ibang Pangungusap'; Marina Grzinic 'Monstrous Bodies and Subversive Errors'; Ingeborg Reichle 'Remaking Eden: On the reproducibility of images and the body in the age of virtual reality and genetic engineering' ; Ulrike Bergermann 'Analogue Trees, Genetics, and Digital Diving. Pictures of Human and Reproduction'; Christina Goestl 'If Cyberfeminism is a Monster... then Clitoris Visibility = true'; and Elisabeth Strowick 'Cyberfeminist Rhetoric, or Digital Act and Interfaced Bodies'.

Review reproduced from Volume 16, n.paradoxa, July 2005. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder (eds)

Caught in the Act:an Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (Toronto:YYZ Books, 2004)

ISBN: 0-920397-84-0

This is an impressive and important book and an invaluable teaching tool. Documenting women performance artists working in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, it parallels the territory of Moira Roth's classic on American feminist performance art, The Amazing Decade. The book offers 25 profiles of women artists or groups working across Canada based on interviews, with extensive descriptions of individual performances and actions. Overviews of the field are offered by both performance artists and critics: Johanna Householder; Tanya Mars (emphasising the use of humour as a strategy); Tagny Duff (on work in Vancouver 1973-1983); Dot Tuer (on the body politic); Elizabeth Chitty (on embodiment practices) and Jayne Wark (on costume and dress). Dot Tuer's definition of performance as a means for women to 'render visible the politics of representation as a struggle over control of real bodies in time and space' underpins the approach of many whose work is recorded in this book.

Artists profiled include: Lillian Allen; Anna Banana; Rebecca Belmore; Berenicci; May Chan; Elizabeth Chitty; The Clichettes; Kate Craig; Rae Davis; Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan; Nathalie Derome; Margaret Dragu; Lily Eng; Gathie Falk; Vera Frenkel; Collen Gray; Johanna Householder; The Hummer sisters; Suzanne Jolly; Kiss and Tell; Sylvie Laliberte; Frances Leeming; Cheryl L'Hirondelle Waynohtew; Toby MacLennan; Tanya Mars; marshalore; Rita McKeough; Pam Patterson and Leena Raudvee; Paulette Phillips; Robin Poitras; Judy Radul; Francoise Sullivan; Sylvie Tourangeau and Colette Urban.

Review reproduced from Volume 13, n.paradoxa, Jan 2004. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Maria Fernandez, Faith Wilding, Michelle M. Wright (eds) A SubRosa Project: Domain Errors New York: Autonomedia, 2002 ISBN: 1-57027-141-0

'Part performative intervention, part radical polemic and activist manifesto', this book examines the intersections between race, technology and cyberfeminism. Divided into 3 sections, 'Racism and cyberfeminism in the integrated circuit', 'The female flesh commodities Lab', and 'Research! Activism! Embodiment! Conviviality!', the book aims to explore 'a contestational politics for cyberfeminism'. The international contributors include the editors, SubRosa, Lisa Nakamura, Irina Aristarkhova, Susanna Paasonen, Rhadika Gajjala/Annapurna Mami-dipudi, Lucia Sommer, Christina Hung, Emily de Araujo, Tania Kupczak, Amelia Jones, Terri Kapsalis, Nell Tenhaaf and Hyla Willis.

Review reproduced from Volume 9, n.paradoxa, Jan 2002. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Hilary Robinson (ed) Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000 Oxford: Blackwells, 2001 0-631-20850-X

Over 706 pages, with 101 texts by different authors, nine themed and sub-divided chapters and extensive bibliographies, this book is designed as a core text book for anyone researching feminism, feminist theory and feminist art practices in the visual arts. Without any illustrations, it is organised to retrace feminist histories, feminist discourse and the legacy of the women's art movement in a number of countries and to provide valuable teaching material. In this, it will undoubtedly succeed. Hilary Robinson announces the composition of material within the book as 50% from the USA, 25% from UK, 12.5% from Canada, with the remaining texts from Ireland, Australia and previously translated material from Western Europe. The selection concentrates on republishing material from diverse and small publications but includes some key texts which, although they may have been republished before, are included to frame and organise the different sections. The bibliographies point to the many further articles in this field and open up the possibilities for numerous other avenues of research to be pursued in relation to feminist theory and the visual arts in other countries. This academic text book is undoubtedly the most comprehensive anthology of feminist theory/ feminist art criticism about the visual arts to date and, given the publisher, a fitting complement to the marginalisation of feminist ideas in the C. Harrison and P. Wood anthology Art Theory 1900-1990. This publication will do much to establish and secure feminism's contribution to the field of art criticism and art theory in the academy.

Review reproduced from Volume 7, n.paradoxa, Jan 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Aruna D'Souza (ed) Self and History: A Tribute to Linda Nochlin

Thames and Hudson, 2001 ISBN 0 500 28250 1

In this anthology, fellow art historians pay tribute to the full range of Nochlin's art historical scholarship by addressing and developing areas which her own work on sexual politics, realism, Impressionism has made possible. Very few works address her life and scholarship directly, Abigail Solomon-Godeau or Moira Roth's portrait/dialogue with her are exceptions.

Review reproduced from Volume 8, n.paradoxa, July 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska Feminist Visual Culture

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000 ISBN 0 7486 1046 4

The 15 chapters of this book point to a range of issues in the UK in fine art, design and mass media. It is a taster to these debates, given the short and very generalised approach and summaries offered and the often unacknowledged and uncritical Anglo-American bias of most arguments presented. It may be ideal for a foundation/first year student entering a degree course in the UK but it is disappointing for fellow professionals. The history of feminism in the UK has been re-routed through the yBA and the subtlety of the distinction between feminist readings and "histories" eroded. This stress may be symptomatic of the UK's current art school culture but it is not enough to argue for the value of the "visual" to feminism nor to launch a new area in what is still known as cultural studies/visual culture.

Review reproduced from Volume 7, n.paradoxa, Jan 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Liana de Girolami Cheney, Alicia Craig Faxon, Kathleen Russo Self-Portraits by Women Painters

London: Ashgate, 2000

ISBN 1 85928 424 8

The list of "most significant" or interesting women's self-portraits attended to in this book, overlaps the European/American story presented in Borzello's above. The 3 scholars' approach, while less passionate, examine questions of interpretation, identification and attribution in art history from antiquity to the present day.

Review reproduced from Volume 3, n.paradoxa, Jan 1999. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Cutting Edge: Women's Research Group (eds) Desire by Design: Body, Territories and New Technologies

London: I B Tauris, 1999 ISBN 1-86064-280-2

A new collection of critical essays by artists, designers, lecturers,curators and critics on women artist's uses of technology and body politics. The book arose from a Cutting Edge conference at University of Westminister.

Contents: Alexa Wright 'Partial Bodies'; Sarah Hember 'Nits and NRTS'; Jane Prophet 'Imag(in)ing the Cyborg'; Jackie Hatfield 'Imaging the Unseeable'; Nicky West 'The Body & the Machine'; Katy Deepwell 'Digital Sampling'; Erica Matlow 'Escape from the Flatlands'; Rosie Higgins,Estella Rushaija,Angela Medhurst 'Technowhores'; Helen Coxall 'Representing Marginalized Groups in Museums'; Uma Patel, Erica Matlow 'What have Science,Design & Technology got to do with Gender?'; Danielle Eubank 'Accumulation of Subleties'; Janice Cheddie 'From Slaveship to Mothership'; Gail Pearce 'A Reflection on Mirror,Mirror'; Jos Boys 'Positions in the Landscape?'; Alex Warwick 'Bodies of Glass'; Marion Roberts 'City Futures'.

Review reproduced from Volume 7, n.paradoxa, Jan 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Emanuela De Cecco & Gianni Romano Contemporanee: Percorsi, lavori e poetiche della artiste dagli anni Ottanta a oggi Italian text.

Milan: Editori Associati srl, Ancona-Milano, 2000 ISBN 88 489 0025 9

Commentaries, interviews and individual critical writings on over 40 women artists whose practice has been widely shown in Europe and America in the 1990s. Most sections of this book are published in Italian for the first time and come from a wide variety of sources, including art magazines and catalogues. Artists discussed or interviewed include: Ghada Amer; Marina Abramovic, Grazia Toderi, Tacita Dean, Elke Kystufek, Vanessa Beecroft, Rebecca Horn, Francesca Woodman, Nan Goldin, Doris Salcedo, Sophie Calle, Soo-ja Kim.

Review reproduced from Volume 7, n.paradoxa, Jan 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Nat Muller & Deanna Herst (eds) Ctrl+shift alt-ctrl+shift gender: Convergences of Gender, New Media and Art Netherlands, Amsterdam: Axis Bureau voor de Kunsten V/M, 2000.

A new reader from Axis, anthologising existing material on cyberfeminism, electronic music, internet sites, women's images in computer games and issues in new media art, aesthetics and web design. Contributors include Faith Wilding, Verena Kuni, Hannah Bosma, Yvonne Volkart, Angelika Beckmann, Anne-Marie Schleiner and Cornelia Sollfrank, Kathy Rae Huffman and Margarete Jahrmann. A wide range of websites are also presented.

Review reproduced from Volume 7, n.paradoxa, Jan 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Anna Alchuk (ed) Woman and Visual Marks Moscow: Idea-Press Publishers, 2000

Open Society Institute/ Woman Network Program. Russian text.

The theme of this collection is the imageof woman in mass consciousness produced by the mass media, TV, photos, advertising, periodicals, etc. This is quite a new theme for theoretical analysis in Russia. The collection brings together well known philosophers, sociologists, art critics and other feminist intellectuals. It offers an historical analysis of the mechanisms of emerging of new woman's images on the ruins of Soviet ideology.

Colour reproductions of 12 Russian women-artists are included:-A. Alchuk, T. Antoshina, L. Gorlova, E. Elagina, I. Makarevitch, I. Nachova, S. Sochranskaya, N. Tournova, A. Tchijova. Essays on the representation of women in former Soviet times and in today's Russia by V. Aristov ; N. Koslova ; O. Vanstein ; A. Levinson ; A. Jurchak. ; I. Aristarchova. and O. Turkina; on pornography O. Voronina; E.Goshilo and T. Michailova; and interviews with O. Lipovskaya and N. Azhgichina and M. Ryklin; analysis of the internet by S. Kuznetzov and Bredichina writes on 'Representative practices in women's art in Moscow in the 1990s.'

Review reproduced from Volume 8, n.paradoxa, July 2001. Katy Deepwell 'Short Book Reviews'

Peg Zeglin Brand Beauty Matters

Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000 ISBN 0 253 21375 4

There is an interesting tension in this book between the disciplines of philosophy/ aesthetics in Plato, Kant and Hegel and cultural studies attention to popular culture, social/political context and racial/sexual stereotypes, when it comes to defining the concept of beauty. The doubleplay in the title reinforces this: whose concept of beauty matters and which beauty matters are we discussing? Feminist essays include: Peg Brand discussion interview with Orlan; Hilary Robinson on the value of Irigaray for feminist discourse; Eva Kit Wah Man on ideals of beauty in China; and Susan Bordo (re) discovering the male body in Calvin Klein adverts.

Review reproduced from Volume 5, n.paradoxa, Jan 2000. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Coco Fusco (ed) Corpus Delecti: Performance Art in the Americas Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-19454-7

A wide cross-section of Latino performance art is discussed, documented and presented in this volume which highlights both trans-national and feminist viewpoints in Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil as part of a general picture and the work of many women artists, including: Maris Bustamente; Lygia Clark; Ana Mendieta; Neo Bustamente; Marta Minujin; Tania Bruguera; Lotty Rosenfeld and Coco Fusco's own. This book has much to offer in its analyses of the relationships between per-formance art, theatre and cabaret; the role performance can play in political activism and transforming cultural stereotypes; and the debates around performance art, the legacy of dada in performance and its reinvention under the title 'non-objectual' art. The book contains scripts as well as documentation of work from the 1980s and 1990s.

Review reproduced from Volume 3, n.paradoxa, Jan 1999. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Katy Deepwell (ed) Women Artists and Modernism Manchester: Manchester University Press,1998.

USA: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0-7190-5082-0

A new anthology in which each essay offers a different feminist methodology through which to explore questions concerning women artists and modernist art histories.

Contents: Rosemary Betterton on women artists, modernity and suffrage, in UK and Germany, 1890-1920; Jane Beckett & Deborah Cherry on women, metropolitan culture and vorticism; Pauline de Souza on gender and representation in the Harlem Renaissance; Bridget Elliott on Romaine Brooks and Gluck's 1923 portraits of eachother; Susan Platt on Elsabeth MacCausland; Katy Deepwell on Hepworth and her critics; Nedira Yakir on women in the St Ives Group; Moira Roth 'Talking Back' with Marcel Duchamp; Joanna Frueh on 'Women's Bane,Women's pleasure' ; Hilary Robinson on Irigaray's re-valuings; Renee Baert on 'Desiring Daughters.'

Review reproduced from Volume 3, n.paradoxa, Jan 1999. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Cornelia Sollfrank (ed) First Cyberfeminist International Reader Hamburg: Old Boys Network,1998.

The reader includes excellent documentation, interesting papers, artist's projects and presentations from the First Cyberfeminist International September 20-28 1997, Hybrid Workspace, Kassel. The developing international network of women whose work is represented here exchange information through the (ironically titled) Old Boy's Network; PopTarts on Telepolis and the FACES e-mail list and many participated in the FACES conference in Forum Stadtpark in July 1998. (See also: Vol 2, n.paradoxa :Women and New Media.) Topics covered range from data DJ's and data-avatars, fan and e-zines, hacking, art/video projects on the net; definitions of cyber-feminism, fe-mail culture, and what constitutes feminist counter-strategies in cyber-culture.

Review reproduced from Volume 3, n.paradoxa, Jan 1999. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Alison Beale & Annette Van Den Bosch (eds) Ghosts in the Machine: Women and Cultual policy in Canada and Australia

Toronto: Garamond Press,1998 ISBN 0-920059-29-5

A rare and serious feminist analysis of cultural policy in Canada and Australia, which begins with a comparative study of these two respective countries since the 1960s, comparing the legal, administrative and social infrastructure in which women in the arts work. The essays offer some very thought-provoking and specific case studies on anti-racist initiatives (Monica Kin Gagnon,Canada); cultural planning (Deborah Stevenson, Australia); community, public, audience (Jennifer Barratt, Australia); value (Barbara Godard, Canada); queer politics and film (Brenda Longfellow, Canada); women artist's careers (Annette Van Den Bosch, Australia) and women composers (Andra McCartney, Canada).Further analysis of cultural policy in each country is offered by Andrea Hull, Alison Beale and Patricia Gillard.

Review reproduced from Volume 4, n.paradoxa, July 1999. Katy Deepwell 'Book Reviews'

Betty Ann Brown (ed.) Expanding Circles: Women Art and Community (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1996) ISBN 1-877675-21-0

This important anthology, which continues discussions of community-based activist work is divided into 4 sections which suggest the themes of the book: Women's Art Communities in Contemporary History; Identity in Community; Building Community; and Living in Community. Contributions include texts by: bell hooks, Lucy Lippard, Joanna Frueh, Betsy Damon, Suzanne Lacy, Ruth Weisberg, Lorraine Serena on Women/Beyond Borders, Frances K. Pohl and Betty Ann Brown who also interviews Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven, Cheri Gaulke, Rachel Rosenthal,and Suzanne Lacy. It is an ideal companion to earlier books like Lippard's Get the Message, Nina Felshin's But is it Art?, and Lacy's Mapping the Terrain.

Review reproduced from Volume 1, n.paradoxa, Jan 1998. Katy Deepwell 'Short Reviews of New Publications' - The fifteen essays in this book highlight the question of difference - social, sexual, cultural, political differences - experienced both generationally and geographically in the work of women artists and the attention to difference in feminist readings of women's work.

Contents: Mieke Bal essay is called 'Reading Art?', Elisabeth Bronfen writes on Hysteria, Irma & Cindy Sherman', Irit Rogoff on 'Gossip as Testimony', Nanette Salomon on Hidden agendas and 'The Venus Pudica', Alison Rowley on Jenney Saville as feminist painting practice, Michelle Hirshhorn on the French artist Orlan, Judith Mastai on 'The Anorexic Body' in Canadian installation art, Lubaina Himid (artist's pages), Rosemary Betterton on Paula Modersohn-Becker and Kather Kollwitz (also in Betterton above), Young-Paik Chun on the work of Re-Hyun Park, Catherine de Zegher on Cecilia Vicuna, Brenda LaFleur on Jin-Me Yoon, Anna Raine on Ana Mendieta, Hagiwara Hiroko on Shimado Yoshiko, Griselda Pollock on Bracha Lictenberg Ettinger.

This over-view of the book is an extract from the general introduction of New Feminist Art Criticism : Critical Strategies (St Martins / Manchester University Press, 1995) by Katy Deepwell - The five sections of the book address what have emerged as important areas for feminist criticism and art practice in the late 1980's. Within each section, the contributors foreground a different set of questions for the development of feminist strategies in the 1990's. Different perspectives on the sites, strategies and positions of contemporary women artists emerge as each outlines their own particular position.

The impact of post-structuralist theories has undoubtedly had an effect in transforming the terms of feminist debate since the early 1980's. The majority of the contributors make reference to the ways in which both criticism and the relationships between theory and practice have been transformed by interest in French feminism, deconstruction, theories of the subject, and critiques of narratives of history and the boundaries between disciplines.

In the first section, Between Theory and Practice, Janet Wolff identifies an impasse in feminist art criticism with divisions into essentialist and anti-essentialist camps; for and against theory. She considers the implications of current critical theory for feminist practice in overcoming such binary oppositions and the inadequacy of such binary oppositions to classify and debate women artist's work. Gilane Tawadros analyses how the 'postmodern' analysis of identity is neatly identical to contemporary black women artists' analysis of the narratives of history in their practice. Moira Roth's analysis of Sutapa Biswas' project 'Synapse' offers her own account of the mutual recognition and challenge presented to her by the artist in terms of a post-colonialist encounter. Roth's account seeks to situate and question her own responses to Biswas's work as much as it presents the artist's explanation of her own approach.

In the gap between theory and practice, there is the role played by institutions in validating and maintaining particular ideas, values and beliefs. Frances Borzello examines the institutional constraints upon the appearance and circulation of feminist ideas from a publishers perspective. She examines how little mainstream art writing is devoted to women artists, be it in newspaper reviews, art and literary journals and magazines, catalogue essays, T.V. and Radio etc.. Feminist perspectives,she argues, in art criticism occupy a still smaller area of coverage within these spaces. The period 1985-1988 saw a flurry of publications in Britain on this topic e.g. Gisela Ecker's Feminist Aesthetics (Women's Press,1985);Hilary Robinson's Visibly Female (Camden Press,1987),Rosika Parker & Griselda Pollock's Framing Feminism (Pandora/Routledge,Kegan and Paul,1987); Leslie Saunder's Glancing Fires (Women's Press,1987) and G.Elinor et alWomen and Craft (Women's Press,1988). There have also been two specialist magazines published over this period (1987-1992), Women's Art Magazine (formerly WASL Journal,now Make) and Feminist Art News which have worked hard to initiate new debates about women's art practice. However, since 1988, only three other books on feminist art practice have been published in the UK: Janet Wolff's Feminine Sentences (Routledge,Kegan and Paul,1990); Wendy Beckett's Contemporary Women Artists(Phaidon,1988) and Maud Sulter's Passions (Urban Fox Press,1990). Borzello's argument raises the important questions about access to writing about women in the visual arts as well as the inaccessibility or not of certain forms of academic debate.

The section concludes with two contrasting essays about feminist interventions in the culture of another major institution, the art school. Val Walsh provides an outline of a potential framework for feminist teaching while Pen Dalton's piece questions the underlying models from developmental psychology on which much 'modernist' studio teaching since 1945 is based in an attempt to lay bare the male bias in teaching practices.

In Curatorship and the Art World two gallery directors, Maurenn Paley (Interim Art) and Elizabeth Macgregor (Ikon Gallery) present how they see the pleasures and pitfalls of their respective positions in the commercial and public sectors. The art world and the role of public and commercial exhibitions is a further piece of the institutional structure of the art world. How to intervene as a feminist and initiate change is a question which all the contributors in this section explore.

From her experience as curator of touring exhibition The Subversive Stitch Pennina Barnett analyses audience reaction to the contemporary work selected. She argues that although the show attempted to renegotiate definitions of art/craft, feminine/feminist, much of the press reception and audience reaction remained trapped within more conventional critical categories, closing down on the debates which the exhibition aimed to initiate. How women negotiate making and exhibiting their work in gallery and non-gallery settings is explored by Debbie Duffin's analysis of her own and other artist's exhibiting strategies. Both Debbie Duffin and Fran Cottell argue against the idea that the artist waits to be discovered by the dealer but must actively seek and make choices about the context and display of their work. Fran Cottell's piece offers her own experience of exhibition across painting,performance and installation, highlighting the ways in which she renegotiated her practice to meet new audiences.

The marginalisation of women's concerns and the handling of the presentation of their work when it deals with controversial subjects are analysed by the three contributors in On the Question of Censorship. Anna Douglas's discussion of the pre-emptive removal of one of Deanna Petherbridge's works from a solo exhibition highlights the misconceived pressures of institutional prejudices in the public sector by employing Annette Kuhn's theorisation of censorship as regulation. In Douglas's argument the actual content of the work made by the artist becomes an irrelevance because of the troubled reception of the 'politically' charged signifier in its title when the work travels from a private gallery to a public gallery. By contrast, in Naomi Salaman's chosen examples it is purportedly the 'sexual' content of the work which underlies the removal of works from sale or exhibition in her three case studies. Sally Dawson pursues a very different argument, aligning censorship with the taboo on women's perspectives which discrimination in our culture enforces, she presents the work of four women who address different aspects of women's experience and history. These works are not 'censored' in the conventional sense of removed, not displayed, not seen but they address areas of women's social and political experience which appear 'censored' by a patriarchal culture.

The Engagement with Psychoanalysis addresses the impact of one of the most powerful influences on feminist art practice here in the late 1980's. The legacy of Lacan is surplanted by the impact of Irigaray and Kristeva. As Christine Battersby's piece argues the adoption of psychoanalytic terms and models,specifically from Luce Irigaray, may prove fraught for feminist art practice if we do not address these writers' own analyses of the place of painting. Hilary Robinson enthusiastically demonstrates how critical terms from psychoanalysis have enabled a rethinking of representation of the body and how it has been used as the starting point for a broad range of women artists producing work in the late 1980's as well as for new critical readings of their work. Joan Key with reference to her own practice presents how pyschoanalysis, particularly Kristeva's discusssion of the abject and the repression of the maternal body, provides a position for painting which addresses the physicality of colour. A very different approach is offered by Mary Kelly who provides a discussion of 'Historia' the fourth and last section of her project Interim which analyses the attitudes of women aged 45-55 to their body,money,power and history as the 1968 generation involved in women's liberation. In this section of 'Interim',Kelly questions what is at stake in how a subject positions itself historically: particularly how a feminist identifies a particular 'ideal' moment of radicalism (1968) only to be challenged by the different perspectives of a younger generation. Kelly approaches Kristeva's analysis of 'Women's Time' and redeploys Foucauldian ideas of history as a form of genealogy and archeology in relation to her continuing critique and dialogue with Lacan concerning femininity and the construction of women's identity, evident in the other sections of both Interim ('Corpus','Pecunia', and 'Potestas') and Post-Partum Document.

The shifting definitions of practice and the employment of new theoretical frameworks from 'post-stucturalist' theories of language, deconstruction and decoding are taken up again in Janis Jefferies piece which introduces the last section, Textiles,linking it back to but extending in a different direction the analyses provided by J.Wolff, G.Tawadros, and H.Robinson. Textiles situation on the boundaries, at the margins, as a 'hybrid', in the relationship between text/textile and the use of metaphors from embroidery and weaving provides the diversity of practices within this field with a specific relationship to postmodern debates. The position of textiles both in and out of the fine art or craft arenas (see P.Barnett also), crossing and at the same time challenging hierarchies and definitions, myths and ideologies, in both theory and practice are explored here in relation to the work of individual women artists and debates from the 1970's on the revaluation and transformation of 'traditional crafts' with radical feminist messages. Ann Newdigate, Dinah Prentice and Ruth Scheuing each present their own practice in the context of these debates, demonstrating how through tapestry, piecing, and weaving respectively, the artist works to undo politics and patriarchal myth-making while creating feminist work.

This review by Katy Deepwell was first published in Oxford Art Journal 1995 Vol 18 No. 2 p.119-122

The beautiful colour reproductions and the substantial qualities of this new Broude and Garrard anthology (literally its size and weight) create a totality and 'seeming' coherence to art history about the feminist art movement and confirm its importance as an object of study. There is no doubt that here, and not just within the pages of this book, is an important history which needs to be affirmed, celebrated, anthologised and documented. However, much as I and many others might wish to reiterate the importance of feminism, the question remains, what contribution will this book make to shifting the study of feminist art practice from the margins to the centre: from its frequent position as an addendum or one-off topic, into a key subject of study?

A new wave of feminist publications has arrived both this year and last including, in addition to those reviewed here, two new anthologies from Harper Collins by Joanna Frueh, Arlene Raven, Cassandra Langer (Feminist Art Criticism and Feminist Criticism; Art, Identity,Action) and a continuing stream of publications from both Bay Press in Seattle (see below) and MidMarch Arts Press in New York (e.g. Leslie King-Hammond (ed) Gumbo ya ya: Anthology of African American Women Artists and Laura Brunsman and Ruth Askey (ed) Modernism and Beyond: Women Artists of the Northwest). Both Lucy Lippard and Mary Kelly are publishing new editions of collected writings in 1995. The first feminist anthology from Britain on the visual arts since 1987 has just been published containing contributions by 23 different women artists,curators and writers : Katy Deepwell (ed) New Feminist Art Criticism: Critical Strategies (Manchester University Press,1995). What, collectively, will the impact of this new wave of publications have on teaching about feminist art practice in art schools and art history departments, even in women's studies ? Will it offer a means to redefine the curriculum? And, by this I mean, moving the study of feminist theory, criticism and practice out from the occasional guest lecture or one-off seminar tagged on to the end of the programme, into the centre of issues and debates explored within programmes on contemporary art. Perhaps, here, is the other great problem that art history departments in Universities rather than art schools tend towards, the absence of taught programmes about contemporary art practice in the last twenty-five years. What impact also will such books have in redefining the teaching of what constitutes feminist art practice, beyond the often officially-unacknowledged reassurance that such publications, which are typically out from the library, provide for women students of role models or possibilities for a future as practicing artists, art critics and art historians. After twenty five years, it is very clear , if only to those who have been involved, that the feminist art movement is in the process of redefining its own legacy and redrawing the boundaries and emphases of its own history. Overcoming the incredible backlash of the mid-late 1980's, renewing internal debates and addressing the 'generation gap' amongst its practitioners have emerged as key issues. The longstanding questions of feminism's critique of Greenbergian modernism, its potential interventions in the art world and its new, if tentative, alliances with postmodernism (in addition to its use of post-structuralist theory) remain on the agenda in all the new publications discussed here. Such reassessment is taking place in the context of a renewed interest from a younger generation of women artists in the supposedly brash and deliberately lewd feminist transgressions of the early 1970's to parallel their own in the guise of postmodern 'Bad Girls' or 'Cyberchics'. The Power of Feminist Art ends , appropriately, with an essay by Laura Cottingham ( a contributor to the ICA's 1993/1994 Bad Girls catalogue) which stresses a continuum linking 'Bad Girls' like Sue Williams, Zoe Leonard or Lorna Simpson to a legacy of feminism dating from the early seventies. The point is reiterated, from a different angle in Mira Schor's essay on 'Backlash and Appropriation', the dual themes of a feminist legacy in postmodern times. Schor contrasts David Salle's painting 'Autopsy'(1981) with Kiki Smith's sculpture/installation 'Tale'(1992) amongst other examples to demonstrate the casual sexism and discrediting of any feminist critique by the repitition of images of abject, often deliberately humiliated, women in the work of some of the art world's currently most celebrated 'golden boys' and 'girls'.

Given the increasing number of substantial publications on feminist art practice, isn't it now time to reassess how feminist art practice since the 1970s is now taught or even communicated to succesively younger generations of art students ? Art school culture still does not seem to have updated its ideas of feminism from either the stigmatising of everything feminist (particularly from the 1970's) as essentialist, even more perversely as 'sexist', or the attempt to bury feminism under the prefix of 'post'-feminism by the lads of the new academy.

In this respect it is significant that feminist interventions in teaching form such a central part of the material discussed in The Power of Feminist Art, specifically the impact of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro's feminist art program at Cal Arts and Fresno in the early 1970's (in interviews with both artists) and Linda Nochlin's own recollections of her early feminist teaching programs at Vassar and the vast expansion of work on women artists since the early 1970's. These women's interventions as teachers have had a significant impact as feminist role models, the former in a new focus on women's experience and perspectives as subject matter for works of art; the latter in switching the emphasis away from studying women as bearers of man's meaning into their significant contribution as makers of meaning. Nochlin's emphasis upon analyses of the representations of women ( coupled with developments in cultural studies) have achieved a limited orthodoxy as an appropriate 'academic' approach in many art history departments though they are not always accompanied by the groundswell of research into the work of women artists which developed from this work. I am still amazed at how few students have actually read her pioneering essay 'Why have there Been No Great Women Artists?' and been encouraged to apply her insights to new research on women artists.(The project of recovery is far from exhausted, even as methodologies change). The description of the feminist art program by former students, in Faith Wilding's account, and of the significance of the Womanhouse project which emerged from the work (Arlene Raven) , make exceptionally interesting reading for lecturers. Chicago and Schapiro's use of both a separate teaching space for women students and the intensive use of consciousness-raising techniques as the basis for issue-based work continue to inspire as well as suggest ways to problematise feminist approaches and methodologies.

To a British audience, clear theoretical differences remain in the reception of this American re-assessment of its own legacy. Firstly, the emphasis upon celebration. This appears as an, at times, uncritical celebration of women's creativity and connections within the mainstream, an 'art-world feminism' , which the British art scene has until recently apparently lacked. For we too, now have 'Bad Girls' and a new generation of women sculptors 'making it in the mainstream', e.g. Rachel Whiteread, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Helen Chadwick. What this celebratory element provides cannot be too quickly dismissed , however critical we might remain of the terms of some affirmations of all women's work as feminist statements , particularly those working within mainstream and well-established practices. Affirmation, at least, has the advantage of providing important documentation of works which have rarely been seen over here and a large number of extremely useful descriptive passages about the staging or content of the individual artworks, even while it provides little analytical commentary about the context in which such works were produced or received. It may appear to a more sceptical British audience, that the affirmation of women artist's activities per se is equivalent to all or any feminism, but what is actually being presented in this anthology is a quite well established canon of feminist practitioners, a great and good accounting of the visibility of feminism in the art world since the seventies. This is not to dismiss the usual complaints about the selection of writers and artists represented and its resulting exclusions and emphases. The book has provoked complaints in America because of its lack of representation of certain sections of the feminist art movement (literally its heterodoxy and its East coast/West coast emphasis) but it is certainly no less than the complaints of British feminist practitioners on the publication of Rosika Parker and Griselda Pollock's Framing Feminism: the Women's Art Movement 1970-1985 for its inclusions, exclusions and emphases. The mistake is in assuming that either book is definitive, the only possible account , and that the presentation consists of only those artists worth studying or even, in these cynical times, worth knowing about . For those who have well-established collections of feminist magazines or who have followed the major feminist exhibitions in America, there are no new surprises in this book , but what there is is a vast array of photographs reproduced in colour which had previously only been frequently known in black and white. The documentation of the Womanhouse project and photographs of early performance work are but two good examples.

Much of 'The Power' in the title brings into view the activism of American feminists in the art world, both protests against the status quo from Whitney demos to Guerilla Girls to Women's Art Coalition (WAC) as well as the more organised side of the women's art movement through the Women's Caucus for Arts (WCA) and the Coalition of Women's Organisations and the establishment of a variety of feminist publications and exhibition spaces for women. The broader picture of women artists' activism in terms of political engagement from street theatre to large scale collaborative projects enable links to be seen between the women's movement and content-based work. Overall the book stresses the centrality of activism to the individual and general level of public consciousness-raising about issues like violence against women, the peace movement, enviromental and health issues, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), levels of institutionalised discrimination in the art world , analysis of attitudes towards women's bodies and change for women in the workplace. The Power of Feminist Art also supports and enables connections to be seen between feminist practice over the last twenty five years and its centrality to the emergence of 'New Genre Public Art' which form the subject of both Suzanne Lacy's Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and Nina Felshin's But Is It Art?: The Spirit of Art as Activism (both titles from Bay Press,1995). Activism within a recognised community in these three books provides an argument for overcoming standard oppositional definitions of public art as 'the turd in the plaza' and the incredibly diverse category called 'community arts' by foregrounding a definition of socially engaged and committed practice outside conventional gallery spaces with a specific constituency as both audience and participants. Collaboration (between artists and co-workers as much as the use of non-art audiences as participants in public artworks) becomes the key to challenging modernism's emhpasis on individualism and models of isolated art production as artworks travel from studio to gallery.

Underlying these comments about activism , however, is an important issue which the book does seek to address in a variety of ways, namely the question of the exclusions within feminism and whether or not feminism can be all-inclusive. This debate has a particular character in America which complaints about exclusivity, particularly debates about racism or the Eurocentrism of white feminists here, only superficially share. Firstly, this is because the make-up of constituencies in terms of ethnic and racial backgrounds and their colonial inheritances amongst feminists is different on either side of the Atlantic (see,for example, Lucy Lippard's Mixed Blessings: Art in Multi-Cultural America Panetheon,New York,1990). Secondly, as a consequence, this produces a variety of different emphases in how these factors affect both what constitutes the areas of activism as well as the levels of recognition possible within particular constituencies, specifically feminist, black and hispanic, both inside and outside the art world. In stressing engagement, via consciousness-raising, collaboration, community and activism, Broude and Garrard's anthology presents in a new light what had become a dividing issue amongst feminist constituencies: the question of essentialism versus anti-essentialism. There are side-swipes at recognisably anti-essentialist practices which engage directly at the level of Theory and refutations of the attacks or identification of certain feminist positions as essentialist throughout the book. However, rather than adopting the theoretical ground for a discussion of these issues (a debate here which can be seen in the arguments presented by Barry / Flitterman-Lewis as opposed to A.Partington in Hilary Robinson's Visibly Female Camden Press,London, 1987), this book stresses activism as a means to re-read the question of what makes a work a feminist intervention. Suzanne Lacy, for example, argues that 'deconstruction was tied to an activist project of shifting power relationships in daily life, rather than a theoretical exercise in rarifed language addressed to an art-world viewership' (p.264) and Judy Chicago states that the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate closes down on the real project, feminism's ongoing critique of patriarchy : 'The thing about essentialism is that it's being used by women to attack women . . . and to discredit their foremothers' (p.71). While 'activism' has the effect of foregrounding feminist practice as diverse and manifest in different levels of practical engagement from teaching to participation in feminist publications, street demonstrations or work with particular constituencies and communities, it also short-circuits the much more difficult theoretical questions of 'Woman/women' and analyses of the complexities of racism and multi-culturalism in relation to gender (particularly given the enterprises of feminist post-structuralist approaches in criticism and practice).

Overall The Power of Feminist Art maintains a vital emphasis upon the diversity of positions and perspectives in two and a half decades of feminist art practice but this diversity is stressed in and through a representational politics of identity rather than by sustained argument or dialogue. Two artists quoted within the book show the difficulty of arguing for the centrality of their own position in terms of identity politics which may leave different constitutencies isolated and without dialogue between them. Judith Baca states that feminism (since the 1970's) remains an important body of knowledge and a resource, but that 'Ethnicity won't join a white feminist agenda. It will transform it. It will become the central agenda of feminism, as rightly it should, because we are the majority'(p.274). While Ruth Iskin, in a different essay, argues equally for the centrality of a lesbian perspective, 'The lesbian relationship as metaphor stands at the heart of feminist art and has on some level affected every feminist's work' (p.202), thus echoing Adrienne Rich's arguments prioritising a lesbian continuum precisely for the importance attached to all woman-to-woman relationships. While critiques of the ethnocentrism and the 'invisibility' of lesbian perspectives are acknowledged by this approach which seeks to represent constituencies with equal weight, the arguments are rarely made in full, which may lead toonly tokenistic acknowledgement of their importance for all women.

This model of cultural diversity is, however, extremely useful precisely because it is so easily assimilable into teaching practice, providing a great number of examples for discussion while it at the same time leaving a lot of questions unanswered and a great number of future possibilities to be explored. Certainly this is the important challenge that a book like this offers readers and lecturers who adopt it as core teaching material and it underlines the importance of feminism as a politics and not an artworld style or art historical movement . While The Power of Feminist Art possesses the authority of grounding a potential field it also begs for further research to be undertaken. Hopefully, this publication will go a long way to overcoming the repetitive foregrounding of only Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger or Mary Kelly as worthy objects of study, (often as the acceptable face of anti-essentialist feminism in the postmodern art world via Craig Owens essay 'The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism ') and the positioning of Judy Chicago as representative of the 'bad' essentialist camp because of her revival of craft or use of core imagery. For, in spite of its celebration of the latter's work, it at least foregrounds a large number of women artists as alternative objects of study and points again to the importance of performance work for feminists from the seventies. There are also frequent references to the use of masquerade and transformative performances and photowork in representation as 'forerunners' of Cindy Sherman. Miriam Schapiro suggests that it is an 'absence of representations, of icons, of memory' (a lack in education as much as in art historical and critical discussion ) which leads contemporary women artists to 'endlessly repeat' images and signs of 'the ills of survival in patriarchy' (p.83). However, as Griselda Pollock, pointed out in her review of the book in Women's Art Magazine (Jan/ Feb 1995) such comments continue to muddy the waters by inaccurately failing to acknowledge the significance of the attribution of feminist readings of images of women produced by Cindy Sherman's work as if that were either the politics of the artist or an internal quality of the work.

Norma Broude and Mary D Garrard The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History(eds) IconHarperCollins, 1992 ISBN 0-060430391-8

This review was first published by Katy Deepwell in Women's Art Magazine Jan/Feb 1993 No.50

A decade ago Norma Broude and Mary Garrard published Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany (Icon,1982) one of the first anthologies of feminist art history in America. The Expanding Discourse maps the progress and diversity of feminist art history debates through 29 essays written in the 1980s.

In the introduction they outline how the encounter with post-modern Theory has literally expanded and diversified the discourses of feminist art historians producing what they define as 'neo-Marxist'; 'constructivist' and 'poststructuralist' accounts in addition to their own "liberal feminist" project. While they still maintain feminist art history should raise "fundamental questions for art history as a humanist discipline" they do not believe feminist art history should be confined to the documentation of women artists (as a form of additive history). Nor does their selection preclude the work of male writers eg Craig Owens whose classic essay "The Discourse Of Others Feminists and Postmodernism" is included.

The editors argue there are three dominant tropes in feminist an history in the first decade: the female body and the male gaze; femininity as a social construct ; and feminist critiques of essentialism, postmodemism and the woman artist. Under the first category come some trenchant analyses of images of women in "great" male artists' work including Leonardo da Vinci (Mary D Garrard's essay in the book) Botticelli (Lilian Zirpolo); Titian (Rona Goffen); Degas (Norma Broude); Matisse (Marilynn Lincoln Bernard); Renoir (Tamar Garb) and Gauguin exploring his "Invention of Primitivist Modernism'' (Abigail Solomon-Godeau) ; and constructions of a "Tahitian Body" (Peter Brooks)

Mary Ann Caws' illuminating essay on the depiction of women in Surrealist art "Ladies Shot and Painted" is also included. Yael Even examines the images of women's subjugation on the ''Loggia dei Lanzi" sculpture court in Florence. While Carol Duncan's "MoMa's Hot Mamas" explores how the modern (male artists heroic struggle over the body of woman structures the visitor's experience at New York's Museum of Modern Art).

Femininity as a social construct is explored through an analysis of largely 19th century themes - another feature of feminist an history in the 1980s. These include Griselda Pollock's essay which redefines "Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity" through an analysis of the spaces selected for representation in male/female Impressionists' works and Tamar Garb's analysis of a critical category "L'Art Feminin" used to pigeonhole women's work. Linda Nochlin argues that Berthe Morisot's "Wet Nurse" renegotiates the construction of work and leisure in impressionist painting while James Saslow's essay discusses the construction of a lesbian body in Rosa Bonheur's painting "The Horse Fair". Anne Higonnet's essay on 19th century women's "Secluded Vision'' in contrast with the former analyses of women's professional practice explores images of feminine experience in women's albums and "amateur" paintings.

Outside the research on the 19th century is Margaret Miles' study of the "Virgin's One Bare Breasts" which analyses nudity, gender and religion in Tuscan Early Renaissance culture and Natalie Kampen's "The Muted Other: Gender and Morality in Augustan Rome and 18th Century Europe". Helen Langa explores the work of women artists in America's New Deal arts projects of the 1930s. Langa contrasts the rhetoric of an "egalitarian vision" with the gendered experience of identity/difference across a male/public female/private political division.

The volume also includes some valuable studies of individual women artists which discuss the negotiation of feminine/ feminist identities and experiences Frida Kahlo (Janice Helland's essay); Lee Krasner as ''LK" (Anne M Wagner) and Georgia O'Keefe (Barbara Buhler Lynes). Explorations of contemporary feminist artists include Josephine Wither's on Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" and two essays on Faith Ringgold on her observations of America in the 1960s (Lowery Sims) the other on Afrocentrism in Ringgold's and Elizabeth Catlett's work (Frieda Tesfagiorgis in line with poststructuralist debates about identity and subjectivity femininity is not assumed but explored as contradictory, strategic and fragmentary.

"Along with the dominance of a masculine value system in art and art history has often come a blindness to female existence even when the reality of women's roles is well documented by the art of a given place or period " (Broude and Garrard 1982)

Anyone involved with the teaching of art history today will understand the importance of Broude and Garrard's suggestion that feminist art history will continue to serve "a corrective need" in the next decade until the "values, categories and conceptual structures of our field" are profoundly rearranged.

KT press

n.paradoxa

n.paradoxa
international feminist art journal

Anthologies of feminist art

If you want to search n.paradoxa's published articles, click here

The anthologies list below is organised by date:-

© Copyright KT press, 2011. Registered Co. no. 3492334. ktpress@ktpress.co.uk
Website design: adapted from wfiedler open source design

KT press

n.paradoxa

n.paradoxa international feminist art journal

Anthologies of feminist art

If you want to search n.paradoxa's published articles, click here The anthologies list below is organised by date:-

© Copyright KT press, 2011. Registered Co. no. 3492334. ktpress@ktpress.co.uk Website design: adapted from wfiedler open source design

n.paradoxa
international feminist art journal

If you want to search n.paradoxa's published articles, click here

The anthologies list below is organised by date:-

© Copyright KT press, 2011. Registered Co. no. 3492334. ktpress@ktpress.co.uk
Website design: adapted from wfiedler open source design