Dead white male George Santayana finds himself quoted more than once in this comprehensive record of feminist art and politics since the '70s. Painfully aware that feminism as an idea has arisen periodically since the Middle Ages but has until now never managed to last for more than a generation, the authors hope that, armed with a knowledge of feminist ``herstory,'' future artists will expand on rather than repeat the work of their predecessors. Representing a wide spectrum of feminist artists and thinkers, the 18 contributors to this impressive historical reference book include prominent women such as art historians Linda Nochlin and Arlene Raven and painter Miriam Schapiro. The book, edited by Broude and Garrard (both Art History/American Univ.), covers both art and politics, discussing such internationally famous projects as the CalArts student installation Womanhouse, as well as the contemporary activist groups WAC (the Women's Action Coalition) and the Guerrilla Girls. The authors analyze art ranging from Judy Chicago's ``central core'' imagery to lesbian performance pieces, ``great goddess'' imagery, and the pattern and decoration movement. (Le Corbusier once stated, ``There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art at the bottom, human form at the top. Because we are men.'') While the work represented here varies greatly in content and quality, all of it stems from what the artists often describe as ``coming to consciousness'' about their oppressed condition. For some artists this seems to have been a powerful, almost ``born again'' experience; for others it was a gradual reorientation of perspective. As this book makes clear, the collective impact of feminist thought on contemporary society has also been significant- -in the early '70s, young art historians studying past women artists discovered that slides of their work did not even exist. However, discrimination still exists: As the Guerrilla Girls' posters reproduced here show, despite a roughly equal gender mix in art schools over the past 20 years, most major galleries still show mostly men. Essential reading for any woman in the arts. (245 illustrations, 118 in color)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8109-3732-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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