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Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies

Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies

by Catherine McCormack

W. W. Norton & Company ·2020 ·240 pages ·Art
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
56/99
Maybe Someday

36/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

76/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

6/99

Rating

66/99

Volume

89/99

Rating

64/99

Volume

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About This Book

Art historian Catherine McCormack challenges how culture teaches us to see and value women, their bodies, and their lives. Venus, maiden, wife, mother, monster―women have been bound so long by these restrictive roles, codified by patriarchal culture, that we scarcely see them. Catherine McCormack illuminates the assumptions behind these stereotypes whether writ large or subtly hidden. She ranges through Western art―think Titian, Botticelli, and Millais―and the image-saturated world of fashion photographs, advertisements, and social media, and boldly counters these depictions by turning to the work of women artists like Morisot, Ringgold, Lacy, and Walker, who offer alternative images for exploring women's identity, sexuality, race, and power in more complex ways. 20 illustrations


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Reviews

"A stellar section called 'Monstrous Women' asks if 'Medusa was originally a Black African deity from Libya' ..."

Jasmine Sanders· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Mixing feminist polemic, a few blinding flashes of the obvious and the cri de coeur of a working mother, McCormack grounds her analysis in feminist art history and theory, the insights of racial and sexual justice movements, and her own story as an emerging professional from a working-class background who moves in elite zones of the art world ..."

Cathryn Keller· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Near the Top

"A timely, succinct, aesthetic inquiry into debates about sexuality, objectification, and representation."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"This eye-opening work will leave readers with plenty to ponder."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"While her analysis of historical painting and sculpture is whip smart and probing, her modern corollaries are oddly random ..."

Margot Mifflin· Los Angeles Review of Books Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"Man, I felt depressed reading...narratives of struggle, misogyny, marginalisation, being overlooked and being always on the outside looking in."

Laura Freeman· The Spectator (UK) Read review ↗ Bottom of the Pile

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