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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 ·2021 ·240 pages
Maybe Someday
Maybe Someday
I Index
32/99
Bottom of the Pile

4/99

Critics' Rating Index

Near the Top

59/99

Readers' Rating Index

n/a

Scholars' Citation Index

77/99

Volume of Reviews

36/99

Volume of Reader Ratings

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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


Reviews

"A thought-provoking purchase for academic library art history and women's studies collections."

Denise Miller· Library Journal Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

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

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Venus, befittingly the first, is especially engrossing ..."

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

"McCormack's mad dash through and around the confluence of issues of gender, power and representation in art is a passionate, serious, yet often entertaining introduction to issues that will be with us for the foreseeable future, their historic context and their implications for women."

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

"I'm with her on a lot of it, but the tone of grudge, gripe and the grievance of millennia does the case no favours."

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

"The subject could fill an encyclopedia; in Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies, historian Catherine McCormack narrows it down to women in art history and visual culture ..."

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

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

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

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