Unlocking Women's Art

"A mix of art history and analyzing pieces. I found it very interesting and fun to read. This book mainly focuses on Western art but touches on Eastern artists occasionally. Popular male artists taught in most art history classes are brought up and compared to women artists who worked in the same periods. I found it analyzes art professionally and in a detailed way. It introduces symbols found in a variety of women’s art and analyzes them in the context of the artist’s intentions and the context within history. Notably, this book compares artistic symbols in works made by men to art done by women and says why something works or doesn’t work. This feels like a college course textbook rather than an in-depth analysis, due to the author covering so much time and so many artists. The author mentions various power dynamics between artists and their models, especially male artists. It also touches on the difference in how men paint women (objectifying) while women artists understand the model’s perspective and can represent a natural and intimate scene. Another thing that was mentioned was the erasure of women artists, especially if their husbands/siblings/etc are well known (ex. Lee Krasner and her husband Jackson Pollock). My biggest complaint is the cover. It works with the title but is fairly boring, and I wish they picked something else. If they picked a painting that better represented the title in a better way or if they commissioned an art piece for the cover, it might look better. Personally the artist interviews were not interesting to me at this time, so I skipped them. On a later reading I might look into them more. * Thanks to the publisher Aurora Metro via Netgalley for an ebook!"