Women in the Picture cover art

Women in the Picture

Women, Art and the Power of Looking

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Women in the Picture

By: Catherine McCormack
Narrated by: Catherine McCormack
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About this listen

A bold reconsideration of women in art - from the ‘Old Masters’ to the posts of Instagram influencers.

A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale....

Women’s identity has long been stifled by a limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history’s classics to advertising, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles.

In this impassioned book, art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images - from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. She also shows us how women artists - from Berthe Morisot to Beyoncé, Judy Chicago to Kara Walker - have offered us new ways of thinking about women’s identity, sexuality, race and power.

Women in the Picture gives us new ways of seeing the art of the past and the familiar images of today so that we might free women from these restrictive roles and embrace the breadth of women’s vision.

©2021 Catherine McCormack (P)2021 W F Howes Art Body Positivity Gender Studies Social Sciences
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This is a good review of art as well as how women in art are perceived.
With a historical explanation of how women in art evolved, it also gives an excellent juxtaposition of women's subjugation and the patriarchal paradigm that art displays.
It evidences the contradiction of thoughts of patriarchy as display through art, and the fears it has displayed throughout time.
This is a must read for anyone wanting to know about art and how it has influenced our world and how we can change it today.
that mai

Much Needed Art Review

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This book was wonderful. Great framing of art through time. Excellent references for further research.
I saw one review that said it was little too feminist, what even does that mean? This is a must read for any art history enthusiast!

So nice i read it twice

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The author writes and narrates well. She knows her subject and by listening, I discovered paintings I hadn't known before this book. I think the author makes a valid argument for some misogynistic gratification, particularly with Balthazar, but goes too far with mythology and religious depictions. If the viewer can't appreciate the era and thinking at the time these paintings were made was much less enlightened and therefore not in step with our way of thinking today then they shouldn't, and probably wouldn't, be thinking much about art at all.

A little too feminist

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