Reviews with content warning for Sexism - Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies by Catherine McCormack

8 reviews

rey_reads's review against another edition

informative reflective fast-paced

4.75

came into this with very little knowledge of art history & only the guerilla girls as the extent of my knowledge of feminist perspectives on art - so glad i read this!

really deepened my understanding of art and the way we look at it - joined up the dots between ideas i was already thinking about and issues i wasn’t entirely conscious of. also loved the idea that it’s really important that (”monstrous”) women make art & write even if this isn’t explicitly feminist (bc their art may not be feminist but the suppression of their ability to create is always sexist)

some highlights for me:

- mainly the idea that the predominant form of art we interact with today is advertising & how this is drawing from a historical body of art references that is at best largely biased towards a male perspective and at worst drawing from explicitly degrading + misogynistic ideas. so this feeds into an art form (ads) that is not only ubiquitous but is also created with the intention of influencing our beliefs …
-similarly, that we are drawing from a body of art that treats women in ways that has undermined their agency and value outside of their value as an object of the male gaze (primarily as objects not artists) - especially the idea that expression of male desire is so overwhelmingly prevalent that it has obscured the opportunity for depiction of female desire & that we are left without a visual framework for what female desire can even look like. so this creates a society where women are silent about both their pleasure and their violation & this “helps culture not to be able to tell the difference between the two” (barbara johnson)
and that in this way art works alongside legal prejudices to cultivate a society that normalises sexual violence towards women - or rape culture !!
- also thought the ideas about the power of who gets to look (the male gaze, about the power of female subjects being able to look at the viewer & about historical obstruction of women from making art because they weren’t able to access institutional support or able to look at their subjects or life outside the home) were interesting. -and adjacent ideas about the way we view male v female nude bodies (“as long as we have had nude images of women they have been sexually objectified”)
-one final note: on the privilege of feeling comfort & discussion of the use of “uncomfortable” in silencing discussions about sexual violence, racism, and homophobia

very long review - can you tell i loved it?? haha

Content Warnings

a_violentfemme's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

2.5

I didn't hate this but overall, I don't think I am the target audience for this book. This book is accessible for those without an experience of art historical arguments- especially feminist ones. But I found these theories all very surface level, predictable and a summary of ideas originally by many other well known feminist art historians.
She splits the book (and depictions of women in art) into 4 sections- Venus, mother's, maidens and monsterous women. She uses some well known and loved case studies e.g Titan's 'Rape of Europa' and Millias' 'Ophelia' and attempts to put these in conversation with contemporary media and pop culture, like Beyonce's 'lemonade' but it all left me a bit cold.
In content this reminded me of Lauren Elkin's art monsters- which I also didn't particularly enjoy (especially all the talk of writing during the pandemic and balancing mothering and writing).
I was waiting for a mention or citation of famouse academics in this field including Lynda Nead, Griselda Pollock or Linda Nochlin and they only got a disappointing acknowledgment at the end.

Give it a go if you are a beginner in art history but maybe skip over it and read 'the female nude' by Lynda Nead instead.

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carlycormier_'s review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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triple_m's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

5.0

I’ve never been particularly interested in art, but I am interested in feminist literature so I thought this book would be a fun way to expand my reading.

I loved it. As an art novice I feel like I learned so much and the author explained the significance, origins, and evolution of each archetype in a way that easy to digest as a newbie.

A very strong intention on being intersectional! Way more than “and here’s a chapter about POC women.” Queer and BIPOC women and their relationship to the chapter topic were discussed in every chapter.

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