Customer Reviews

Art/Women/California, 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections (San Jose Museum of Art)

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These type of art books seem to come in two varieties: 1) heavy on history and criticism or 2) overflowing with plates and reproductions. This book is in the former category, and in all honesty, it should probably have been titled "Art/Feminism/California, 1950-2000", because the art criticism is definitely slanted with a particular ideology. Prepare to stumble across rather meaningless and I think, stupidly antiquated, phrases like "the male gaze".

Nevertheless, there is a vast amount of information here. The book can be valuable, then, in a couple of ways. One can read it as a guidebook to contemporary (or at least, modern) west coast, feminist artists-- or, as an index of informed, and sometimes fearlessly politically correct art criticism. I found the segment by Amelia Jones the most entertaining and least pretentious example, partly because it comes in the form of a spontaneous interview. Most of the book seems uncomfortably bent on classifying artists according to ethnicity. Personally, I like multiculturalism, but when it becomes a matter of stuffing everyone into a category, as in "Chicanos here, Asians there", I rebel.

In fact, as scholarly and erudite as books like this one may be, they suggest that today's young female artist may face a different, but equally difficult form of "Obstacle Course", if they wish to follow the established and politically correct paradigms laid out in this book, in order to qualify as an "authentic", precedent-minded female artist.