Customer Reviews

The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art

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As a young college student and newly marked feminist this book filled in important gaps surrounding women's art and feminism that was lacking in my male-dominated art history classes. It gave me a sense of history and brought up many issues in feminist art I had not yet discovered. It also sent me to library to look up many female artists in hope to find more information. The book was very easy to read and wasn't weighted down with to much academia.

This book is must for women artists, either young or firmly established. Originally published as From The Center, it helped me to understand my relationship to my artwork and my work's relationship to the various aspects of the larger art world. When I was attending art school, all my fellow women grad students read this book and, interestingly, responded enthusiastically to different sections. Lippard is a grounded, intelligent writer with a wry sense of humor and has a keen sense of observation. Her other books are also excellent, especially Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory and Sense of Place.

This is an excellent anthology of Lippard's essays. I found it especially helpful as I am writing a thesis on "third wave" feminist art. Her essays are thoughtful and insightful without being full of jargon, so even those with no background in feminist theory can get the gist of the writing. Its great to be able to read the oldies and see how much has- and sadly, hasn't- changed. Most interesting are Lippard's updates and introductions to the older essays, in which she prefaces them with how her thoughts on the topics have changed or shifted since the essays were written.
This is a really thorough and broad reaching book on art and feminism.I highly suggest it for all feminist artists (especially younger ones who missed the first wave) and those who study feminism and/or art.

Lucy Lippard's text is written in what is now labeled a 'feminist' narrative because it intertwines art world events alongside the author's awakening to her own liberation. That is, to examine the work of the women artists that were working on their own art- to the side of the men in their lives, in their studios, and in their schools.
'The Pink Glass Swan' works wonderfully as an introduction to the historical importance of this paradigm shift in the 1980's. Lippard uses language that strives to include the reader, as opposed to throwing tons of art theory and insider references. And, as you read the text, (in my case along with a class of college students) it becomes clear that this was largely the intention of feminist criticism-- to make it available to everyone to understand and to put into practice. I can highly recommend it.