Customer Reviews

Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keeffe (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Book)

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One is reluctant to criticize the reviews of other customers, yet the two reviews prior to mine attempt to force upon Wagner's book both an historical framework and a point of view that are outside of her intended goal. If one reads the book for what it is, one finds a work of analytical insight, scholarship, humanity, and understanding of historical context. Enjoy it, savor it, reflect upon it!

I greatly enjoyed Anne Wagner's work in Three Artists (Three Women). Not only did she write an exceptional Introduction for her work - something rare in my opinion - but she isn't afraid to tackle the idea that one of her subjects, Eva Hesse, might not have been such a commodity had she lived. Wagner doesn't insult the artist or offend the reader in her discourse about Hesse's semi-martyrdom. Instead she very matter-of-factly outlines reasons for considering that the sculptor might have been less novel. She is sharp but candid:

It is her (un)timely death that has meant that she has survived to play a special cultural role: forever under thirty-five, she answers a hunger for youthful tragic death. She is the `dead girl'...Much of the writing about the artist cannot resist taking advantage of the free mileage it gets from Hesse's early death. When it is harnessed to her troubled life, so called, an irresistible package results. (197)

Wagner's strong suit is her skill at assisting the reader to build an understanding of feminism, art and the history of women as artists. She draws on three rather conventional (in the academic sense) artists when one might prefer to see her focus on feminist artists who are a little more out of the ordinary - Shirin Neshat comes to mind. In all, however, the work is quite a valuable cornerstone for art study and her presentation of the subject of women as artists/artists as women and the discussion about the mutual exclusivity that has historically accompanied those two constructs is insightful.

This closely argued study of three women artists is a delight to read: it is rigorously researched, beautifully written and insightful.

The introduction is a highly provocative intervention into feminist art history that stresses the need to consider aesthetic criteria rather than simply political credentials. Or more accurately, the author argues for their interdependence. Wagner compares Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party to a Lynda Benglis Eat Meat. She refers to Benglis's work as part of the modernist avant-garde tradition with its recalcitrant resistence to easy interpretation, and argues that this kind of work has more political potential than Chicago's work, which by comparison, is much more closed and didactic.

Each chapter examines a woman artist in relation to the avant-garde tradition. The Hesse chapter is a brilliant reworking of the methods of psychobiography. I would recommend the book for that chapter alone, her evaluations of Krasner and O'Keefe are, however, equally provocative and fascinating.

I picked up this book after seeing the Hesse retrospective in San Francisco. Although it provides a lot of useful background, the reading the art are somehow too pat. I guess it is a problem to always refer to the artist's life, however fascinating, to explain their work? And the 'feminist' framework did seem forced -- the photos were very suggestive but the author seemed afraid to really go for it. Why is so much academic writing afraid to make a strong argument or provocative, unexpected analysis?

Everyone who reviewed it seemed to love this overview of the careers of 3 artists: Krasner, Hesse. It's a fun read, with great photos, but I wish art historians would start to see there's more to the sixties than Hesse: what about Agnes Martin, Lee Bontecou, Yoko Ono, Alison Knowles, and all the rest??

Wagner wants to be a good feminist, but ultimately, her approach is surprisingly traditional: canonical figures, marriage plot, sticks to the US, the known and alrady successful. Wants to avoid being "radical" or disturbing at all costs.

Wagner presents 3 kay artists but her analysis is thin -- after 200+ pages, we get to the conclusion that "altho gender doesn't entirely determine our lives, it does inflect them..." or something like that. Seems to be totally unaware of feminist work on modernism in other fields (ie lit, film) and never questions the whole "marriage" (heterosexuality) framework she sets up. As a trade press book, it'd be fine, but as a university press book -- seems thin, uninformed.