The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women's Self Portraits
by Jennifer Higgie
On This Page
Description
"Her story weaves in and out of time and place. She's Frida Kahlo, Loïs Mailou Jones and Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay. She's Suzanne Valadon and Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea and solitude; she's Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples and Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede. She's haunting museums in her paint-stained dress, scrutinising how El Greco or Titian or Van Dyck or Cézanne solved the problems that she too is facing. She's show more railing against her corsets, her chaperones, her husband and her brothers; she's hammering on doors, dreaming in her bedroom, working day and night in her studio. Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available. Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery"--Amazon.com show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
This isn’t an in-depth read, but a fascinating and enjoyable read which highlight how many talented artists were looked over for being a woman.
De geschiedenis van vrouwelijke kunstenaars en hun strijd om te mogen schilderen en tegen de miskenning en ontkenning van hun kunstenaarschap, verbeeld aan de hand van zelfportretten.Bibliotheek.nl
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Published Reviews
ThingScore 50
Group biographies are extremely difficult to pull off successfully: the danger is that the narrative will seem hurried and superficial, and that the connections between its subjects, in as much as they exist at all, will feel forced and contingent. In theory, The Mirror and the Palette is my ideal book. I could hardly be more interested in its subject. But I’m afraid that both these problems show more are apparent here. show less
added by Nevov
Lists
Feminism
167 works; 4 members
Author Information
137+ Works 516 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- The Mirror and the Palette
- Dedication
- To my mother, Jean Higgie.
Classifications
- Genres
- Art & Design, Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 704.9424 — Arts & recreation Arts Special topics in fine and decorative arts Iconography Specific subjects Human figures and their parts
- LCC
- PR9619.4 .H54 .M67 — Language and Literature English English Literature English literature: Provincial, local, etc.
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 113
- Popularity
- 284,152
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.94)
- Languages
- Dutch, English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 3
