WOMAN's. ART JOURNAL
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WOMAN's. ART JOURNAL (on the cover): Alice Nee I, Mary D. Garrard (1977), FALL I WINTER 2006 VOLUME 27, NUMBER 2 oil on canvas, 331/4" x 291/4". Private collection. 2 PARALLEL PERSPECTIVES By Joan Marter and Margaret Barlow PORTRAITS, ISSUES AND INSIGHTS 3 ALICE EEL A D M E By Mary D. Garrard EDITORS JOAN MARTER AND MARGARET B ARLOW 8 ALI CE N EEL'S WOMEN FROM THE 1970s: BACKLASH TO FAST FORWA RD By Pamela AHara BOOK EDITOR : UTE TELLINT 12 ALI CE N EE L AS AN ABSTRACT PAINTER FOUNDING EDITOR: ELSA HONIG FINE By Mira Schor EDITORIAL BOARD 17 REVISITING WOMANHOUSE: WELCOME TO THE (DECO STRUCTED) 0 0LLHOUSE NORMA BROUDE NANCY MOWLL MATHEWS By Temma Balducci THERESE DoLAN MARTIN ROSENBERG 24 NA CY SPERO'S M USEUM I CURSIO S: !SIS 0 THE THR ES HOLD MARY D. GARRARD PAMELA H. SIMPSON By Deborah Frizzell SALOMON GRIMBERG ROBERTA TARBELL REVIEWS ANN SUTHERLAND HARRis JUDITH ZILCZER 33 Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism ELLEN G. LANDAU EDITED BY N ORMA BROUDE AND MARY D. GARRARD Reviewed by Ute L. Tellini PRODUCTION, AND DESIGN SERVICES 37 The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine De Pizan's O LD CITY P UBLISHING, INC. Renaissance Legacy BYS uSAN GROAG BELL Reviewed by Laura Rinaldi Dufresne Editorial Offices: Advertising and Subscriptions: Woman's Art journal Ian MeUanby 40 Intrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel Rutgers University Old City Publishing, Inc. EDITED BY JORDANA POMEROY Reviewed by Alicia Craig Faxon Dept. of Art History, Voorhees Hall 628 North Second St. 71 Hamilton Street Philadelphia, PA 19123, USA 41 Eve's Daughter/Modern Woman: A Mural by Mary Cassatt New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA Phone: + 1.215.925.4390 Phone (732) 932-7041 ext.20 Fax: +1.215.925.4371 BYS ALLY WEBSTER Reviewed by Caroline I. Harris Fax (732) 932-1261 [email protected] [email protected] www.oldcitypublishing.com 44 Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent EDITED BY HOLLY PY E Co OR Reviewed by Donna Gustafson © 2006 Rutgers University, Department of Art History and Old City Publishing, Inc., 47 Framing Women EDITED BYS ANDRA CARRO LL, BIRGIT PRETZSCH AND Woman's Art Journal (ISSN 0270-7993.) is published semiannually, PETER WAG ER Reviewed by Melissa Percival Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter by Old City Publishing, Inc., a member of the Old City Publishing Group. All rights reserved. 49 Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonne Subscription rates $24.00 per year for individuals and $52.00 per year BY BARBARA BUHLER LYNES Reviewed by Sascha Scott for institutions. Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months after shipping date 51 Women Potters, Transforming Traditions BY MOIRA VINCENTE LLI or we cannot be responsible for replacements. All rights reserved. Rustic Cubism, Anne Dangar and the Art Colony at Moly-Sabata Indexed in Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), Art Bibliogra BYBR UCE ADAMS phies Modem, Arts and Hwnanitics Citation Index (lSI) and Wilson Magdalene Odundo ED ITED BY ANTHONY SLAYfER-RALPH Full Text. The full text is also available through JSTOR's Arts & Sciences ill Collection, www.jstor.org. Reviewed by Pamela H. 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Tina Modotti BY MARGARET HooKs Reviewed by Robin Rice For permission to photocopy for internal use within your organization, or to make copies for external or academic use please contact the 62 Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 Copyright Clearance Center at 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA EDITED BY MARl ON AR NO LD AND BR ENDA SCHMA HM ANN 01923, USA; telephone: +1 978-750-8400 or online at http: / /www.copy Reviewed by Elizabeth Rankin right.com / . Any unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or storage may result 65 Dialogues: Women Artists From Ireland in civil or criminal liability. BY KATY D EEPWELL Reviewed by Patricia Briggs ALICE NEEL AND M E By Mary D. Ga rrard n the winter of 1977, Ali ce Nee! painted me (front cover). with what I had become, I simply could not imagine a portrait When I came to her apartment and studio on West 107th that would not falsify at least half my identity. I Street in New York, I walked in the door, fresh from the cold, The portrait project was cold on the back burner until I met snowy street, and before I could take off my coat and hat, she Alice. Here was an artist who had for decades been painting said, "Stop, I want to paint you just like that." But I was not one portraits that were both realist and modernist. "Do you take o f N eel's chosen victims-the p ortrait cam e ab o ut as a commissions?" I asked . "Oh, yes," she said, and named a price, convergence of two factors. which was modest enough for me to propose to the patron, In 1977, I was just ending my term as the second president Lucile Clark Garrard . My poor mother didn' t know what she of Women's Cau cus for Art (WCA), the nati onal organiza ti on was in for, but she trusted me, and the project was set. of wom en in the visual arts.' In a photograph of an early When she first saw the portrait, my mother hated it. For a conference meeting I am accompanied by WCA officers Dian e long time, Norma was the only one who liked it, recognizing Russell, Claire Sh erman, Ellouise Sch oettler and orm a in it what she calls my intensity and centeredness. In her book Broude. At that time, I knew orma only as another WCA on Ali ce eel, Pamela Allara labeled this image "the militant lead er wh o h ad recently joined m y univers ity's art feminist activist, " and perhaps that's what my mother saw in it department. We began our life together as collaborators and too. I think in time she would have come to understand it, partners soon after the Neel portrait was painted. In the larger because she would surely have been a feminist if she'd known theater of fe minist acti vism, orma and I had come to know a how. Indeed, the very idea of her requesting my portrait might lot of artists and other fe minists who would become nati onally be counted a feminist gesture because, I realized much later, prominent. One of the m was Alice N ee! (1900-84), newly she might have wanted to offset my father's board-room style famous but grandly so. Two years later, she would be honored portrait hanging in their living room. But as it happened, my at President Jimmy Carter's White House, along with Louise mother would become ill and die within a year, at a moment Nevelson (1899-1988), Selma Burke (1900-95), Isabel Bishop when she was as troubled about what I was doing with my life (1902-88), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911 ), and Georgia O'Keeffe as about the portrai t. (1887-1986), in the WCA's first annual awards ceremony. The As photogra phs of the 1970s dem on stra te, s uch as one White House event was instigated by Ellouise Schoettler and showing Lucy Lippard picketing at the Whitney, I didn't look Norma Broude, and ca rried out by Judy Brodsky, my successor different from others in my world. Alice Nee! saw me in the as WCA president, and Washington artist Charlotte Robinson. uniform of the day, and, ever alert to the fit and misfit between I first met Nee! at a party at Charlotte Robinson's house in individuals and types, said, "I want to paint you like that. " Falls Church, Virginia. As I sat talking to her, a wicked thought Nan cy Nee!, her daughter-in-law and studio assistant, took me came into my head-and this is the second factor. For years, aside and whispered, "You don' t have to wear the coat and hat, my m o ther h ad wanted to h ave my portrait p ainted . She you know. Since this is a commission, you can have it however would pay for it, she said, but would leave it to me to find a you want." The art historia n in me took only an instant to suitable arti st. For years, I had demurred, protesting that no respond: "I want her to do her own idea. I want an Alice Nee!." good modern artists painted portraits-wouldn' t she be just as Wha tever tha t turned out to be, a t least it would set the happy w ith a nice photograph? I had resisted even the nice debutante to rest.