Women in the Picture: Women, Art and the Power of Looking

A bold reconsideration of women in art – from the ‘Old Masters’ to the posts of Instagram influencers. ‘I’m glad this book was written because it felt like the scales were falling from my eyes as I read it. Women will continue to be objectified in art and in popular culture, but the book sheds a generous amount of angry light on how we got here.’ – The Herald A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale… Women’s identity has long been stifled by a limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history’s classics to advertising, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles. In this impassioned book, art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images – from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. She also shows us how women artists – from Berthe Morisot to Beyonce, Judy Chicago to Kara Walker – have offered us new ways of thinking about women’s identity, sexuality, race and power. Women in the Picture gives us new ways of seeing the art of the past and the familiar images of today so that we might free women from these restrictive roles and embrace the breadth of women’s vision. AUTHOR: Dr Catherine McCormack is an art historian and independent curator. She is the founder and course leader of the ‘Women and Art’ study programme at Sotheby’s Institute of Art where she teaches on art, race and gender. She is the author of The Art of Looking Up (2019) and her written work has featured in The Architectural Review, the Independent and Harper’s Bazaar as well as numerous exhibition catalogue essays on historical and contemporary art. — ISBN13: 9781785786952