On the Cover
Maya
Lin,
Storm King Wavefield (2008), earthwork covering 4 acres of 11-acre
site. Collection of the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York.
© Maya Lin, Maya Lin Studio. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson.
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ISSUE
PARALLEL PERSPECTIVES
By Joan Marter and Margaret Barlow
PORTRAITS, ISSUES AND INSIGHTS
MAYA LIN’S PERPETUAL LANDSCAPES AND STORM KING WAVEFIELD
By Dina Deitsch
THE
MINIMAL PRESENCE OF SIMONE FORTI
By Virginia B. Spivey
BENEDETTA
CAPPA MARINETTI AND THE SECOND PHASE OF FUTURISM
By Siobhan M. Conaty
THE
EARLY CAREER OF VIOLET OAKLEY, ILLUSTRATOR
By Bailey Van Hook
REVIEWS
Kara
Walker:
My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love
ESSAYS
BY PHILIPPE VERGNE, SANDER L. GILMAN, KEVIN YOUNG,
THOMAS MCEVILLEY, ROBERT STORR, YASMIL RAYMOND
Reviewed by Lisa E. Farrington
Mary
Heilmann: To Be Someone
BY
ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG, JOHANNA BURTON AND DAVE HICKEY
Mary
Heilmann: Save the Last Dance for Me
BY
TERRY R. MYERS
Reviewed by Vittorio Colaizzi
Francesca
Woodman
BY
CHRIS TOWNSEND
Reviewed by Jovana Stokic
Chicana
Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities
BY
LAURA E. PÉREZ
Reviewed by Lynda Hoffman-Jeep
Women
Artists at the Millennium
EDITED
BY. CAROL ARMSTRONG AND CATHERINE DE ZEGHER
Reviewed by Patricia Mathews
Encounters
in the Virtual Feminist Museum:
Time, Space and the Archive
BY
GRISELDA POLLOCK
Reviewed by Susan Funkenstein
Elsie
Driggs: The Quick and the Classical
BY
CONSTANCE KIMMERLE
Reviewed by Betsy Fahlman
Frida
Kahlo: The Still Lifes
BY
SALOMON GRIMBERG
Frida
Kahlo: Song of Herself
BY
SALOMON GRIMBERG
Reviewed by Lynda Hoffman-Jeep
Cecilia
Beaux: American Figure Painter
BY
SYLVIA YOUNT, NINA AUERBACH, MARK BOCKRATH,
KEVIN SHARP, ALISON BECHTELWEXLER
Reviewed by Jennifer Zarro
The
Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France, 1814-1914
BY
TAMAR GARB
The
Body in Time:
Figures of Femininity in Late Nineteenth-Century France
BY
TAMAR GARB
Reviewed by Temma Balducci
conference was held at Rutgers University on April 3, 2009.
Participating in this event were speakers Robert Hobbs, Dina
Comisarenco, Midori Yoshimoto, and Tatiana Flores. All have
written for the journal during its three decades of publication.
The conference concluded with remarks by Founding Editor Elsa
Honig Fine. Following are excerpts Robert Hobbs’s presentation,
titled “Celebrating 30 Years of Woman’s Art Journal: Feminist
Deconstruction of Mainstream Art History.”
The vitality of artistic movements in the 20th century can
frequently be calculated in terms of the range, quality, and
depth of the periodicals that have been created with the
express purpose of disseminating information about them….
Considering the contributions WAJ has made, it is remarkable to
note that it was originally financed through the sale of an antique
$20 gold piece at the height of 1980’s gold fever.
Elsa Honig Fine had first become aware of the importance of
the women’s art movement in 1972 when she attended the
organizational meeting of the Women’s Caucus for Art in San
Francisco during the College Art Association’s annual
conference. This meeting convinced her of the movement’s
relevance to the visual arts, and encouraged her to write Women
and Art, published in 1978…a historical overview of women
painters and sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th
century.… After originally proposing a journal on women and
the arts to the Women’s Caucus for Art at the 1979 meeting in
Washington, D.C., Elsa Fine undertook the project on her
own…. Enunciating the program for her new periodical, Fine
pointed out: “While primarily concerned with recording a
hidden heritage, we are also interested in a reinterpretation of
art history from our new awareness as women….”
WAJ
was to be international in its focus, a goal that Fine
pursued over the years by travelling to the United Kingdom,
Scandinavia, and Israel in order to meet and enlist prospective
scholars to submit manuscripts of their studies. Fine wanted
WAJ
to be “a vehicle for the exchange of ideas and for honest
criticism”… Rather than advocating an art
historical or critical
position, the journal’s strength has been its open-endedness,
including its refusal to take sides in the internecine conflicts that
have plagued the feminist movement….
Although
WAJ’s organization
was responsive, peripatetic,
and opportune, depending entirely on the inclination and
interests of submitting scholars, names of survivors in need of
recognition, and the ever mounting spate of publication of
books and catalogues devoted to women, its role in the world of
mainstream art history is large. While it has and continues to
include traditional art historical essays, its overall impact has
not been the reinforcement of conventional (meaning
paternalistic) art history….
Considered categorically, WAJ
has in
fact undermined many of the assumptions of mainstream art
history. It is my contention that WAJ’s
primary focus as the
premier art historical periodical devoted exclusively to
women’s contributions to the visual arts as well as its
longevity
have enabled it to assume a significant role in deconstructing
the mainstream—that is the patriarchal art history that was
still
practiced in the 1970s and early 1980s. Although WAJ
has
published essays representing a number of art historical
approaches that range from old-fashioned, predominately
biographical insights to more advanced, subtly nuanced
theoretically conditioned arguments, its overall deconstructive
contributions have been far more important than any specific
group of essays or single issue….
Deconstruction
has opened up the possibility of theorizing
and then discerning new subject positions where only
enunciated or polarized ones were thought to exist. Although
any subject will ultimately deconstruct itself over time, the
process can be accelerated with the right set of incentives, and
I’m suggesting that the women’s movement in general
and WAJ
in particular did in fact accelerate the deconstruction of
mainstream art history—keeping its masculinist feet to the
fire,
so to speak—by providing new means of access and ways of
understanding…. The changes feminism in general and WAJ
in
particular have enacted on patriarchal art history…have
discrete life spans: once feminist art history becomes
mainstream, as it now is, the terms change, the sphere of history
makes an about turn, and now feminist art as a branch of
mainstream art history needs to become deconstructed.…
Today
the challenges facing WAJ are
vastly different from
those at its inception. Feminism’s acceptance into the
mainstream brings with it new as well as familiar challenges.
While masculinist inequities still persist, and the contributions
of worthwhile women artists, critics, art historians, collectors
and arts administrators still need to be acknowledged and
celebrated, as they have been in the WAJ,
the terms
“woman”
and “man” have assumed new subject positions for
many
people, and consequently different relationships and meanings.
The result of this repositioning of male and female roles is that
feminism in many guises needs to be updated and at times
deconstructed. More self-criticality and historical selfconsciousness
are warranted, not only in regards to the time
before the advent of mid-twentieth century feminism but also in
the period since then….
The
journal is very fortunate in having such highly
professional and conscientious co-editors as Joan Marter and
Margaret Barlow in addition to its admirable book editor Ute
Tellini. It’s also a testament to its importance and continued
relevance to the art historical field at large that it is being
published under the auspices of Rutgers University’s
Department of Art History. My sincere appreciation to all of you
who continue to make this periodical a valuable forum for new
scholarship on women in the visual arts. In conclusion, let me
say, “Bravo,” for a job very well done
Robert Hobbs
The
Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of Art History
Virginia
Commonwealth University
Visiting
Professor, Yale University
We continue to receive new submissions and encourage scholars to send
their articles for consideration. WAJ
guidelines for contributors and subscription information can be found
on our website, womansartjournal@womansartjournal.org.
Published
semiannually—May and November—since 1980, Woman's
Art Journal continues to
represent the interests of women and art worldwide. Our articles and
reviews
cover all areas of women in the visual arts, from antiquity to the
present day. Each issue presents current research on a variety of
topics, featuring "portraits" of women artists, "issues and
insights," and discerning reviews of recent books and exhibition
catalogues. Each article is well researched and clearly written. Our
authors are international scholars in their fields. A typical
60-page issue contains 20-25 color plates and 25-35 black-and-white
illustrations.
WAJ
is indexed on all major art indexes and bibliographies, and is used as
a supplementary text in many university courses on women and art. The
journal is found in university and major
libraries worldwide and in selected museum bookshops, including the
Metropolitan (New York), Philadelphia, and Nelson-Atkins (Kansas City),
and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington,
D.C.). The full text is also available in the electronic versions of
the Art
Index and through JSTOR’s
Arts & Sciences III Collection.
To request Advertising Rates,
contact WAJ
by email.
WAJ
is available by subscription.