Reclaiming female agency : feminist art history after postmodernism

This volume is the third in an influential series of anthologies by editors Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard that challenge art history from a feminist perspective. Following their Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany (1982) and The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (1992), this new volume identifies female agency as a central theme of recent feminist scholarship. Framed by a lucid and stimulating critical introduction, twenty-three essays on artists and issues from the Renaissance to the present, written in the 1990s and after, offer a nuanced critique of the poststructuralist premises of 1980s feminist art history. Contributors: Allison Arieff, Janis Bergman-Carton, Babette Bohn, Norma Broude, Anna C. Chave, Julie Cole, Bridget Elliott, Mary D. Garrard, Sheila ffolliott, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Ruth E. Iskin, Geraldline A. Johnson, Amelia Jones, Maud Lavin, Julie Nicoletta, Carol Ockman, Erica Rand, John B. Ravenal, Lisa Saltzman, Mary D. Sheriff Here's looking at me : Sofonisba Anguissola and the problem of the woman artist / Mary D. Garrard Learning to be looked at : a portrait of (the artist as) a young woman in Agnès Merlet's Artemisia / Sheila ffolliott Artemisia's hand / Mary D. Garrard The antique heroines of Elisabetta Sirani / Babette Bohn Pictures fit for a queen : Peter Paul Rubens and the Marie de' Medici cycle / Geraldine A. Johnson The portrait of the queen : Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun's Marie-Antoinette en chemise / Mary D. Sheriff Depoliticizing women : female agency, the French Revolution, and the art of Boucher and David / Erica Rand Nudity à la grecque in 1799 / Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby A woman's pleasure : Ingres's Grande Odalisque / Carol Ockman Conduct unbecoming : Daumier and Les Bas-bleus / Janis Bergman-Carton The gendering of impressionism / Norma Broude Selling, seduction, and soliciting the eye : Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère / Ruth E. Iskin Mary Cassatt : modern woman or the cult of true womanhood? / Norma Broude The "strength of the weak" as portrayed by Marie Laurencin / Bridget Elliott New encounters with Les demoiselles d'Avignon : gender, race, and the origins of cubism / Anna C. Chave The new woman in Hannah Höch's photomontages : issues of androgyny, bisexuality, and oscillation / Maud Lavin Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and the collaborative construction of a lesbian subjectivity / Julie Cole Louise Bourgeois's Femmes-maisons : confronting Lacan / Julie Nicoletta Reconsidering the stain : on gender and the body in Helen Frankenthaler's painting / Lisa Saltzman Minimalism and biography / Anna C. Chave The "sexual politics" of The dinner party : a critical context / Amelia Jones Cultural collisions : identity and history in the work of Hung Liu / Allison Arieff Shirin Neshat : double vision / John B. Ravenal. 'Reclaiming Feminine Agency' identifies female agency as a central theme of recent feminist scholarship & offers 23 essays on artists & issues from the Renaissance to the present, written in the 1990s & after AN UNUSUAL PORTRAIT by Sofonisba Anguissola gained new prominence from its illustration in color in Whitney Chadwick's Women, Art, and Society (1990).