Synopses & Reviews
Voicing Today's Visions is a compelling and deeply enjoyable anthology of women artists' writings, essential reading for understanding the meaning of being a woman and artist today.
Writing provides a valuable medium through which the voices of women artists can be heard. Although all artists' writings are important sources for analyzing the art they have produced, those by women artists have had special significance. While artists of both genders ask similar questions (such as What is an artist? Am I an artist?), women artists have often had another level to negotiate to claim their artistic vocations. In this volume, fourteen contemporary women artists articulate the personal and aesthetic issues that shape their lives and their works.
Like the earlier, critically acclaimed Voicing Our Visions: Writings by Women Artists (Universe, 1991), which offered the writings of 19th and 20th-century women artists, much of the material in this sequel is only now made widely accessible. Each artist is introduced by a representative work of art and brief biographical sketch that examines her place in the history of art. Spanning diverse artistic styles, media, and written genres, featured artists include: Dorothy Dehner, Agnes Martin, May Stevens, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Audrey Flack, Eva Hesse, Monica Sjöö, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Mary Kelly, Howardena Pindell, Harmony Hammond, Barbara Kruger, Adrian Piper, [and] Cecilia Vicuña.
About the Author
Mara Witzling is Professor, Department of Art and Art History and the Women's Studies Program, at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Her previous titles include
Voicing Our Visions: Writings by Women Artists (Universe, 1991) and
Mary Cassatt: A Private World (Universe, 1991). She is a frequent lecturer and contributor to scholarly periodicals.