Can male artists ever truly represent the female experience? For centuries, they had the monopoly on the subject; women were not admitted to art schools until the late nineteenth century and there were few professional female artists before the twentieth century.
But the work of women artists, though largely unrecognised in the professional art world, has a long and diverse history, while as subjects women have been the focus of a myriad works, as generations of male artists have tried to capture the prismatic essence of the feminine. Did these male artists ever succeed? Were their attempts invalidated by their gender, or is it possible to transcend gender and look purely with the artist's eye? And, comparing similar objects by male and female artists, how can we judge their creators' comparative degrees of achievement?
These are the questions that Judy Chicago, artist, feminist and writer, and Edward Lucie-Smith, critic and art historian, have addressed in 'Women And Art'. With a brief to choose from the whole of art history they have selected images - by men and women - that in some way reflect both the many aspects of being a woman and the experience of viewing women through the artist's eye. The result is a sharp, vivid dialogue on the female image, and a triumphant celebration of the feminine.
