According to the ethos of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a woman’s
natural destiny was to be a wife, mother, and
guardian of the
virtues of hearth and home. Some women wanted more, however, and
despite cultural
expectations chose to
explore their creativity and seek training in art. Often at considerable social cost these women exchanged washboards, ovens, and mending baskets for the challenges of a piece of canvas or block of stone.
In Skirting the Issue, authors Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss present dozens of women from Indiana who chose this route. The authors include a biographical dictionary detailing the lives of one hundred of the state’s historical women artists, and they single out nearly forty of them for further examination in detailed essays. They describe the challenges the artists faced, the sacrifices they had to make, and the varying degrees of success they met, and they present numerous examples of the artists’ work. While this first-of-a-kind book focuses on Indiana women specifically, its stories offer excellent insights into the culture and values of the greater Midwest—and the nation at large—in the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century.
Skirting the Issue includes more than two hundred images, including full-color reproductions of artworks and black-and-white photographs of the artists themselves..
Price: $41.57
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