Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art

by Noah Charney, Ingrid Rowland (Foreword by), Marina Abramovic (Afterword)

Overview

Discover anew the herstory of art that Publishers Weekly calls "illuminating" and Foreword Reviews calls "spirited" for an enlightening art history read.

How many female artists can you name? Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marina Abramovic? How about female artists who lived prior to the Modern era? Maybe Artemisia Gentileschi and then… even a regular museum-goer might run out of steam. What about female curators, critics, patrons, collectors, muses, models and art influencers?

This book provides a 360 degree look at the role, influence, and empowerment of women through art—including women artists, but going beyond those who have taken up a brush or a chisel. In 1971, Linda Nochlin published a famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” This book responds to it by showing that not only have there been scores of great women artists throughout history, but that great women have shaped the story of art. The result is a book that sheds light on the art world in a very new way, finally celebrating the great women artists and influencers who deserve to be much better known. The entire history of art can be told as a herstory of art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538170991
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2023
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	427,456
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Noah Charney is the internationally best-selling author of more than a dozen books, most recently, The Devil in the Gallery: How Scandal, Shock, and Rivalry Shaped the Art World, and including The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art, which was nominated for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. He is a professor of art history specializing in art crime, and has taught for Yale University, Brown University, the American University of Rome, and the University of Ljubljana. He lives in Slovenia.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We’re supposed to think that Jackson Pollock invented drip painting, and with it the American branch of Abstract Expressionism. He did, didn’t he? So say Life and Time magazine and countless art history books and professors in dimly lit lecture halls, their brows tinted by the light from the projector, their words backed by the windy hum of its motor. The first drip, or all-around painting—made by the revolutionary technique of splattering and dripping paint on the fly while approaching the canvas from all angles, as it lay on the floor—was Pollock’s 1947 Galaxy. Wasn’t it?

It makes for a good story. Pollock was the macho, hard-drinking, Wyoming-raised cowboy of postwar American art—Hemingway with a paint bucket. Painting within the lines, the traditional way, wasn’t manly enough for a rebel like him. And he certainly made a name for himself. He remains one of the two most famous American painters, along with Andy Warhol. Americans, especially American men in the 1940s and 1950s, blazed trails and cast their shadows across the globe. This is the narrative that we’ve been taught.

And it’s all wrong. Or rather, it’s been airbrushed and skewed to fit this idea that men, particularly American men, are the trailblazers. This is so in just about every sphere, but in our case, we’re talking about art.

Insert audible sigh and rolling of the eyes here.

That’s what this book seeks to correct. For what has so often been overlooked or airbrushed out—brushed aside (pun intended)—is the role of women in the story of art. As artists, of course, but there are other books that showcase women artists (though in a different way than we will here). I’m interested in shining the spotlight on the overshadowed role of women in all aspects of art and its history. Not just as artists, but also as patrons, curators, influencers, critics, scholars, models, muses, and more. The result will, I hope, show a 360-degree view of women in art. So, how do we make the history of art into the herstory of art?

Let’s begin by gently bumping Jackson Pollock off his pedestal. Because all-over painting and the drip technique were actually invented by a Ukrainian grandmother.

Table of Contents

List of Artworks

Foreword by Ingrid Rowland

Acknowledgments

Note from the Author

Introduction

Part One

Art Herstory: The Movements Without Men

1. Renaissance to Realism
2. Salons and Academies
3. Concept and Statement
4. Performance and Feminism

Part Two

Art Herstory: Beyond the Creators

1. Courtly Patrons & Collectors
2. Modern Influencers
3. Critics and Scholars

Afterword: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? by Marina Abramović

Selected Bibliography

Notes

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

06/26/2023

In this breezy and illuminating survey, art historian Charney (The Devil in the Gallery) spotlights female artists, patrons, curators, influencers, critics, scholars, models, and muses who shaped the art world. He notes that women are thought to have created 75% of cave handprints, making them some of “the very oldest painters in history,” while Catharina van Hemessen (1528–1565) was the first person to paint a self-portrait of an artist at work. Louise Jopling (1843–1933), the first woman admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists, was “as important a political figure as she was a painter” and campaigned for women’s right to vote; sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962) established in 1932 New York City the first art studio helmed by a “prominent artist” that enrolled Black students. Meanwhile, untrained artist and mother-of-five Janet Sobel (1893–1968) pioneered drip painting—preceding Jackson Pollock’s use of the method—though she was often overlooked by art critics who derisively cast her as a “Brooklyn housewife.” While some entries are rather cursory (art collector Peggy Guggenheim, for instance, occupies only one page), those seeking an accessible introduction to women’s art history will be pleased by Charney’s lucid prose and faithful renderings of these often-overlooked figures both as artists and as unique, distinctive personalities. It’s worth checking out. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"One wonders what wonders she would have wrought," writes Noah Charney in hisstory of the herstory of art. At last we have a proper herstory! This book is an admirable, fully-fledged overview of great women in the story of art.

Meta Grgurevic

With characteristic wit and élan, Charney takes us on a romp through centuries of art, focusing his scrutiny on the women who “have shaped the story of art.” This highly readable and engaging “herstory” of art offers a sweeping bird’s eye view, a personal and passionate panorama that introduces the reader to a wide range of artists, periods, and styles. Famous female artists are joined by myriad others, who have been forgotten or never properly acknowledged and yet, whose contributions deserve recognition. Charney also tells us about “influencers”: muses, patrons, collectors, critics, and scholars—women who each in their way have left a lasting mark on art. As we learn about their work and their lives, Charney regales us with a cornucopia of tasty—and memorable—tidbits.

Véronique Plesch

Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art is not only a brilliant volume, full of anecdotes straight from the art world, from which you won’t be able to tear yourself away, but it is also a game changer in how we look at the past. As we dive into Charney’s words, we are challenged to ask ourselves to what extent were men the protagonists of the realm of art: was it really Jackson Pollock the one who created the dripping technique? Or rather a female figure overshadowed by Pollock and almost entirely forgotten? Isn’t Artemisia Gentileschi at least as good as other celebrated baroque painters?

Anna Sumislawska

As he did in The 12-Hour Art Expert, Charney offers an accessible, different, and fascinating look at art history. Here his ‘goal is to provide a broad, multi-angled view of how women have shaped the story of art.’ In addition to recognizing the still-underappreciated legacy of women artists, he also chronicles the equally important and freshly interesting contributions of women as collectors, patrons, critics, curators, scholars, influencers, and more. The first part covers women artists across a wide span of time and art movements, from ‘Renaissance to Realism’ to ‘Salons and Academies’ to ‘Concept and Statement’ to ‘Performance and Feminism.’ The second half, ‘Beyond the Creators,’ portrays women in key supporting roles, ensuring that art is seen, understood, and preserved. Charney's survey goes a long way in filling in the gaps in art history caused by years of male-biased perspectives. Crisp color illustrations, a selected bibliography, and extensive notes enhance this enlightening and enjoyable volume. Art lovers and researchers alike will find much to appreciate in this unusually inclusive and expert celebration of women in art.

Booklist

Without patronizing, without flattery, without teary penitence, Noah Charney writes about women artists throughout global history, searching for the ‘herstory’ of art. Precise, informative, within context and with perspective, he is a witty and unreserved lover of art and a lover of creative women. This is a precious book, at once passionate and informative.

Svetlana Slapšak

Art historian Noah Charney’s book Brushed Aside is a colorful overview of underrecognized women artists and art influencers throughout history. While an estimated 75 percent of the human handprints found with cave paintings belonged to women, the record of women artists and their works through time is hazy, Charney notes. This survey of women artists and influencers corrects the record with a focus on European and American artists, patrons, and critics, showing that there have always been great women artists and supporters of the arts, even at times when men got credit for their innovations.… Brushed Aside is a spirited art history book covering the unheralded women who shaped art history as artists, patrons, and critics.

Foreword Reviews

Feminist art historian Noah Charney broadens the landscape about the roles women have played in art history. Traversing time and location, Charney’s trailblazing globe-trotting narrative challenges the established and now settled tropes surrounding the feminist movement that developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. Inclusive of collectors, commissioners, curators, and critics, alongside the art makers themselves, Charney presents a narrative through a new lens which has formerly been the coveted domain of female art historians. Thus, his book is valuable by presenting a paradigm shift in terms of how art history is understood and delivered.

Penelope Jackson MNZM

2023-06-20
An encyclopedic series of short biographies focused on overlooked women in art history.

In this “herstory,” Charney, a professor of art history and author of The Devil in the Gallery and The Collector of Lives, aims to “teach the history of art using only female artists.” While he succeeds at finding representatives for each major historical movement, the author frequently leans too far into his subjects’ lives and omits descriptions of their work. The book is underillustrated, many features are forgettable due to their lack of visual information, and Charney rarely paints a picture with his prose. This is particularly frustrating as he explicitly touts the importance of balancing biography with art appreciation. Regarding Judith and Holofernes, a violent work by baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi that was likely influenced by her own history of sexual abuse, Charney writes, “this masterpiece should be considered as a great artwork unto itself, avoiding an over-focus on Artemisia’s biography that turns the work’s analysis into a revenge fantasy while ignoring its technical brilliance.” Despite this, much of the text is too focused on biography. To his credit, Charney offers a unique twist and expands the scope of his history to include women patrons and collectors, many of whom were instrumental in the formation of major museums. He closes with a new take on Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” offering a lukewarm urge to reframe the discussion. He finds her argument “concerning, potentially destructive to the art historical narrative, to empowering women, to giving credit to those heroines of the past. The same point can be made in a supportive, inclusive way.” Unfortunately, Charney’s book falls short of being empowering, as the cascading biographies eclipse the spirit of his subjects. Readers intrigued by the subject should turn to Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men.

A well-intentioned but underdeveloped new perspective in art’s discourse.

Kirkus Reviews