Although I wish for more text in Andy Warhol: Piss and Sex Paintings and Drawings than the five pages of quotes from The Andy Warhol Diaries (1985), the line drawings from the 1950s are stunning and delightful, reminiscent of Jean Cocteau’s erotic work (see Jean Cocteau: Erotic Drawings, Guédraw, Evergreen, 1998). There are also obsessive variations of penis and asshole screen prints from the 1970s and reproductions of the piss paintings which do not, unfortunately, convey the subtle beauty of the originals. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2003, 100 pp., $50.00, paperback, ISBN 1-880154-82-X.
Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed by Gay Block (featured in Hammond’s Lesbian Art in America) covers thirty years of photographs and videotapes. Bertha Alyce was Southern, Jewish, beautiful, and wealthy. Block, the mother of two, identifies as lesbian. The photographs and text explore a conflicted, competitive relationship between mother and daughter, but also Block’s relationship with her brother and her woman lover. Rich with both interviews and color and black and white photos, Bertha Alyce is about being very rich, facelifts, fur coats, jewelry, her mother’s lovers and about coming to terms with the past. Includes a video on CD. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003, 292 pp, $39.95 hardcover, ISBN 0-8263-3094-0.
Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention by Martha Gever concentrates “on dimensions of lesbian celebrity related to cultural institutions and practices, discursive configurations, and political debates and developments.” It is a very engaging exploration of the operation of fame in the lives and times of Radclyffe Hall, Mercedes de Acosta, Bessie Marbury, Elsie de Wolfe, Martina Navratilova, and others; the ambivalent relationship of early gay liberation to internal and external authority; and more. New York: Routledge, 2003, 236 pp, $18.95 ($28.95 Canada) paperback, ISBN 0-415-94480-5.
Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age, edited by David Steinberg is a collection of sexually explicit black and white photographs. Seattle-based gay photographers Geoff Manasse and Paul Dahlquist are represented by several images each. Eight photographs are by Mark I. Chester including his six panel series, “Robert Chesley--ks portraits with harddick and superman spandex” and his “HIV-positive gay jewish deaf leatherman and shaved bottom.” Lesbian photographers include Phyllis Christopher, Jill Posener, Jessica Tanzer, Sharon Stewart, Lee Ann McGuire, Michele Serchuk, and Tee A. Corinne. Same-sex images are also by Mariette Pathy Allen [who has a new book coming out this fall], Vivienne Maricevic, Robert Adler, Barbara Nitke, Cliff Baker, and Michael Rosen. Two images are of threesomes. Included is a photo of gay porn star Scott O'Hara kissing his erect penis and an image of a pre-op MTF transperson with a male lover. My personal favorite is a charming butch/femme image (one woman with tattoo and glasses) by Michele Serchuk. San Francisco: Down There Press, 2003, 128 pp, $25.00 paperback, ISBN 0-940208-32-6.
Cheers for Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes by Laurie Toby Edison, essay by Richard F. Dutcher and Debbie Notkin, introduction by Michael Kimmel. In luminous black and white photographs, there are men of many ages, differing body types, different races. Some are marked by scars, some by tattoos, a few by amputations. One, before transitioning, appears in Edison’s book Women En Large. I like these nudes with friendly, open faces, casually posed, most lit by sunlight and located in domestic settings. San Francisco: Shifting Focus Press, 2003, 80 pp, $25.00 paperback, ISBN 0-9743343-0-8.
A new print run of The Cunt Coloring Book (the “adult coloring book” which the religious right keeps attacking) by Tee Corinne brings the in-print total to 28,000 copies. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1988, 48 pp, $7.95 paperback, ISBN 0-86719-371-9.
BOOK REVIEW
Ressler, Susan R., ed.
Women Artists of the American West
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2003)
ISBN: 0-7864-1054-X
For the publisher’s description and table of contents visit http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/
Reviewed by Samuel Duncan,
Associate Librarian/Cataloguer,
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
I work in an art museum where the West is largely portrayed as that of cowboys, Indians, and explorers, i.e. the male-dominated, popular view so vehemently eschewed in Women Artists of the American West. A flip through the museum’s recent collection catalog, which does not exclusively focus on art of the West, offers further evidence of male-centricity: a who’s who survey from the ranks of the great male American artists. To be expected, there are also a few trumpeted works from the luminary ranks of Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, and Louise Nevelson, and there is a peppering of examples from lesser-known artists such as Bessie Potter Vonnoh and printmakers Blanche Lazzell and Mabel Dwight. The photography collection seems more equitable in terms of women artists: Nell Dorr, Carlotta Corpron, Linda Connor, and Laura Gilpin are more equally represented with their male counterparts.
That I was spurred to consider the visibility of women artists within the museum’s collection is exactly the sort of response that I imagine Susan Ressler would applaud. Why do there seem to be more women photographers in the collection compared to other media? Has the museum been sexist in its acquisitions policy? I think not, but I do think, as Ressler would agree, that there is much to do in identifying and promoting the work of woman artists, especially those of the West. Surely this lack of awareness played a role in the limited number of women artists in the museum’s collection.
Women Artists of the American West is a step toward increasing the visibility of women artists. It contains fifteen essays by fourteen authors focusing on a wide selection of topics and media ranging from quiltmaking to digital art. The essays are brought together under four thematic categories identified by Ressler through the course of her studies: community, identity, spirituality, and locality. In additional to editing the work, she contributes the preface, a lengthy introduction, and two essays. The book grew from Ressler’s Web-based distance learning course [http://www.sla.purdue.edu/waaw/] of the same title, and many of the essays are available on the Web site, though some are in a different form. A biographical dictionary covering the artists follows the essays, as well as a bibliography and index.
An artist herself, Ressler imbues the work with passion and sensitivity, both in her writing and in choosing the essays from an interdisciplinary pool of other writers. There were distracting moments, though, when Ressler’s voice is stereotypically earthy: “The ‘garden’ of women artists is blooming, bursting with riotous and variegated color …” Her four thematic sections are an effective means of organization, and each section’s introduction nicely sets the stage for the material that follows. The essays cover a lot of territory, and passionately, but they seem to be largely focused on art of the Southwest, in particular New Mexico and stretching to California. Time periods are more evenly distributed. They are also limited to a selection of artists, so necessarily there are many key figures left out. Lesbian artists are strongly represented. A final section, “Telling Visions,” offers two autobiographical essays that touch on the four themes; both seem somewhat overwrought. The biographical section is of limited use as a general reference tool (and I was hoping it would be) since it only covers those artists discussed in the essays. Many of the color illustrations are poorly reproduced, and a large number appear to be slightly out of focus.
Women Artists of the American West makes a valuable contribution by looking at a variety of artists from the West, examining them from many angles, while focusing on the unique vision they impart as women working under the influence of that geography. Equally valuable is that it acts as a prism, urging us to view the West as a multifarious place (which even has room for a few cowboys and Indians).