Written by IN PRAISE OF THE DOUBLE REVIEW
Many WAJ reviews, I humbly submit, serve to deepen scholarship. They not only summarize the book under review but also encapsulate the broader current understanding of the topic(s) discussed and bring the review author’s own thoughtfully considered insights into the conversation.
Double reviews—reviews of two books on the same subject, or on related themes—are especially good ways to contribute to scholarship.
A virtuoso example is Sarah Cowan’s double review in Fall/Winter 2023 of Lex Lancaster’s Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art and the Serpentine Galleries catalogue for Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing. Cowan sensitively yet with trenchant concision explores some of the less recognized potentialities of abstraction and figuration as brought forth in these volumes.
May I interest you, new and veteran WAJ contributors, in writing a double review for us, perhaps covering one of the below pairs of volumes (or in one case a group of three)? Is there another feminist art-historical subject you’d like to explore in depth through reviewing multiple books? Please let me know at apoe@womansartjournal.org. I’d love to order you two (or three) free books! 🙂
Happy reading,
Alison
Two ambitious approaches to 1970s activist women artists: The Tate’s catalogue of its just-ended show of 1970s–1980s Britain, and Amy Tobin’s study of the impact of 1970s liberation politics on women artists’ work
Linsey Young, ed. Women in Revolt! Tate, 2024.
Amy Tobin. Women Artists Together: Art in the Age of Women’s Liberation. Yale U Press, 2023.
Howardena Pindell: Studies of an African American painter and mixed-media artist whose career spans five decades
Fiona Bradley, Anna Lovatt, Amy Tobin, Howardena Pindell, and Adeze Wilford. Howardena Pindell: A New Language. Fruitmarket, 2022.
Sarah Louise Cowan. Howardena Pindell: Reclaiming Abstraction. Yale U Press, 2022.
Wendy Red Star: A monograph and an artist’s book of an Apsáalooke Native American artist who examines Indigenous representation and material culture through photographic collages, installations, and other works
Wendy Red Star, Jordan Amirkhani, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Josh T. Franco, Annika K. Johnson, Layli Long Soldier, and Tiffany Midge. Wendy Red Star: Delegation. Aperture, 2022.
Annika Johnson, Adriana Greci Green, Molly Malone, Chelsea Malone, and Wendy Red Star. Wendy Red Star: Bíilukaa. Radius, 2023.
Camille Henrot: Essays by and about a contemporary French artist exploring maternity through painting, drawing, and writing
Camille Henrot. Milkyways. Hatje Cantz, 2023.
Camille Henrot, Julika Bosch, Seamus Kealy, Legacy Russell, Marcus Steinweg. Camille Henrot: Mother Tongue. Hatje Cantz, 2023.
Cecily Brown and Mary Weatherford: Exhibition catalogues of two contemporary Anglophone abstract painters that could be the subject of a good triple review (!)
Ian Alteveer and Adam Eaker. Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023.
Ian Berry, Bill Arning, Elissa Auther, Arnold Kemp, and Rebecca Morris. Mary Weatherford: Canyon—Daisy—Eden. Rizzoli/Gagosian, 2022.
Francine Prose. Mary Weatherford: The Flaying of Marsyas. Rizzoli/Gagosian, 2024.
Two of the Getty’s Illuminating Women Artists volumes: How does this series frame these historical Italian woman painters?
Cecilia Gamberini. Sofonisba Anguissola. Getty, 2023.
Adelina Modesti. Elisabetta Sirani. Getty, 2023.