Written by Happy Women’s [Art] History Month from WAJ! If you’d like to review any of these books on contemporary women artists for us, please email me at apoe@womansartjournal.org. I’d be delighted to order you a complimentary review copy.
Happy reading!
– Alison Poe, Ph.D.
WAJ Book Reviews Editor
Edited by Victoria Sung, with text by Pio Abad, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Ruba Katrib, Nancy Lim, Matthew Villar Miranda, Victoria Sung, and Xiaoyu Weng. Pacita Abad. DAP/ArtBook, April 2023. On the Philippine American artist (1946–2004) best known for her large-scale, colorful, semiabstract masklike or abstract trapunto paintings—executed in acrylic on canvases stuffed and stitched like quilts—but whose thousands of works span a wide array of media. From a retrospective opening at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in April.
Ian Alteveer with Adam Eaker. Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023. The catalogue of the soon-to-open show at the Met of the New York-based British artist (b. 1969) whose expressive paintings, often of semiabstract nudes, “explore the intertwined themes of still life, memento mori, mirroring, and vanitas—symbolic depictions of human vanity or life’s brevity” (Met website). A review might bring in the Phaidon Contemporary Arts Series monograph Cecily Brown (2020) as well.
Helaine Posner, Rackstraw Downes, and Nicole Miller, with a conversation with Donna Dennis. Donna Dennis: Poet in Three Dimensions. Monacelli, 2023. On the American sculptor (b. 1942) who specializes in installations of sculpture that take architectural form, evoking cabins, subways, and other types of vernacular structures as “repositories for memory and feelings” (Phaidon/Monacelli Press website).
Edited by Julie Decker and Nicholas Bell, with text by Julie Decker, Nicholas Bell, Kristine Wong, Heather Davis, Stephanie Wakefield, Gean Moreno, and Stan Cox, and an interview of Mary Mattingly by Antonio Serio Bessa. Mary Mattingly: What Happens After. Hirmer, 2022. From the Anchorage Museum’s online exhibition of large-scale sculptures and installations by the American artist (b. 1978) dealing with the human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.
Edited by Catharina Manchanda, with text by Amada Cruz, Halima Taha, Catharina Manchanda, and Barbara Earl Thomas, and an interview with Barbara Earl Thomas by Catharina Manchanda. Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography of Innocence. Seattle Art Museum, 2021. From the show of luminous cut-paper portraits of Black children and teenagers by the Seattle-based American artist (b. 1948). In these works, the artist explains, “I ponder what comes with our preconceived notions of innocence and guilt, assigned in shades of light and dark, black and white” (14).