Hungry for Light: The Journal of Ethel Schwabacher

American painter Ethel Schwabacher (1903-1984) rebelled against her fellow Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, deeming their work anti-human and hostile to women. In her later mythological paintings, made during the period covered by this lyrically precise journal (1967-1980), she used figures such as Eurydice and Prometheus to recast her own life on an epic scale. These fragmentary jottings mingle joyous visions, ruminations on Michelangelo, Cezanne and Chinese art, an analysis of Schwabacher's own creative process and meditations on old age. Her self-analysis yields memories of her father's infidelities, of her yearnings for primal union with her mother and of a sexually charged relationship with her brother. Schwabacher battled suicidal impulses to produce luminous paintings, reproduced here in 33 color and black-and-white plates. Webster, the artist's daughter, and Johnson, an English and women's studies professor at the State University of New York, have skillfully edited this journal. Photos. (May)