Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies

“Art and culture are not separate to our discussions about the politics of gender, race and representation; they are at its very heart,” posits art historian McCormack (The Art of Looking Up) in this illuminating look at how women’s bodies have been depicted in the arts. Examining work from Greek mythology and the Renaissance up to Instagram and Pinterest, she considers how archetypes in art have permeated the narrative around womanhood, which, she argues, until recently, has been largely controlled by men. She anchors her insightful study around four female stereotypes—Venus, Mothers, Maidens and Dead Damsels, and Monstrous Women—and lucidly explains the ways in which women’s bodies have become symbols of male desire, sex, and violence, their subjugation culturally treated as “the unquestionable natural order of things.” From Titian’s The Rape of Europa (1560–1562), through works by Picasso and Warhol, and even to the Trump campaign’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton as a modern Medusa, McCormack reveals how such imagery has come to influence today’s sexual politics, gender roles, misogyny, and racial attitudes, and she also gives credit to the women artists (including 17th-century Italian painter Elisabbeta Sirani, and contemporaries Beyoncé and artist Kara Walker) who’ve challenged these perceptions by celebrating female sexuality, pleasure, and power. This eye-opening work will leave readers with plenty to ponder. (Nov.)