Gender and Art

In this intriguing book, a diverse collection of case studies sheds light on the effects of gender issues on the study of art history. Encompassing European art, architecture, and design from the sixteenth century to the present day, the book examines the role of gender difference in the production, consumption, and interpretation of works of art. The authors explore both the work of women artists and the ways that visual representation by both female and male artists may be gendered. The book opens with an examination of works by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian women artists, focusing on the conventions of feminine portraiture of the time. This is followed by studies of the role of gender within academic art practice, with attention to the work of women artists associated with the academies of France and England. In a section devoted to the relationship between gender and cultural authority in Britain, the authors consider seventeenth-century architecture and nineteenth-century art and design. The book’s final section examines some of the gendered associations within modernist theory and practice and provides an introduction to the forms of psychoanalytic theory that have influenced feminist art history.