The Arts
January 2018
Addressing the other woman
Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing
by Kimberly Lamm, Marsha Meskimmon
This book analyses how three artists - Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero and Mary Kelly - worked with the visual dimensions of language In the 1960s and 1970s. These artists used text and images of writing to challenge female stereotypes, addressing viewers and asking them to participate in the project of imagining women beyond familiar words and images of subordination. The book explores this dimension of their work through the concept of 'the other woman', a utopian wish to reach women and correspond with them across similarities and differences. To make the artwork's aspirations more concrete, it places the artists in correspondence with three writers - Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey - who also addressed the limited range of images through which women are allowed to become visible. Appealing to scholars and students of feminist art history, visual studies, and literature, the book offers a multi-faceted picture of the feminisms that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
