The book lists details on various forms of art, highlights on the Italian city of Bologna, traces 'Western Art History' and mentions global names in western art. Rating: 4 Stars.
Do women have to be naked to get into the MET museum?
The above headline screamed from a poster designed in 1989 by The Guerilla Girls, a group dedicated to exposing discrimination in the art world. In the same vein, we bring you a very interesting book ‘The Story of Art Without Men’ by Katy Hessel, to close women’s month. Ask yourself, when was the last time you referenced a woman artist in your conversations. A random Google search of the world’s best artist reveals the greats; Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Dali and Rembrandt. Does this mean that women artists have uniformly been wanting in skill and vision?
This realisation hit Katy Hessel, when she walked into an Art Fair in 2015, where among more than a thousand paintings on display, not a single one was by a woman. Hessel is a famous art historian, educated at the reputed University College London (UCL). She has painstakingly chronicled a 500-year survey of art by women from the 1500s to 2020s, in her book.
Our five Bookstrapping insights are as follows -
I say this with great regret that my review does not do justice to the book. The book changes a social paradigm and compels us to think beyond what we take for granted. The book is both inspiring and indispensable.
But here's something we can do. Before your next conversation on art, look up Amrita Pritam, Jadé Fadojutimi, Flora Yukhnovich and Plautilla Nelli.
Who’s Plautilla Nelli? The painter of another version of ‘The Last Supper.’ Yes, we know Da Vinci painted one too!
The author, Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta, is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ On Twitter @OfficialReetaRG.
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