GREAT HOUSEWIVES/ART - Softcover

Swain, Sally

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385251939 ISBN 13: 9780385251938

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 1988

Synopsis

Great Housewives of Art by Sally Swain

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

"Why don't art galleries display more images of modern woman's daily domestic grind?" Forty-two color pictures elaborate on the above question and similar ones raised in this witty visual spoof of "great" art, i.e., art made by men according to male esthetics. Thus, a composition whose neat geometry recalls Mondrian demands a second look: the apparently abstract configuration depicts a robotic woman ("Mrs. Mondrian") wielding a mop. Another woman (with blood trickling from an amputated ear) makes the bed of Van Gogh's famously awry room. And in this Dejeuner sur l'herbe , the female picnickers wear business suits while a man reclines in abashed nudity. The jokes are pungent and readily accessible--no arcane allusions here. Several gags misfire: "Mrs. Pollock Can't Seem to Find Anything Any More" (the image of a woman tearing her hair is embedded in blithely swirling strokes of color) obscures the historical "Mrs. Pollock," the noted painter Lee Krasner. Swain, an Australian, is a self-taught artist and illustrator.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0385251939
• ISBN 13: 9780385251938
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 96