Women, Art and Society was first published in 1990 and quickly came to be regarded as an essential and popular survey of women artists from the Middle Ages to the present.
The book was intended to provide a general introduction to the history of women’s involvement in the visual arts, focusing on painters and sculptors and the ideologies that shaped production and representation. Chadwick challenged the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule, who transcended their sex to produce great works of art. Rather, Chadwick’s survey re‐examines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, related often to gender. As an introductory book, Chadwick does not seek to uncover new biographical facts or archival texts, but to use the research of others to “reframe” the many issues raised by feminist art historians.
Although the book moves chronologically forward, each chapter is written as an essay in itself, examining an aspect of the history of women artists. For this third edition, Chadwick has written an additional chapter, bringing this book right up to date in terms of developments in contemporary art.
There have been many changes in the world since this book was published, and even since its second edition in 1996 (RR 97/249). Globalisation, shifting demographic and geographic realities, and new technologies have altered our perception of the world. This new chapter focuses, in particular, on the many international exhibitions that have emerged during the 1990s – an arena where transnational and transcultural ideas in art can be exchanged and circulated. Chadwick examines the involvement of women artists in these exhibitions and the dramatic increase in their representation between the years of 1989 and 1999, to the extent that a quarter of all artists exhibiting at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 were women. International exhibitions have now become an important showcase for women artists from around the world.
Chadwick’s classic book is ambitious in scope and impressive in argument and information. This third edition brings her arguments right up to date as she charts the position of women in the contemporary art world.
