KIRKUS REVIEW

A potent study of feminist art and activism of the 1970s.

Princenthal, a contributing editor at Art in America, offers a scholarly but accessible survey of the ways women artists of the 1970s confronted sexual violence — rape, incest, and harassment — in their work. The book opens with a broad overview of the era's feminist politics and then proceeds thematically, examining performance art, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. The author's research is impressive: she interviewed many of the artists discussed and draws on a wide range of critical and archival sources. Her prose is clear and measured, and she is scrupulous about placing individual works in their historical and political contexts.

Among the artists considered are Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke, Nancy Spero, Adrian Piper, and Joan Jonas. Princenthal is especially good on the tensions between the personal and the political, and between aesthetic ambition and activist intent, that animated so much of this work. She is also attentive to the ways in which race and class inflected feminist art practice, and to the complex reception history of works that were sometimes dismissed, misread, or ignored.

The book is richly illustrated and includes extensive notes and a bibliography. Princenthal's account is measured and judicious, but she does not shy away from the discomfort that this art was designed to provoke. A concise and vital view of art and social change.