His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art

by Wendy Lesser

Looks at the portrayal of women in art, photographs, motion pictures, and literature, and argues that male artists do not inevitably misrepresent women

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 1991

About the author

Wendy Lesser a critic, novelist, and editor based in Berkeley, California.

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of literary/cultural criticism. Lesser calls herself an "impressionistic critic," by which I think she means she calls 'em as she sees 'em. She isn't invested in any particular ideology or theory, so her approach to the all-male artists and writers she discusses doesn't have to be tethered to the dogmas of any particular "ism" or the jargon that goes with it. Her chapters on Randall Jarrell, Cecil Beaton, and Henry James are wonderfully insightful and just plain fun. But I think my favorite chapter is the one on King Vidor's STELLA DALLAS, which is in its way one of the finest pieces of film criticism I've ever read, and which holds a special place in my heart because it ennobles the copious tears I shed when I first watched this movie. Lesser convinces me that I wasn't wallowing in a tear-jerking guilty pleasure -- I was responding to a great work of cinematic art.