Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keeffe

by Anne Middleton Wagner

This original and sharply obser-vant book gives new significance to three important figures in the history of twentieth-century Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Anne Wagner looks at their imagery and careers, relating their work to three decisive moments in the history of American the avant-garde of the 1920s, the New York School of the 1940s and 1950s, and the modernist redefinition undertaken in the 1960s. Their artistic contributions were invaluable, Wagner demonstrates, as well as hard-won. She also shows that the fact that these artists were women―the main element linking the three―is as much the index of difference among their art and experience as it is a passkey to what they share.

Genres: Art, Art History, Feminism

323 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 1996

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This closely argued study of three women artists is a delight to read: it is rigorously researched, beautifully written and insightful.

The introduction is a highly provocative intervention into feminist art history that stresses the need to consider aesthetic criteria rather than simply political credentials. Or more accurately, the author argues for their interdependence. Wagner compares Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party to a Lynda Benglis Eat Meat. She refers to Benglis's work as part of the modernist avant-garde tradition with its recalcitrant resistence to easy interpretation, and argues that this kind of work has more political potential than Chicago's work, which by comparison, is much more closed and didactic.

Each chapter examines a woman artist in relation to the avant-garde tradition. The Hesse chapter is a brilliant reworking of the methods of psychobiography. I would recommend the book for that chapter alone, her evaluations of Krasner and O'Keefe are, however, equally provocative and fascinating.

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to read some solid art history again. This is an excellent work that aims to show 3 specific women in the context of their time and history and how that, and not some fundemental reality about womanhood effect their work and their reception, but perhaps more importantly how all that and these women's engagement with the social conditions of their time critiqued developed and added to Modernism

[Christo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very impressed by this feminist critique of three famous artists. Anne Wagner expertly dismantled the myths and critical cliches surrounding their work and provided wonderful readings of the works of Georgia O'Keefe, Lee Krasner and Eva Hesse. She managed to make very convincing arguments about how gender played a decided role in each of their creative endeavours, without ever claiming to have said the final word on the subject. Balanced and insightful.

[William]

I just flipped through it. . . need to really sit down and read it.