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3 - LAM BDA RISING BOOK REPORT
A G uidebook fo r a Place To G o in O ne9s M in d
by Tee A. Corinne
It seems to me to be a wonderful time
in which to be a woman artist: feminism has
made a change in the art world (I can rem
ember what it was like before) and the power
of women networking, sharing ideas and
information and writing about each other’s
work is strong in ways that were hard to
imagine twenty-five years ago. Regionalism,
pluralism and a respect for content are all
ascending and these are good signs for
women artists who are often perceived as a
different region by established art interests.
It is a credit to the persistance of our
nineteenth century foremothers that women
have equal access to art education even if we
(Museum photo from the book)
haven’t yet managed financial parity in the
gallery/museum juggernaut.
The new National Museum of Women
in the Arts which opened in April in Washing
ton, D.C., has caused a flurry of media inter
est in women in the arts: debates, arguments,
should there be such a place, shouldn’t there,
etc. I think the attention is wonderful. People
are dragging out the statistics and looking at
them again, noticing that there are still huge
gaps and inequalities in who gets collected,
included in gallery and museum shows, pub
licized, made the subject of books.
It seems to me that the new museum is
the result of many dreams focusing on the
same need at the same time. It was created
out of a leap of faith, exists as a place to go in
the mind as well as in reality. I think it will
function as a locus of activity and research, a
stimulant, a pilgrimage site. It gives us art
from a women’s eyes view. It doesn’t matter
how similar or different these images are to
works by men. What really matters is notic
ing that women did them, learning the women
artists’ names, finding more of their work.
N A T IO N A L M U S E U M O F W OM EN I N TH E ARTS, edited by Margaret B. Rennolds (Harry
N. Abrams, 253 pp. $35.001.
moving women from the periphery to the
center of our consideration.
Coinciding with the opening of the
museum, the publishing house of Harry N.
Abrams has brought out an impressive book
titled N A T IO N A L M U S E U M O F W OM EN
I N T H E ARTS, 253 pages, large format,
glossy paper, bright color, crisp reproduc
tions. Two hundred and thirty works of art
from the museum’s permanent collection are
reproduced, sixty-nine in color, accompanied
by text and a contemporary image of each
artist.
A ll the pictures are beautiful.
Alessandra Comini’s introduction is
thought-provoking and offers many answers
to the question “ W hy a National Museum of
Women in the A rts?” Comini in her summa
tion notes that the permanent collection
insures “ that the whole story of art be told....
It presents not a footnote to the history of
art, but a supplement; not a ghetto, but an
extension.”
W hat’s best about this book is the
reproductions of artwork and the likenesses
of the artists. The text is strongest in pre
senting the larger world in which the artists
lived and worked. There are, however, con
fusing inconcistencies when discussing art
ists’ personal lives. Children are mentioned
with no notation about whether or not the
artist had married. Sometimes marriages are
cited but not subsequent divorces or wido
whoods. The beginning of Gabriele Numter’s
affair with Kandinsky is highlighted, but not
the end which had a devastating effect on her
work.
The details of artists’ lives make them
more memorable, help lodge the artists in our
minds. When individual particularities are
glossed over, as they are in this text, the
artists become homogenized, lose some of
their uniqueness and their power.
For anyone interested specifically in
work by lesbian artists this collection has a
few delights. But, missing are examples of the
work of Harriet Hosmer, Romaine Brooks,
Emma Stebbins, Alice Austen, Edmonia
Lewis, Emma Jane Gaye, Edith Watson, Flor-
ence Wyle, Frances Loring, Anee Whitney,
and Gluck. One cannot tell from the text that
any of the artists who are mentioned might be
lesbian.
The treatment of Rosa Bonheur is a
case in point. The collection of the museum
includes a drawing and a painting by Bon
heur, both of sheep. The accompanying text
describes Bonheur as leading an “ uncon
ventional life-style... She smoked cigarettes
in public, rode astride, and wore her hair
-
short. From her teens, she favored men's
attire.” O f Bonheur's fifty-three year alliance
with Nathalie Micas or of her passionate
involvement with the younger American
painter, Anna Klumpke, there is not one
word. One of Klumpke's paintings of Bon
heur is reproduced as a "contemporary”
image of the artist. It was done with a loving
eye.
I keep asking, “ Is this really impor
tant?” And answering, "Yes, it is.”
As I ’ve searched, as an artist and a
lover of women, for role models. I ’ve found
the things unsaid to be continually frus
trating and disorienting. I remember my
elation on reading James Saslow’s article
“ Closets in the Museum” in LA V E N D E R
C U LTU R E (JA Y A N D YO U N G , JOVE/
HBJ) that George Dyer was Frances Bacon’s
lover. Bacon’s portraits of George D yer’s
death suddenly exploded with meaning for
me. Saslow points out that information
about relationships “ calls our attention to a
potential layer of meaning in the work.”
Although this layer is less obvious in Bon
heur's portraits of sheep, I sometimes won
der if she chose to work with animal imagery
because it would tell less about her than
human scenes might.
Some of Berenice A b b o tt’s pho
tographs in the museum collection are also of
variant interest. In the main body of the
book is one of her portraits of the bisexual
poet Edna St. Vincenty Millay wearing a
necktie and looking rather sad; though the
print quality is gorgeous.
Further in the book is an Abbott
photo of J anet Flanner wearing an
embroidered blouse. Flanner wrote for the
New Yorker for fifty years using the pen
name Genet. Some of her correspondence and
a wonderful group of scrapbooks about her
are housed in the “ Flanner/Solano Papers”
in the Library of Congress. More letters
appear in D A R L IN G H IS S IM A (M URRAY,
R AN D O M HOUSE)--witty, romantic, intel
ligent and charming.
The museum book also contains
A b b ott’s grand photo of Djuna Barnes in
profile: troublesome Djuna who claimed she
wasn’t really a lesbian, she just made a fool
of herself over Thelma Wood. Thelma Wood
was also an artist. Their relationship lasted
ten years.
Included also is Louis Abbema’s “ Por-
trait of a Young Girl in Blue Ribbon,” a
pastel of a pouty, serious looking child. Abb-
ema, who was French and a close friend of
Sarah Bernhardt, wore fancy male attire,
smoked cigars, and was quite public in the
It presents not a footnote to the history of art, but a
supplement; not a ghetto, but an extension. -
expression of her lesbianism.
Finally there is Gwen John, who spent
most of her adult life in Paris. John was
known for her passionate attachments to
both men and women and ultimately to the
Catholic Church. She is represented by two
pieces: a charcoal of a surly looking young
woman and a water color of a woman, in
profile, holding a missal near an empty chair.
Who were these women, how did they relate
to John’s life?
More questions arise about what may
have been left out. What was the nature of
Ellen Day Hale’s relationship with Gabrielle
de Veaux Clements with whom she studied
and later lived? So much as been left unsaid.
(Portrait (ran Ihr <hut )*rk*tl
On the other hand, that leaves us so
much more to do which brings me back to the
existence of the museum, its library, its
power to inspire directly, through making
originals available, and indirectly, through
publications, posters, cards, etc. It is fulfil
ling all of these funcitons. I f I ask for more,
it is to insure that the new plenitude extends
to all women and embraces all of our varie
ties.
Should you buy this book, it’s a bar
gain. Many of the pictures and much of the
text is not available elsewhere. Hopefully
each artist will have a book of her own, soon.
It is all very exciting.
The A. Gorinne is a writer and artist best
known for her S IN IS T E R W ISD O M poster.
Her work appears in E R O T IC IN T E R
LUDES, Y A N TR A S O F W OM ANLOVE,
and O N OUR BACKS. She writes an art
books column for F E M IN IS T BOOK
STO RE NEWS.
JONATHAN A Lavender Slasher, A Crimson Edge
KELLERMAN
OVER T H E EDGE, by Johnathon Kellerman
(Atheneum, 373 pp. $17.95)
by Jack Garman
Three-fifteen a.m. Dr. Alex Delaware,
semi-retired psychologist, gets an emergency
call from a past patient, Jamey Cadmus, a
19-year-old, gay super-genius. Word salad.
Hallucinations. On the lam, Jamey is rea
ching out for sanctuary from himself, his
voices, his tormentors. The line goes dead.
The call leads Dr. D. (Jamey's by-name
for Delaware) to a psychiatric hospital, its
director who happens to be a pre-CIA mind
drug researcher, and a family whose members
include California land boom developers and
flower child peaceniks, and whose destiny is
somehow linked to an unconvicted Nazi war
criminal. Jamey has escaped the hospital and
been charged with the Lavender Slasher mur
ders, a series of ritualistic sex slayings. This
gallery of model citizens are all convinced of
his guilt, by reason of insanity-but not Dr. D.
He won’t sign onto this legal defense team
until he knows precisely about the game.
Dr. D. has the detachment of a lab-
bound scientist and the loving-kindness of
the average saint. Ever sensitive to the sligh
test nuance, he keeps these seemingly con
tradictory aspects of character in perfect
balance while meticulously pursuing the
daunting checklist of damning evidence
against Jamey. The director of the private
hospital from which Jamey has escaped par
ticularly worries Dr. D. A prominent psy
chiatrist who has advanced the science of
psychopharmacology, he is exacting to the
point of inhumanity. But does this automa
tically make him guilty of something
nefarious? By itself, scientific precision is
innocent; but it can be corrupted. Perhaps
especially so when in proximity o f the family
lawyer, a transparent megalomaniac who
owns entire boulevards of prime real estate.
But is wealth an automatic indication of
corruption? The lawyer's dedication to the
care of two generations of Cadmuses is with
out obvious taint. In fact, convinced of
Jamey s guilt, he fixes his sights on the
young man’s incarcertion in a private facility
where he would get the best care. A pretty
compassionate guy, it seems.
These and other questions, answers,
and further questions lead the good doctor,
and the tantalized reader, through a labyr
inth of doubts, false hopes, and inspired gues
ses. Along the way, one gets just enough
back-story to remain ravenously curious, as if
a smoragasbord is being served on tea
saucers; because, as in the best fiction of this
genre, Kellerman focuses on the case at hand
and keeps the fecund undergrowth trimmed.
The result is a gradually forming tragedy of
the motives and milieu that have given rise to
the convoluted series of events our
psychologist-sleuth is unravelling.
W ith the cooperation of Milo Sturgis,
a gay detective assigned to the Lavender
Slasher killings and Delaware’s best friend,
details begin to appear, not as die-cast peices
of a gradually developing picture; but rather
as part of an organic whole which shifts and
clarifies as it grows along with the developing
knowledge of Jamey's life. So, instead of wat
ching the story as a spectator to a chess
game, the reader learns what the doctor
learns, formulating possibilities along with
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