Mothers of Invention - by Eleanor Heartney & Helaine Posner & Nancy Princenthal & Sue Scott (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Offering a radical rewriting of the history of contemporary art from a feminist perspective, four distinguished authors explore the lineages of performance, abstraction, craft and ecofeminism in ways that reveal the debt these important genres owe to the work of pioneering women artists. Tracing these influences over time, Mothers of Invention underscores the enormous impact of feminist ideas on the work of contemporary artists of all genders.

The painters, sculptors and performance artists featured here have shaped ideas now dominating the art world: the vulnerability of the environment, the rise of activist art, the challenge to the reign of high technology (including digital culture), and the development of a new language of abstraction. Having demolished the linear narrative of modernism, the privileging of a white male ethnocentric vision, the division of high and low art and the separation of art from larger social issues, feminist artists laid the groundwork for the globalised, multi-media, postmodern art world of today.

Illustrated with a spread of work from the last sixty years (and including contextual discussion of earlier practitioners), this book makes a compelling case for placing feminist art and artists at the heart of contemporary art.

Review Quotes

'Mothers of Invention is a vital contribution to the ongoing re-evaluation of women's role in the evolution of contemporary art. These four remarkable writers draw on decades of experience to create a narrative that profoundly reshapes our understanding of art today.' - Susan Fisher Sterling, PhD, The Alice West Director, National Museum of Women in the Arts

'Mothers of Invention is the third, and most historically capacious, collaborative book project of art curators and writers Heartney, Posner, Princethal, and Scott. Like the artists featured in their book, the writers are "mothers of invention" in their own right; each has significantly contributed to the advancement of women in the visual arts through their writing and curation, and their insistence on coauthorship both echoes feminist practices of the 1970s and provides a useful, multivocal model for current scholarship. [...] In the introductory discussion, Scott declares that "feminists gave all artists the freedom to do things," which serves as the central claim of the work and a rallying call for considering art of the past, the present, and the future.' - K. Rhodes, CHOICE

'this publication is more than an innovative catalog of artworks. It represents a significant step towards a more inclusive and, therefore, objectively more accurate history of art.' - Kaëna Daeppen, Daily Art Magazine

'In Mothers ofInvention, Heartney, Posner, Princethal, and Scott have given us the most comprehensive and convincing argument for why women artists should not be seen as outliers, second thoughts, or 'nice to haves', but rather integral to our understanding of both the contemporary moment and to the history of art itself.' - Hall W. Rockefeller, Founder of Less Than Half

'In one genre after the next, with clarity and a wealth of insight, the essays here show how critical innovations by women artists have been not merely additions or correctives to established art history, but have served as the beating, living motor force that has kept the entire corpus of recent art alive and vital.' - Ben Davis, art critic