The Art of Feminism: revised edition

Updated for 2022, The Art of Feminism: Images that Shaped the Fight for Equality charts the birth of the feminist aesthetic and its development over two centuries that have seen profound and fast-paced change in women’s lives across the globe. The book includes over 350 remarkable artworks, ranging from political posters and graphics to stunning and provocative pieces of painting, sculpture, textiles, craft, performance, digital and installation art.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, the study moves on to developments of both World Wars before arriving at the ‘birth’ of feminist art in the 1960s. More recent artworks describe the development of feminism from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day, including examples by Barbara Kruger, Sophie Calle, Nancy Spero, Marina Abramović, Mary Kelly, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold and Sonia Boyce. This 2022 edition features an even more diverse array of artists and artworks, including the beautiful figurative paintings of Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil and the thoroughly researched and extravagantly costumed self-portraits of American photographer Ayana Jackson.

Edited by Helena Reckitt, with texts by Lucinda Gosling, Hilary Robinson and Amy Tobin, The Art of Feminism also includes a preface by Maria Balshaw, Director, Tate, and a foreword by Xabier Arakistain, former director of del Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, Spain.

Professor Helena Reckitt is a curator and researcher, and one of the foremost international experts in the visual arts. She is currently Reader in Curating in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Reckitt has curated exhibitions in the UK, US and Canada, including What Business Are You In? at The Contemporary, Not Quite How I Remember It at The Power Plant, and Getting Rid of Ourselves at OCAD University. As well as The Art of Feminism, she is editor of Art and Feminism, Sanja Iveković: Unknown Heroine and Acting on AIDS with Joshua Oppenheimer.