Addressing the Other Woman

In Addressing the other woman, Kimberly Lamm analyses how the artists Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero, and Mary Kelly worked with the visual dimensions of language in the 1960s and 1970s. Using text and pictures of writing, these artists challenged dominant images of femininity, inviting viewers to participate in the project of imagining women beyond familiar worlds that reinforce their subordination. At the heart of this project is 'the other woman', a figure Lamm identifies as representing a utopian wish to reach other women and correspond with them across similarities and differences. In order to make the artworks' aspirations to address the other woman more concrete, Lamm places the artists in correspondence with three writers - Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey - who also addressed the limited range of images through which women are allowed to become visible. These writers enlarge our understanding of the artists' textual interventions, and their own efforts to imagine, create, and reach their audiences shed light on how and why the artists turned to text and writing. Rigorously composed and convincingly argued, Addressing the other woman offers a multi-faceted picture of the feminisms that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It will appeal to scholars and students of feminist art history, visual studies, and literature.