Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury

How a group of artist-mothers in postwar San Francisco refused the centuries-old belief that a woman could not make art while also raising children. For most of modern history, to be an artist and a mother was to embody a contradiction in terms. This "awful dichotomy," as painter Alice Neel put it, pitted artmaking against caretaking and argued that the best art was made at the expense of family and futurity. But in San Francisco in the 1950s and 60s, a group of artists gathered around Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) began to reject this dominant narrative. In Delving into the archive, where the traces of motherhood have not yet been erased from official history, Troeller reveals Ruth Asawa's personal and professional dialogue with several other artist-mothers--including Merry Renk, Imogen Cunningham, and Sally Woodbridge. For these women, motherhood was not an essentialized identity, but rather a means to reimagine the terms of artmaking, outside of the patriarchal policing of reproduction. This project unfolded in three broad areas, which also structure the book's chapters: domesticity and decoration; metaphors for creativity; and maternal labor in the public sphere, especially in the public schools.<

Summary

How a group of artist-mothers in postwar San Francisco refused the centuries-old belief that a woman could not make art while also raising children.

Product details

• Authors: Jordan Troeller
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 06.05.2025
• EAN: 9780262049498
• ISBN: 978-0-262-04949-8
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 211 mm x 262 mm x 27 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Social sciences, law, business; ART / History / Contemporary (1945-), ART / Individual Artists / Monographs, ART / Women Artists, History of art / art & design styles, History of Art, Gender studies: women, Individual artists, art monographs, Gender studies: women and girls