GREAT HOUSEWIVES/ART - Softcover

"Why don't art galleries display more images of modern woman's daily domestic grind?" Forty-two color pictures elaborate on the above question and similar ones raised in this witty visual spoof of "great" art, i.e., art made by men according to male esthetics. Thus, a composition whose neat geometry recalls Mondrian demands a second look: the apparently abstract configuration depicts a robotic woman ("Mrs. Mondrian") wielding a mop. Another woman (with blood trickling from an amputated ear) makes the bed of Van Gogh's famously awry room. And in this Dejeuner sur l'herbe , the female picnickers wear business suits while a man reclines in abashed nudity. The jokes are pungent and readily accessible--no arcane allusions here. Several gags misfire: "Mrs. Pollock Can't Seem to Find Anything Any More" (the image of a woman tearing her hair is embedded in blithely swirling strokes of color) obscures the historical "Mrs. Pollock," the noted painter Lee Krasner. Swain, an Australian, is a self-taught artist and illustrator.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.