Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Important Book for Understanding Art and Feminism
Review: A woman has to search high and low to find any book that comes close to Wolverton's Insurgent Muse when looking for a truly feminist history of women and art in this country. Wolverton takes the feminist discourse course by blending in her own story with very honest critique and appraisal of the influence of Los Angeles' Women's Building on helping women bridge the gender gap in visual and performing art. True to the notion that "the personal is political" Wolverton recounts her own journey from the Midwest and her own journey on her way to becoming a self-realized artist and person. I think some of her points along the way are very important and do blend with feminist literary criticism, for example, that the developing woman and the developing artist are most often one and the same, that these two stories cannot be separated out from a woman's personality.

Though, it must be said of Insurgent Muse, the best thing about it is just that it is a damn good read. Historical and feminist criticism, many times, can be so dry and theoretical (on purpose, you think. Maybe academics think they get brownie highbrow points for that.) that many women are discouraged from reading it. Wolverton's book blends theory, personal history, historical anecdote into something that is insightful, informative, and enjoyable!

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Summary: I LOVED this book!
Review: Terry Wolverton's Insurgent Muse is one of the most powerful, moving memoirs I have ever read. Once I started reading, I literally could not put the book down and stayed up way past my bedtime to finish it. Wolverton writes with insight, courage and humor about her own coming of age as an artist, her coming out as a lesbian, and her experiences with the Los Angeles Woman's Building, not only as an institution but as a vision of a creative, collaborative community of women. Anybody who is interested in the connections between art and politics, especially how artists get politicized and how political art gets made, should read this book. Though there's no happy ending to this story - in that the Woman's Building is no more - I found Insurgent Muse incredibly inspiring and an important reminder that art DOES matter and that sisterhood - however chimerical it sometimes seems - can indeed be powerful.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating memoir!
Review: What a pleasure to read. Wolverton weaves through the book personal history and her experiences at the Los Angeles Woman's Building to bring art history and feminism in LA to life. Wolverton easily evokes engaging images with just a few strokes of the pen.