The book reminds me of Tom Wolfe's comments, in his brilliant book The Painted Word, that in modern art, one can't see the picture without a theory and that thus the explanatory notes posted next to the painting are more important than the work itself. Wolfe was talking chiefly about non-representational art, but it applies here too. The book's theme makes it necessarily political, but Lucie-Smith and Chicago never manage to coherently explain why a piece of art by a man oppresses women and a virtually identical piece by a woman liberates them. It certainly isn't anything in the piece itself. Apparently one needs a label explaining that this particular piece is/is not politically correct. They acknowledge that this is a problem, but never manage to resolve it, which considerably weakens their thesis. This was a reasonably interesting book in that I saw works I was unfamiliar with and found the names of a few artists that I wanted to investigate further - one of them was in the book as an example of how woman should NOT do art. I certainly didn't finish the book feeling that at last I have found artists who express my life as woman of this culture. ( )