Three women artists give a tour of their favorite artworks from their hometown museums.
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Not their favorite artwork of all time, housed anywhere, but something from a local museum.
What might they take a friend visiting from out of town to see?
And several women in the book chose to champion female artists or feminist themes.
I always feel there is some deep symbolic meaning, but what that is isnt always clear.
Agnes Peltons father died when she was 10 years old.
My father died when I was 13, and I also dealt with his death in abstract painting.
The museum reads it as her fathers face, but I think thats bizarre and literal.
Abstraction opened up the visual landscape for us to invent forms to convey our internal reality.
How can you go beyond the persona to capture their true character and convey something new and not redundant?
How do you go beyond the constructed image to reveal the vulnerability and humanity of who they are?
She actually shows us his scars.
You see his breasts, which are exaggerated to look very feminine.
Its hard to think of an artist who controlled his image more carefully than Warhol.
And it was devastating for him to be seen naked.
So this painting really goes against punch in.
Its the only portrait of Warhol I can recall where he lets go of all of these shields.
I also love the unfinished quality of the painting.
Its one of the most powerful things about this painting, how minimal and simple it is.
Its a tremendous lesson for those of us obsessed with the human portrait as a powerful vehicle for communication.
I couldnt do it in the end.
At this point, her daughter Coyolxauhqui seeks revenge on her mother for getting pregnant.
He kills and dismembers Coyolxauhqui, sending her head into the sky to become the moon.
He eventually represents the sun.
She wears a skirt made of serpents, which is whatcoatlicuemeans.
To me whats striking is how the sculpture combines beauty and darkness, or birth and death.
And the history of this sculpture is a history of Europeans being unable to deal with this power.
They soon put it up in full view on the outside of Mexico Citys biggest cathedral.
It was the opposite with Coatlicue.
Its such an interesting metaphor for male versus female knowledge.
Finkels book is out from Prestel today.
