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Dictionary of Women Artists. Ed. by Delia Gaze. Chicago, Ill.: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. 2 vols. $250/set (ISBN 1884964-21-4/set).
The Dictionary of Women Artists in two volumes does not serve as an all-inclusive inventory of women artists through the ages but rather as a reference work and anthology that combines in-depth biographical and contextual information for six hundred women artists, born before 1945 and active in the Western tradition of art from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. Its focus is historical, and the shared goal of its many, predominantly female, contributors has been to reassess the male-dominated art historical canon and to highlight the ground won for and by women artists ever since Linda Nochlin asked in 1971, "Why have there been no great women artists?' (in Women in Sexist Society. Basic Books, 1971). This historical approach distinguishes it from Chris Petteys' Dictionary of Women Artists: An International Dictionary of Women Artists Born Before 900 (Hall, 1985) with its now over 21,000 concise entries and plans for an expanded, revised edition. Both dictionaries, however, build on earlier documentation of women artists' contributions, including U. Thieme's and...