Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500–1900 ed. by Melia Belli Bose (review)

Feminism has assumed a fundamental theoretical aspect of art history ever since Linda Nochlin first raised the question in 1971, "why have there been no great women artists?" Yet, in contrast to the thriving scholarly advances in Euro-American art, studies of women's artistic intervention in Asia has remained sporadic. Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500–1900, edited by Melia Belli Bose, is a long-awaited contribution to the field that brings together thirteen thought-provoking chapters to fill the void. Considering women's various patterns of artistic participation, the authors ask four salient questions: how unusual was it for Asian women to engage directly with art? What factors precluded more women from doing so? In what ways did women's artwork or commissions differ from those of men? And, finally, how were the meanings for woman as subject matter created and interpreted? (2). The authors respond to these inquiries through the main theoretical lens of class, race, and space.

The essay collection is divided into four parts. Part One, "Matrons, Art, and Power," deals with the most powerful and resourceful women in Asian societies. Melia Belli Bose and Cathleen Cummings analyze the strategies of the eighteenth-century Indian queen, Ahilyabai Holker (r.1767–95), in her "matron-age" of architectural projects to strengthen her rule. Luk Yuping discusses how Empress Zhang (1470–1541) and Empress Dowager Li (1546–1614) of Ming China manipulated images of Daoist and Buddhist deities to visualize their divine identities and political power. Leslie Woodhouse illuminates the Lan Na ethnic tradition and modernity in the complex matronage of the Thai royal consort, Dara Rasami (1873–1933). Part Two, "Women's Work and Working Women," focuses on women as creators of art. Lara C. W. Blanchard investigates how Neo-Confucian ideology restricted seventeenth-century Chinese women's self-portraiture in literature and visual art. Similarly, Patricia Fister's introduction to the abundant art production in Japan's imperial Buddhist convents sheds light on the importance of politics and religion to women's art. Cristin McKnight Sethi's examination of the collecting and interpretation of Indian women's textiles in nineteenth-century British India illuminates quintessential issues of white feminism and post-colonial studies.

Women as icons of morality are the theme of Part Three, "Depicting the Exemplary Woman." Sunglim Kim demystifies the historical images of the woman painter Sin Saimdang (1504–51). To this end, she analyzes Saimdang's Neo-Confucian identity, which the artist embedded in her painting of flowers, plants, insects, and birds, and how such identity facilitated the promotion of her artistic talent. By contrast, Elizabeth Lillehoj shows that images of women in illustrated books of morals for women in Edo Japan reflected a desire to construct Japanese identity. Serinity Young looks into yet another mode of manipulating women's images: she points out that the representation of human and non-human females in Tibetan thangka reflected the convention of negating women, and ultimately their fecundity, in Tibetan Buddhism. The book's final section, "Gender in Liminal Spaces," turns to women and spaces beyond the boundaries of social control. Kirsten Chiem analyzes the transformation of a late nineteenth-century Chinese garden in Shanghai from a private property embodying the ideal life style of a male scholar to a public space open for business and amorous encounters. Ikumi Kaminishi and Miriam Wattles focus on cases of performativity and sexuality in Edo Japan. Kaminishi investigates the visualization of unconventional Kumano bikuni, nuns who, according to anecdotes, sang and sold sex for monetary contributions to their religious cause, while Wattles contextualizes the proliferating representations of Asazuma Boat, legendary cross-dressing prostitutes along Biwa Lake, in the visual and performing arts.

These four themes signal the editor's ambitious goal of finding common ground with other feminist art historians, primarily of Renaissance and early modern European art. In this regard, the...