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Female polyphony
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MEMORABLE: (L to R): Gertrude Stein in 1905 by Pablo Picasso and Nathalie Quintane in 2021
[(L to R) Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly/Public; domain DeuxPlusQuatre/CC]
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Chicanes
By Clara Schulmann
Les Fugitives Press, £12.99
“BAD seed” is the literal translation of this book’s original French title, Zizanies. The title refers to troublesome women – disrupters, complainers, women who choose trouble rather than swallowing their anger.
In Chicanes, French art critic Clara Schulmann gathers numerous excellent artists and thinkers, women all, surrounding herself with their voices as she considers challenges to her own life.
The book is a seed catalogue of sorts; translated from the French and published by Les Fugitives, it brings together ideas and discourses from a wide range of arts: literature, film, painting and sculpture. The author delves into the voices of other women to consider her own fresh losses – a relationship break-up and a much loved job suddenly withdrawn. Commonplace happenings, Schulmann notes, but she uses them to devolve a multiform response in conversation with woman.
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