Portrait of the artist and mother

On reaching the end of Hettie Judah’s Acts of Creation, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. At 272 pages, the book isn’t particularly large, but the time span it covers, from prehistoric goddess figures to Laure Prouvost’s 2021 cyborg-octopus installation ‘MOOTHERR’, is enormous. The trajectories, practices and obsessions of the artists discussed range far and wide. Written to coincide with a touring exhibition of the same name, this ambitious book is more of a survey – a highly illustrated, annotated and well-researched one – than a traditional narrative. Judah’s energetic text displays the hunger of someone after a fast who can’t decide where to start at the buffet. This ravenousness goes somewhere towards redressing the historical paucity of women in the written histories of art.

The book isn’t organised chronologically, but rather thematically, with chapter titles such as ‘The Monstrous Child’ and ‘Maintenance’. This allows the author to make conceptual connections. Berthe Morisot’s self-portrait with her daughter, ‘The Drawing Lesson’ (1889), is compared with Suzanne Valadon’s ‘Family Portrait’ (1912), which in turn sits next to Ishbel Myerscough’s naked family portrait ‘All’ (2016).