Escaping the Frame

Women in Famous Pictures tell their Stories

by Mary Bevan

Have you ever stood in front of a picture in an art gallery, read the short notes that often accompany it and wished the subject could step out of the frame and talk to you, answer your questions and give their own version of the events depicted?

This collection of short monologues gives a voice to a group of women who have become famous as the subject of great works of art executed by men, or are themselves artists, but have had little or no chance to speak in their own voices about the events surrounding the making of the pictures.

In this era of #MeToo and #Timesup, when more and more women are clamouring to have their voices heard, they present Book and Reading Groups as well as the general reader with intriguing and often provocative ways of looking at well-known pictures from a female standpoint. The art works featured here range across six centuries, raising important questions about women as subjects of the male gaze and the changing role of women in art across the centuries.

All the pictures chosen can easily be accessed on-line.

Book Reviews

Mary Bevan tells us the stories of women in some of the paintings she chose – for various reasons. The book she wrote is “Escaping the Frame. Women in Famous Pictures tell their Stories”. It was published in 2021.

It is a small, beautifully crafted book to carry with you around, maybe when you walk in a park and sit down for a rest, maybe in your own house to read in its various corners. For me it’s a book to come back to. It’s not a thriller you cannot put down. It’s a book that makes you reflect, that engages you, that makes you want to come back to it, to draw up the paintings on Google, to decide whether Mary Bevan’s interpretation is in agreement with what you yourself think or not.

It's a book to have and it's a book to give as a gift.

by Mariana Nicolae