The Obstacle Race The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work by Greer, Germaine - 1979

New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979. Hardcover. Very Good Good. Farrar Straus and Giroux Edition. First pub. by Secker & Warburg, 1979. Large Very Good Hardcover in Good Dustjacket. Black endpapers, ivory cloth covered boards red panel gilt lettered at spine, tight and solid sewn binding, tight and solid, heavy book, toning at lower spine and along spine edge to red panel, lower corner text block smudgy, upper text block toned with small soil mark near spine, decorative head and tail bands, decorated dustjacket by Constance Fogler with Self-Portrait by Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, tattered at edges, chipped at spine ends, toned on verso at upper edge, light foxing at lower edge. Frontispiece of "Self-Portrait as 'The Art of Painting' " by Artemisia Gentileschi. Thirty-two color plates, one-hundred-sixty black-and-white illustrations. Pages clear, bright and unmarked, plates and illustrations are vivid. Archival protective cover. Greer extends the argument presented in "The Female Eunuch," that women no longer need to be willing to accept a cramped and stereotyped role in a masculine world into the world of women painters. The book focuses on the world of women painters to show how the imposition of traditional social constraints has robbed women in particular, and the world at large, of the chance of excellence. It is an answer to the question: If men and women are equally capable of genius, why has there been no female Leonardo, no Titian, no Poussin? New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979, early printing. 7"x9.75" tall. 373 pp. Indexed with Notes.