Art historian Noah Charney’s book Brushed Aside is a colorful overview of underrecognized women artists and art influencers throughout history. While an estimated 75 percent of the human handprints found with cave paintings belonged to women, the record of women artists and their works through time is hazy, Charney notes. This survey of women artists and influencers corrects the record with a focus on European and American artists, patrons, and critics, showing that there have always been great women artists and supporters of the arts, even at times when men got credit for their innovations.… Brushed Aside is a spirited art history book covering the unheralded women who shaped art history as artists, patrons, and critics.

Foreword Reviews

In this breezy and illuminating survey, art historian Charney spotlights female artists, patrons, curators, influencers, critics, scholars, models, and muses who shaped the art world.... [T]hose seeking an accessible introduction to women’s art history will be pleased by Charney’s lucid prose and faithful renderings of these often-overlooked figures both as artists and as unique, distinctive personalities. It’s worth checking out.

Publishers Weekly

As he did in The 12-Hour Art Expert, Charney offers an accessible, different, and fascinating look at art history. Here his ‘goal is to provide a broad, multi-angled view of how women have shaped the story of art.’ In addition to recognizing the still-underappreciated legacy of women artists, he also chronicles the equally important and freshly interesting contributions of women as collectors, patrons, critics, curators, scholars, influencers, and more. The first part covers women artists across a wide span of time and art movements, from ‘Renaissance to Realism’ to ‘Salons and Academies’ to ‘Concept and Statement’ to ‘Performance and Feminism.’ The second half, ‘Beyond the Creators,’ portrays women in key supporting roles, ensuring that art is seen, understood, and preserved. Charney's survey goes a long way in filling in the gaps in art history caused by years of male-biased perspectives. Crisp color illustrations, a selected bibliography, and extensive notes enhance this enlightening and enjoyable volume. Art lovers and researchers alike will find much to appreciate in this unusually inclusive and expert celebration of women in art.

Booklist

Without patronizing, without flattery, without teary penitence, Noah Charney writes about women artists throughout global history, searching for the ‘herstory’ of art. Precise, informative, within context and with perspective, he is a witty and unreserved lover of art and a lover of creative women. This is a precious book, at once passionate and informative.

Svetlana Slapšak, professor of Classics, University of Ljubljana

Feminist art historian Noah Charney broadens the landscape about the roles women have played in art history. Traversing time and location, Charney’s trailblazing globe-trotting narrative challenges the established and now settled tropes surrounding the feminist movement that developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. Inclusive of collectors, commissioners, curators, and critics, alongside the art makers themselves, Charney presents a narrative through a new lens which has formerly been the coveted domain of female art historians. Thus, his book is valuable by presenting a paradigm shift in terms of how art history is understood and delivered.

Penelope Jackson MNZM, author of The Art of Copying Art, Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime, and Art Thieves, Fakers & Fraudsters: The New Zealand Story

With characteristic wit and élan, Charney takes us on a romp through centuries of art, focusing his scrutiny on the women who “have shaped the story of art.” This highly readable and engaging “herstory” of art offers a sweeping bird’s eye view, a personal and passionate panorama that introduces the reader to a wide range of artists, periods, and styles. Famous female artists are joined by myriad others, who have been forgotten or never properly acknowledged and yet, whose contributions deserve recognition. Charney also tells us about “influencers”: muses, patrons, collectors, critics, and scholars—women who each in their way have left a lasting mark on art. As we learn about their work and their lives, Charney regales us with a cornucopia of tasty—and memorable—tidbits.

Véronique Plesch, professor of art history and chair of the art department at Colby College