Woman Pissing

Elizabeth Cooperman

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781496231444
• eBook ISBN: 9781496232731
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

When we think of prototypical artists, we think of, say, Picasso, who made work quickly, easily, effervescently. On the contrary, in Woman Pissing, a literary collage that takes its title from a raunchy Picasso painting, Elizabeth Cooperman celebrates artists—particularly twentieth-century women artists—who have struggled with debilitating self-doubt and uncertainty. At the same time, Cooperman grapples with her own questions of creativity, womanhood, and motherhood, considering her decade-long struggle to finish writing her own book and realizing that she has failed to perform one of the most fundamental creative acts—bearing a child.

Woman Pissing is composed of roughly one hundred short prose “paintings” that converge around questions of creativity and fecundity. As the book unfolds it builds a larger metaphor about creativity, and the concerns of artistry and motherhood begin to entwine. The author comes to terms with self-doubt, inefficiency, frustration, and a nonlinear, circuitous process and proposes that these methods might be antidotes to the aggressive bravura and Picassian overconfidence of ego-driven art.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Author's Note
• Illustrations
• Woman with Hat
• Head of a Man
• Head of a Woman
• Woman in the Studio
• Woman with Green Stockings
• Crouching Beggar
• Family of Saltimbanques
• Young Acrobat on a Ball
• At the Lapin Agile
• Parade
• Reclining Female Nude under a Pine Tree
• The Lovers
• The Absinthe Drinker
• Woman in Gray
• Woman in a Gray Armchair
• Head of a Hurdy-Gurdy
• The Blue Acrobat
• The Race
• Portrait of the Artist’s Mother
• Pregnant Woman
• Self-Portrait at Thirty-Six
• Dwarf Dancer
• Maya with Doll
• Portrait of Maya
• The Factory
• Maternité
• Spring
• Nude in Red Stockings
• The Beast
• La belle hollandaise
• Le compotier
• Nude in a Garden
• Butterfly Hunter
• Woman with Her Hair in a Bun
• Japanese Divan
• House in a Garden
• Interior Scene
• The Blue Room
• Woman with Outstretched Arms
• Tête de mort
• Still Life with Steer’s Skull
• She-Goat
• Sweets
• La cuisine
• Nude with Drapery
• Kids
• Little Sun
• Tête
• Woman with Jewels
• Watermelon Eaters
• Ma jolie
• Girl before a Mirror
• Self-Portrait
• Yo
• Woman with a Large Hat
• The Artist before His Canvas
• Aiming the Deathblow
• Woman with Pears
• Woman Washing Her Feet
• The Fool
• Woman beneath the Lamp
• Smoke Clouds at Vallauris
• The Pigeon with Green Peas
• Contemplation
• Cabinet particulier
• Bird with Worm
• Cannibale
• The Sigh
• Woman with a Crow
• Two Old People
• Birds in a Cage
• Woman Squatting with Child
• The Old Blind Man’s Meal
• Seated Old Man
• Woman in a Hat with Pom-Poms and a Printed Blouse
• Woman with a Bonnet
• Nude with Dripping Hair
• Woman Pissing
• Blue Nude
• Still Life with Skull
• Death of Nature
• Last Moments
• Lobster and Cat
• Woman Seated in a Garden
• Woman in a Shawl
• La joie de vivre (Pastorale)
• Still Life with Fruit
• Waiting
• Woman Reading
• Woman Throwing a Stone
• Woman at the Window
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Discarded Epigraphs
• Voices
• About Elizabeth Cooperman