The Baby on the Fire Escape

February 7, 2022
Critic Phillips (James Tiptree Jr.) explores the conflicting demands of being a mother and creating art in this astute look at how trailblazing artists stayed true to their craft. When people imagine artists, Phillips suggests, they picture “solitary concentration.” To counter this, the author asks, “What does it mean to create, not... in ‘a room of one’s own,’ but in a shared space?” She examines a wealth of artists’ lives and work: American painter Alice Neel, for example, lost two daughters and was coerced into relinquishing her third to disapproving relatives and escaped to Greenwich Village, where she raised her subsequent children with other “orphans of the avante-garde” and created art that was startling in its frank portrayal of maternal unease. South African novelist Doris Lessing is infamous for leaving her children, but Phillips digs through correspondence to reveal a more nuanced account of a woman who lost the legal rights to her children after divorce. Audre Lorde’s “open marriage to a gay man,” meanwhile, “was a practical way to raise children as a lesbian.” Phillips’s sharp observations and candor add force to the survey: “Thinking about mothers awakened my desire for safety and conventionality, and some things mothers did made me uncomfortable.” The result is a memorable examination of game-changing artists.