Sexually Explicit Art, Feminist Theory, and Gender in the 1970s

Sexually Explicit Art, Feminist Theory, and Gender in the 1970s
Author: Christian Liclair
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000564363

Structured around sexual desire as the central analytical category, this monograph systematically approaches a heterogeneous array of artworks to purposefully examine the entanglements of art, feminist theory, gender, and sexuality. This book considers the potential of sexually explicit art to challenge a socially constructed conception of sexuality as well as gender, and explores the sexually explicit as a means to (re-)claim agency for marginalized subjectivities and to emancipate desire from within the patriarchal and heteronormative system. In distinct case studies, the author focuses on works by four US-American artists – Robert Mapplethorpe, Joan Semmel, Betty Tompkins, and Tee A. Corinne – and situates them in relation to contemporaneous debates associated with the insurgent Sexual Liberation Movements of the 1970s. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and gender and sexuality studies.

Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers

Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers
Author: John R. Shook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 2000
Release: 2005-05-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847144705

The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, and a large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectuals involved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, political science, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in the late nineteenth century. Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, a bibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers are present, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers, including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be an indispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.

Paula Rego's Map of Memory

Paula Rego's Map of Memory
Author: Maria Manuel Lisboa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2017-10-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351759051

This title was first published in 2003. The artist Paula Rego was born in Portugal but has lived in Britain since 1951. In this well-illustrated book, Maria Manuel Lisboa explores the background behind Rego's decision to leave the land of her birth and, in doing so, provides fascinating insights into Rego's persistent portrayal of uneasy and predatory relations between men and women. Looking back over the national, religious and sexual politics of Portugal during Rego's childhood under the shadow of the Salazar dictatorship and subsequently, Lisboa locates the origins of the artist's preoccupation with power and powerlessness, violence and abuse within the political and ideological status quo of Portugal, past and present. The author's clear and thoughtful analysis offers an ambitious contribution to the study of patriarchy, Catholicism and Fascism and their expression in the work of this artist.

Radical Eroticism

Radical Eroticism
Author: Rachel Middleman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2018-01-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520294580

In the 1960s, the fascination with erotic art generated a wave of exhibitions and critical discussion on sexual freedom, visual pleasure, and the nude in contemporary art. Radical Eroticism examines the importance of women’s contributions in fundamentally reconfiguring representations of sexuality across several areas of advanced art—performance, pop, postminimalism, and beyond. This study shows that erotic art made by women was integral to the profound changes that took place in American art during the sixties, from the crumbling of modernist aesthetics and the expanding field of art practice to the emergence of the feminist art movement. Artists Carolee Schneemann, Martha Edelheit, Marjorie Strider, Hannah Wilke, and Anita Steckel created works that exemplify these innovative approaches to the erotic, exploring female sexual subjectivities and destabilizing assumptions about gender. Rachel Middleman reveals these artists’ radical interventions in both aesthetic conventions and social norms.

Carnal Knowing

Carnal Knowing
Author: Margaret R. Miles
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 159752901X

When we look at Michelangelo's David, we see a nakedness that expresses physical prowess, self-knowledge, and spiritual discipline. What do we see when we look at Hans Baldung's Eve, the Serpent, and Death or Master Francke's Martyrdom of Saint Barbara? Why should those naked female images symbolize wantonness and shame? How do ideas about nakedness formed at the dawn of Christianity continue to shape today's sexual values? What must women do to take their bodies back? This revolutionary study by Margaret R. Miles, formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard Divinity School and author of the acclaimed Images as Insight, sifts through centuries of Christian writing and religious ritual and, above all, Western art to reveal the origins of our attitudes toward women's bodies and their encoded meanings. Broad enough to encompass fourth-century descriptions of Christian baptism and contemporary theories of representation, Carnal Knowing is a brilliant, startling work of scholarship whose implications extend far beyond the academy to the way we live and see.