Feminist Art Criticism

From the Preface:"The essays in Feminist Art Criticism are theoretical, and we selected them for several reasons. First, they show a diversity of concerns. These include spirituality, sexuality, the representation of women in art, the necessary inter-relationship of theory and action, women as artmakers, ethnicity, language itself, so-called postfeminism and critiques of hte art world, the discipline of art history and the practice of art criticism. Second, the contributors' work has not been either widely disseminated or readily available. Third, the essays, especially arranged as they are (chronologically), demonstrate a continuous feminist discourse in art from the early 1970s through the present, a discourse that is neither monolithic nor intellectually trendy but that rather exhibits many elements, the polemical, Marxist, lyrical, and poststructuralist being only a few."

The artist, the critic and the academic: feminism's problematic relationship with 'Theory'/ Janet Wolff -- Preaching to the converted? Feminist art publishing in the 1980s / Frances Borzello -- The sphinx contemplating Napoleon : black women artists in Britain / Gilane Tawadros -- Reading between the lines: the imprinted spaces of Sutapa Biswas / Moira Roth -- Modernism, art education and sexual difference /Pen Dalton -- Eyewitnesses, not spectators/activists, not academics: feminist pedagogy and women's creativity / Val A. Walsh -- Exhibiting strategies / Debbie Duffin -- The situation of women curators / Elizabeth A. MacGregor -- Afterthoughts on curating 'The subversive stitch' / Pennina Barnett -- The cult of the individual / Fran Cottell -- On women dealers in the art world / Maureen Paley -- Where do we draw the line? An investigation into the censorship of art / Anna Douglas --Women's movements: feminism, censorship and performance art / Sally Dawson -- Why have there been no great women pornagraphers? / Naomi Salaman -- Just jamming: Irigaray, painting and psychoanalysis / Christine Battersby -- Border crossing: womanliness, body, repre-sentation / Hilary Robinson -- (P)age 49: on the subject of history / Mary Kelly -- Models of painting practice: too much body? / Joan Key --Text and textiles: weaving across the borderlines / Janis Jefferies --Kinda art, sorta tapestry ... / Ann Newdigate -- Sewn constructions / Dinah Prentice -- Penelope and the unravelling of history / Ruth Scheuing.

This text reviews feminist art strategies as they emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s in America and the UK. It draws together the views of prominent practitioners, critics, academics and curators on a broad range of controversial issues. The central focus of the book is feminism's engagement with psychoanalysis and post-modernism and its aim of deconstructing the borders between art and craft, and theory and practice. Feminist politics in the art world are also investigated through discussion of the negotiations of feminist curators, responses to feminist exhibitions, issues surrounding pornography and the censorship of women's work, and the role of feminist teaching on fine art and design degree courses. The book covers a variety of art work, including installation work, painting, textiles and photography.

Autotheory--the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography--as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism. In the 2010s, the term "autotheory" began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.

Art criticism is spurned by universities, but widely produced and read. It is seldom theorized and its history has hardly been investigated. The State of Art Criticism presents an international conversation among art historians and critics that considers the relation between criticism and art history and poses the question of whether criticism may become a university subject. Contributors include Dave Hickey, James Panero, Stephen Melville, Lynne Cook, Michael Newman, Whitney Davis, Irit Rogoff, Guy Brett and Boris Groys.

While feminist art history and queer theory both have a strong presence in academic discourse, there is no clear existing queer feminist art history. This book examines how and why this is the case. Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art histories addresses the historiographic and politicalquestions arising from the relationship between art history and queer theory in order to help map exclusions and to offer models of a new queer feminist art historical or curatorial approach in a European-North American context and beyond. Including essays by both emerging scholars and renownedfeminist art historians, critics and queer theorists, as well as an extensive historical chapter contextualising the interrelated but never fully coextensive developments of feminist art and art history, and queer theories of visual culture, Otherwise is a crucial resource for specialists andstudents seeking to enrich the understanding of the relationship between gender politics and visual culture.Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art histories is oriented towards students at all levels, as well as scholars and practitioners in art and performance, art history and gender studies, visual culture studies, performance studies and other fields in the arts and humanities dealing with queertheory, feminist theory and cultural history. The book will also be of interest to museum-goers and those interested in the visual arts and performance art in general, a growing audience with the popularisation of art and performance across the now global art world.