From Conceptualism To Feminism

"... examines the numbers shows and follows Lippard's trajectory as critic and curator, tracing her growing political engagement and involvement with feminism. Extensive archival material is complemented by a new essay by Cornelia Butler and interviews with Lippard, Seth Siegelaub and exhibiting artists as well as critical responses written at the time by Peter Plagens and Griselda Pollock... also includes an essay by Pip Day analysing artists' initiatives in Argentina as a context for Lipard's emerging political consciousness." --back cover.

Lucy R. Lippard's famous book, itself resembling an exhibition, is now brought full circle in an exhibition (and catalog) resembling her book. “Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'” —Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. Nearly forty years later, the Brooklyn Museum takes Lippard's celebrated experiment in curated concatenation as a template, turning a book that resembled an exhibition into an exhibition materializing the ideas in her book. The artworks and essays featured in this publication recall the thrill that was tangible in Lippard's original documentation, reminding us that during the late sixties and early seventies all possible social and material parameters of art (making) were played with, worked over, inverted, reduced, expanded, and rejected. By tracing Lippard's own activities in those years, the book also documents the early blurring of boundaries among critical, curatorial, and artistic practices. With more than 200 images of work by dozens of artists (printed in color throughout), this book brings Lippard's curatorial experiment full circle.

In One and Five Ideas eminent critic, historian, and former member of the Art & Language collective Terry Smith explores the artistic, philosophical, political, and geographical dimensions of Conceptual Art and conceptualism. These four essays and a conversation with Mary Kelly—published between 1974 and 2012—contain Smith's most essential work on Conceptual Art and his argument that conceptualism was key to the historical transition from modern to contemporary art. Nothing less than a distinctive theory of Conceptual and contemporary art, One and Five Ideas showcases the critical voice of one of the major art theorists of our time.

Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference addresses the on-going dialogue between feminism, art history and visual culture from contemporary scholarly perspectives. Over the past thirty years, the critical interventions of feminist art historians in the academy, the press and the art world have not only politicised and transformed the themes, methods and conceptual tools of art history, but have also contributed to the emergence of new interdisciplinary areas of investigation, including notably that of visual culture. Although the impact of such fruitful transformations is indisputable, their exact contribution to contemporary scholarship remains a matter for debate, not least because feminism itself has changed significantly since the Women’s Liberation Movement. Feminism Reframed reviews and revises existing feminist art histories but also reasserts the need for continuous feminist interventions in the academy, the art world and beyond. With contributions by Anthea Behm, Alisia Grace Chase, Jennifer G. Germann, Catherine Grant, Joanne Heath, Ruth Hemus, Alexandra Kokoli, Beth Anne Lauritis, Griselda Pollock, Karen Roulstone, Anne Swartz and Sue Tate. “Coming at the moment when contemporary art practices are themselves involved in re-cycling, re-evaluating and re-enacting the past, this collection asks how feminism’s own ‘troubled’ histories can be reframed productively in the present. The questions that feminism raised in the 1970s and 80s are still pertinent, and are addressed in a number of original essays: What does gender equality mean in the arts? How can women’s subjectivities be articulated or performed differently in art practices? Can attention to gender enable us to engage with complex differences of race, sexuality and class, of age and generation? Do we need new interpretative and conceptual models for writing about art? Alexandra Kokoli’s thoughtful and illuminating introduction reminds us that reframing is a risky but exciting business if it makes us ask these questions anew, with attention to the politics and aesthetics of the present.” —Rosemary Betterton, Lancaster University

Between 1966 and 1976, American artist Nancy Spero completed some of her most aggressively political work. Made at a time when Spero was a key member of the anti-war and feminist arts-activism that burgeoned in the New York art world during the period, her works demonstrate a violent and bodily rejection of injustice. Considering the ways in which anti-war and feminist art used emotion as a means to persuade and protest, Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art examines the history of this crucial decade in American art politics through close attention to Spero's practice. Situating her work amongst the activism that defined the era, this book examines the ways in which sensation and emotion became political weapons for a generation of artists seeking to oppose patriarchy and war. Exemplary of the way in which artists were using metaphors of sensation and emotion in their work as part of the anti-Vietnam war and feminist art movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Spero's practice acts as a model for representing how politics feels. By exploring Spero's political engagement anew, this book offer a profound recontextualization of the important contribution that Spero made to Feminist thought, politics and art in the US.

The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another. The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, Faith Ringgold's story quilts and Susan Hiller's 'paraconceptualism', as well as less well-known practice, such as the Women's Postal Art Even (Feministo) and the photomontages of Maud Sulter. Dead (lexicalised) metaphors, unhomely domesticity, identity and (dis)identification, and the tension between family stories and art's histories are examined in and from the perspective of different artistic and critical practices, illustrating different aspects of the feminist uncanny. Through a 'partisan' yet comprehensive critical review of the fascinating concept of the uncanny, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice proposes a new concept, the feminist uncanny, which it upholds as one of the most enduring legacies of the Women's Liberation Movement in contemporary art theory and practice.

This book focuses on performance and performance-based artworks as seen through the lens of conservation, which has long been overlooked in the larger theoretical debates about whether and how performance remains. Unraveling the complexities involved in the conservation of performance, Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care (vol. 1) brings this new understanding to bear in examining performance as an object of study, experience, acquisition, and care. In so doing, it presents both theoretical frameworks and functional paradigms for thinking about—and enacting—the conservation of performance. Further, while the conservation of performance is undertheorized, performance is nevertheless increasingly entering the art market and the museum, meaning that there is an urgent need for discourse on how to care for these works long-term. In recent years, a few pioneering conservators, curators, and scholars have begun to create frameworks for the longterm care of performance. This volume presents, explicates, and contextualizes their work so that a larger discourse can commence. It will thus serve the needs of conservation students and professors, for whom literature on this subject is sorely needed. This interdisciplinary book thus implements a novel rethinking of performance that will challenge and revitalize its conception in many fields, such as art history, theater, performance studies, heritage studies, and anthropology.

Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music argues that the Black Women’s Liberation Movement of the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s was a unique combination of Black political feminism, Black literary feminism, and Black musical feminism, among other forms of Black feminism. This book critically explores the ways the soundtracks of the Black Women’s Liberation Movement often overlapped with those of other 1960s and 1970s social, political, and cultural movements, such as the Black Power Movement, Women’s Liberation Movement, and Sexual Revolution. The soul, funk, and disco music of the Black Women’s Liberation Movement era is simultaneously interpreted as universalist, feminist (in a general sense), and Black female-focused. This music’s incredible ability to be interpreted in so many different ways speaks to the importance and power of Black women’s music and the fact that it has multiple meanings for a multitude of people. Within the worlds of both Black Popular Movement Studies and Black Popular Music Studies there has been a long-standing tendency to almost exclusively associate Black women’s music of the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s with the Black male-dominated Black Power Movement or the White female-dominated Women’s Liberation Movement. However, this book reveals that much of the soul, funk, and disco performed by Black women was most often the very popular music of a very unpopular and unsung movement: The Black Women’s Liberation Movement. Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music is an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and researchers of Popular Music Studies, American Studies, African American Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender Studies, and Sexuality Studies.