Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Art in 1970s London - Hardcover

Battista, Kathy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848859058 ISBN 13: 9781848859050

Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2013

Synopsis

What makes art ""feminist art?"" There can be no essential feminist aesthetic, argues Kathy Battista in this exciting new art history, although feminist artists do have a unique aesthetic. Domesticity, the body, its traces, and sexuality have become prominent strands in contemporary feminist practice but where did these preoccupations begin and how did they come to signify a particular type of art? Kathy Battista's (re-)engagement with the founding generation of female practitioners centers on 1970s London as the cultural hub from which a new art practice arose. Emphasizing the importance of artists including Bobby Baker, Anne Bean, Catherine Elwes, Rose English, Alexis Hunter, Hannah O'Shea, and Kate Walker, and examining works such as Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document, Judy Clark's 1973 exhibition Issues and Cosey Fanni Tutti's Prostitution, shown in 1976, Kathy Battista investigates some of the most controversial and provocative art from the era.Primarily concerned with the feminist body as site for making and exhibiting works, this book examines themes that look at the body as material, the body and performance, as well as the alternative creative platforms in 1970s feminist art. Drawing on original material - never-before-seen images from artists' personal collections and commissioned interviews with prominent artists from the period - the book is an invaluable resource for artists, researchers, curators and students interested in recovering this period from the margins of art history.

About this title

About the Author:

Kathy Battista is Program Director of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York. She is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, Frieze and New York Magazine.

Review:

'Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Art in 1970s London by Kathy Battista does much more than its title suggests. It is an assiduous study of the founding generation of feminist artists in Britain. The book is timely both because so much of this emergent feminist movement was ephemeral in its day, and were it not for Battista's careful excavation it would be in jeopardy of extinction, and because only now with the historical perspective of four decades is it possible fully to contextualize and assess the significance of the work done in the 1970s. Through interviews with the artists, investigation of primary source mateiral, and onsite research, Battista brings an historical period back to life, documenting exhibitions and performances that were groundbreaking in their time and shows how this work was linked to the feminist art movement in America at the time, and now it contiues to influence a youger generation of women artists working today.' - Professor Jo Anna Isaak, John L. Marion Chair, Department of Art History, Fordham University.

About this edition

• Publisher: I.B.Tauris
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1848859058
• ISBN 13: 9781848859050
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224