Erotic ambiguities : the female nude in art

262 Pages·1969·6.629 MB·Spanish

by  Berry, C. Dean, Fuentes, Carlos, Pamies, Alberto N

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EROTIC AMBIGUITIES
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3111 Art is always ambiguous. When it involves the female body it can also be erotic.
4 Erotic Ambiguities is a study of how contemporary women artists have recon-
5 ceptualised the figure of the female nude. Helen McDonald shows how, over
6 the past thirty years, artists have employed the idea of ambiguity to dismantle
7 the exclusive, classical ideal enshrined in the figure of the nude, and how they
8 have broadened the scope of the ideal to include differences of race, ethnicity,
9 sexuality and disability as well as gender.
20111 McDonald discusses the work of a wide range of women artists, including
1 Barbara Kruger, Judy Chicago, Mary Duffy, Zoe Leonard, Tracey Moffatt, Pat
2 Brassington and Sally Smart. She traces the shift in feminist art practices from
3 the early challenge to patriarchal representations of the female nude to contem-
4 porary, ‘postfeminist’ practices, influenced by theories of performativity, queer
5 theory and postcoloniality. McDonald argues that feminist efforts to develop
6 a more positive representation of the female body need to be reconsidered,
7 in the face of the resistant ambiguities and hybrid complexities of visual art in
8 the late 1990s.
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30111 Helen McDonald is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Fine Arts, Classical
1 Studies and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne.
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4 EROTIC
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AMBIGUITIES
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1011 The female nude in art
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Helen McDonald
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7 U T LE
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2 Taylor&Francis Grou
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44111 London and New York
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1011 First published 2001
1 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
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3 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
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Disclaimer: For copyright reasons, some images in the original version of this
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book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.
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© 2001 Helen McDonald
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1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro-
duced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
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means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
3 recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
4 permission in writing from the publishers.
5 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
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from the British Library
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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McDonald, Helen, 1949–
9 Erotic ambiguities : the female nude in art /
30111 Helen McDonald.
p. cm.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
2 1. Female nude in art. 2. Feminism in art. 3. Gender
3 identity in art. 4. Women artists––Psychology. I. Title.
4 N7573 .M39 2000
704.9′424––dc21 00–032184
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6 ISBN 0–415–17098–2 (hbk)
7 ISBN 0–415–17099–0 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-44870-7 Master e-book ISBN
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ISBN 0-203-75694-0 (Glassbook Format)
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5 IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER
6 CHARLES
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CONTENTS
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4 Acknowledgements xi
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Introduction 1
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1 Feminism, ambiguity and the ideal 7
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2 Re-visioning the female nude 31
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5 4 Seeing ambiguity 75
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7 5 Gender ambiguity 99
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6 Making a difference with ambiguity 130
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7 Turning ambiguity around 160
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8 Hybrid ambiguities 187
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6 Conclusion 218
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8 Notes 231
9 References 234
40111 Index 240
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PLATES
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3111 1 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face) 18
4 2 Bad Girls: the media, sex and feminism in the 90s 37
5 3 Jane Burton, Two or three things I know about her 40
6 4 Fiona Foley, Native Blood 41
7 5 Untitled (Aborigine, Fraser Island) 44
8 6 Mary Duffy, Cutting the Ties that Bind 46
9 7 Zoe Leonard, Pin-up # 1 (Jennifer Miller Does Marilyn Monroe) 48
20111 8 Jusepe de Ribera, Magdalena Ventura with Her Husband 49
1 9 Zoe Leonard, Preserved Head of Bearded Woman 51
2 10 Michael Bianchino, Spirit Women 55
3 11 Nicolas Petit, Portrait of a ‘jeune femme de la tribu des
4 Cam-Mer-Ray-Gal de Novelle Galles Du Sud’ 56
5 12 Peter Paul Rubens, The Three Graces 59
6 13 Annibale Carracci, Perseus and Andromeda 60
7 14 Titian, Diana and Actaeon 60
8 15 Sydney Long, The Music Lesson 72
9 16 Sydney Long, The Spirit of the Plains 73
30111 17 Judy Chicago, Peeling Back 84
1 18 Test-tube baby (and reversal) 86
2 19 The Face, front cover 87
3 20 Linda Dement, Self and Gun 94
4 21 Zoe Leonard, Untitled Installation at Neue Galerie 95
5 22 Susan Norrie, Inquisition 96
6 23 Linda Sproul, Which Side do you Dress? 105
7 24 Jane Trengove, Sex Fluffies 117
8 25 Della Grace, Jack’s Back 119
9 26 Della Grace, Hermaphrodite Torso 120
40111 27 Linda Sproul, Difficult to Light 125
1 28 ‘Ellen’, seated 128
2 29 Lesley Sanderson, Time for a Change 132
3 30 Lorna Simpson, Hypothetical? 135
44111 31 Rea, Definitions of Difference 140
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