The Artist's Body

Subject and object of artists' work, the artist's body represents the state of contemporary art and makes a wider comment on the human condition. Bound or beaten, naked or painted, still or spasmodic: the artist lives his or her art publicly in performance or privately in video and photography; these records form the Works section. Amelia Jones's survey examines the most significant works in the context of social history and Tracey Warr's selection of documents combines writings by artists, critics and philosophers.

Beginning with such key artists as Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollock, this book examines a selection of the most significant players who have used their bodies to create their art - among them, in the 1960s Carolee show more Scheemann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Yoko Ono; in the 1970s, Chris Burden, Ana Mendieta, Vito Acconci, Marina Abramovic; up to the turn of the millennium, Matthew Barney, Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin and Mona Hatoum. Survey Amelia Jones,among the world experts in the field, discusses performance and body art against the background of social history. She examines the breakdown of barriers between art and life, visual and sensual experience - how artists have expanded and renewed the age-old tradition of self-portraiture, moving art out of the gallery into unexpected spaces and media.
Works Each image is accompanied by an extended caption. The book is organized thematically:
'Painting Bodies', concerns work that shows the trace, stain or imprint of the artist's body in response to the paint-on-canvas tradition.
'Gesturing Bodies', examines artists who transform the body - its acts, its gesture - into art; gesture, behaviour and situations are used in place of art objects.
'Ritualistic and Transgressive Bodies', looks at work which uses the body to enact challenges to the social expecations of the body, often in rituals that perform a cathartic function. Mutilation and sacrifice are used to rupture personal and social homogeneity.
'Body Boundaries', examines boundaries between the individual body and the social environment and between the inside and outside of the body itself.
'Performing Identity', looks at issues of representation and identity.
'Absent Bodies', explores absence and the mortality of the body through photography, casting, imprints or remnants of the body.

Amelia Jones is Head of Art History and Pilkington Chair at the University of Manchester. Among her numerous publications are Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Body Art/Performing the Subject (University of Minnesota Press, 1998). As curator, Jones has organized exhibitions including 'Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History' at the UCLA/ Armand Hammer Museum (1996). Amelia Jones is noted for her essays on many artists who centre their imagery on their own bodies, among them Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Robert Morris and Cindy Sherman.
Tracey Warr is an independent British curator and writer. She was previously Lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford and Researcher in Site-specific Art at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, Surrey (1997-99). A member of the Editorial Board of Performance Research Journal, her projects have included the Edge Biennales in Newcastle/Glasgow (1990) and London/Madrid (1992). She has curated work by artists such as Marina Abramovic, Stelarc and Helen Chadwick. Warr is currently Director of Arts and Cultural Management at Dartington College of Art, Totnes, Devon. show less

Contemporary art of the body, performance art