1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910813299703321

Autore

McDonald Helen <1949, >

Titolo

Erotic ambiguities : the female nude in art / / Helen McDonald

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : Routledge, , 2001

ISBN

1-134-69667-1

1-134-69668-X

1-280-31875-9

0-203-44870-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Disciplina

704.9424

Soggetti

Female nude in art

Feminism in art

Gender identity in art

Women artists - Psychology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; EROTIC AMBIGUITIES: The female nude in art; Copyright; CONTENTS; PLATES; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; INTRODUCTION; 1 FEMINISM, AMBIGUITY AND THE IDEAL; 2 RE-VISIONING THE FEMALE NUDE; 3 HISTORICAL AMBIGUITY; 4 SEEING AMBIGUITY; 5 GENDER AMBIGUITY; 6 MAKING A DIFFERENCE WITH AMBIGUITY; 7 TURNING AMBIGUITY AROUND; 8 HYBRID AMBIGUITIES; CONCLUSION; NOTES; REFERENCES; INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Art is always ambiguous. When it involves the female body it can also be erotic. Erotic Ambiguities is a study of how contemporary women artists have reconceptualised the figure of the female nude. Helen McDonald shows how, over the past thirty years, artists have employed the idea of ambiguity to dismantle the exclusive, classical ideal enshrined in the figure of the nude, and how they have broadened the scope of the ideal to include differences of race, ethnicity, sexuality and disability as well as gender. McDonald discusses the work of a wide range of women artists, including Barbara Kruger, Judy Chicago, Mary Duffy, Zoe Leonard, Tracey Moffatt, Pat Brassington and Sally Smart. She traces the shift in feminist art practices from the early challenge to



patriarchal representations of the female nude to contemporary, 'postfeminist' practices, influenced by theories of performativity, queer theory and postcolonialism. McDonald argues that feminist efforts to develop a more positive representation of the female body need to be reconsidered, in the face of the resistant ambiguities and hybrid complexities of visual art in the late 1990s.