Otherworlds: The Art of Nancy Spero and Kiki SmithJon Bird Otherworlds accompanies a major exhibition of the work of two American artists - Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith - at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, from 13 December 2003 to 30 March 2004. They are both prominent artists, from different generations, whose figurative art addresses issues of the feminine across history and mythology. The book explores thematic connections in their work - the female body, myth and fantasy, the "decorative" - and situates them in the context of post-War American art and social movements, as well as feminist and cultural theory. Now in her mid-seventies, Nancy Spero is a respected feminist artist whose practice has greatly influenced a younger generation. Her work on paper and her installations are an acknowledgement of the power of the carnivalesque, and an exploration of the potential recoding of space and architecture through a visual poetics of word and image. Never abandoning the figure, even at a time when images of women were thought to carry only negative connotations, Spero has systematically refigured the feminine as collective, social and empowered. Coming from the generation of artists immediately following Spero, Kiki Smith has always acknowledged a liberating impulse in her art. Both artists have turned vulnerability into strength, making art that represents the female body, but in forms that avoid objectification or narcissism, and that can speak to the universal without idealization or reduction. Both artists make art from the histories, fantasies, legends and myths of the feminine, reclaiming the female body as an expressive vehicle of emancipation and desire. Contributors: Rosetta Brookes, Sylvere Lotringer, Jo Anna Isaak, Marina Warner and Anne Reynolds. |
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 792 | 7 |
Working in the RagandBone Shop | 49 |
A Girl Story for Kiki Smith | 75 |
If Walls Could Talk | 89 |
Word and Image | 113 |
Invisible in Plain Sight | 137 |
REFERENCES | 163 |
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS | 183 |
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Acrobats aesthetic Angela Carter Anna Isaak Antonin Artaud Art Gallery Art Museum Artemis Artforum Artist and Galerie Bloody Chamber book with photo-engravings Brigitte bronze Center Subway Station Codex Artaud collage on paper colour Conceptual Art Contemporary Art critical cultural decorative Detail from panel detail of panel dimensions variable Divas and Dancers Egyptian essay exhibition female body feminine feminism feminist fragmented Galerie Lelong girl glass hand-printed collage hand-printing and printed hand-printing on paper handmade book Hours illus images installation Jon Bird Josh Baer Julia Kristeva Kiki Smith language Leon Golub Lilith Lincoln Center Subway London Mary Modern Art mosaic Museum of Art Museum of Modern myth Nancy Spero narrative Natalia Notes painting papier mâché Persephone political printed collage Sculpture sense sexual Sky Goddess Spero and Kiki Sylvère Lotringer tion Torture of Women Untitled Vancouver Art Gallery visual walls western platform woman women artists York