Fantasies of adventure, escape and return: Tracey Emin's "Why I never became a dancer" -- Traces of feminist art: temporal complexity in the work of Eleanor Antin and Elizabeth Manchester -- Sexuality, loss and maternal desire in the work of Carolee Schneemann and Tracey Emin -- Feminist narratives and unfaithful repetition: Hannah Wilke's "Starification object series" -- Critical mimesis: Hannah Wilke's Double address -- Smooth surfaces and flattened fantasies: thoughts on criticality in Sam Taylor-Johnson's "Soliloquy III" -- Near-stillness in the art films of Sam Taylor-Johnson and Vanessa Beecroft.
Summary
"Femininity, Time and Feminist Art" explores feminist art of the 1970s through the lens of contemporary art made by women. In a series of original readings of artworks by, amongst others, Tracey Emin, Vanessa Beecroft, Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneemann, Clare Johnson argues that femininity can be understood as a relationship to time. Each chapter analyses one or more artworks through different forms of time, taking the reader on a journey through a range of issues including maternal loss and desire, narratives of escape and failed femininity. "Femininity, Time and Feminist Art" argues for an inter-generational approach to art history, which is unafraid to include art considered marginal to feminism.
