Traces of feminist art

Temporal complexity in the work of Eleanor Antin, Vanessa Beecroft and Elizabeth Manchester

Bibliographic Data

ID4367244
AuthorsClare Johnson (0000-0002-6157-0918, University of the West of England, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume7
Issue3
Pages309-331
Publication date2006-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700106069039
OpenAlexW2107950118
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited18

This article discusses the relationship between Eleanor Antin's Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1973) and Elizabeth Manchester's All My Dresses With All My Shoes (2002) in terms of the differently structured temporalities of making and viewing through which the concept of femininity materializes in each work. Diachronic understandings of post-feminism, as a concept emptied of a former moment of political consciousness, are contested through my readings of artworks that call forth a complexity of tenses. The article argues that the connections and tensions between the two works, which are generationally distinct in terms of the political and cultural climate of their production, require a critical apparatus that suggests the simultaneity of differently valued temporal experiences. The notion of temporal play is further explored in relation to Vanessa Beecroft's performance and film works VB29 (1997) and VB35 (1998). Here the traces of earlier feminist strategy, in which femininity is cast in relation to loss, are reconfigured in the failure to achieve the stasis of the photographic moment

Aesthetics · Art · Carving · Consciousness · Epistemology · Femininity · Feminism · Politics · Sculpture · Simultaneity · Sociology · Temporalities · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Theatre and Performance Studies · Visual Culture and Art Theory