These essays on nine women artists are framed by the question, born of feminism, ""What evaluative criteria can be applied to women's art?"" Since the 1970s Rosalind Krauss has been exploring the art of painters, sculptors, and photographers, examining the intersection of these artists concerns with the major currents of postwar visual culture- the question of the commodity, the status of the subject, issues of representation and abstraction, and the viability of individual media.
These essays on nine women artists are framed by the question, born of feminism, ""What evaluative criteria can be applied to women's art?"" In the case of surrealism, in particular, some have claimed that surrealist women artists must either redraw the lines of their practice or participate in the movement's misogyny. Krauss resists that claim, for these ""bachelors"" are artists whose expressive strategies challenge the very ideals of unity and mastery identified with masculinist aesthetics. Some of this work, such as the ""part object"" (Louise Bourgeois) or the ""formless"" (Cindy Sherman) could be said to find its power in strategies associated with such concepts as ecriture feminine. In the work of Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, or Sherrie Levine, one can make the case that the power of the work can be revealed only by recourse to another type of logic altogether. Bachelors attempts to do justice to these and other artists (Claude Cahun, Dora Maar, Louise Lawler, Francesca Woodman) in the terms their works demand.
By:
Rosalind E. Krauss (Editor October magazine / Professor Columbia University)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 178mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 522g
ISBN: 9780262611657
ISBN 10: 0262611651
Series: October Books
Pages: 228
Publication Date: 25 August 2000
Recommended Age: From 18
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"By way of introduction, Claude Cahun and Dora Maar; portrait of the artist as ""fillette"", Louise Bourgeois; the ""cloud"", Agnes Martin; contingent, Eva Hesse; untitled, Cindy Sherman; problem sets, Francesca Woodman; bachelors, Sherrie Levine; souvenir memories, Louise Lawler."
Rosalind E. Krauss is University Professor in the Department of Art History at Columbia University, where, from 1995 to 2006, she held the Meyer Schapiro Chair in Modern Art and Theory. She is a founding editor of October and the author of Passages in Modern Sculpture, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, Perpetual Inventory, Under Blue Cup (all published by the MIT Press), and other books.
Reviews for Bachelors
[S]timulating, difficult, and often dazzling... Bachelors is a smart and often profound book that makes a valuable contribution to the gendered field it abhors. --Carol Zemel, Women's Review of Books
