Inside the visible: an elliptical traverse of 20th century art in, of, and from the feminine

Abstract

Published on the occasion of a major exhibition opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Inside the Visible presents a gendered reading of more than thirty women artists of vastly different background and experience. The work of important yet previously "invisible" figures is highlighted alongside the work of established artists to create a retheorized interpretation of the art of this century. Structured in terms of recurrent cycles over time, Inside the Visible focuses on three periods (the 1930s and 1940s, the 1960s and 1970s, and the 1990s) that anticipated a wave of political repression, nationalism, and xenophopia, often stimulating artistic production that redefined practice. Illustrated essays document each artist in the collection. In addition, four general essays trace the connections among the artists. These take up such issues as why artistic recognition eluded certain artists and why their work is only just becoming visible today. They also address overlapping themes such as gender and sexuality; the intersection of racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional identities; and the nature of the relationship between work and viewer.

Contents

Introduction : inside the visible / M. Catherine de Zegher -- The echoes of enchantment / Jean Fisher -- Allegory as art of interfacing (a failed fable, an iconographical incident, and an anachronistic symposium) / Paul De Vylder -- Inscriptions in the feminine / Griselda Pollock -- The with-in-visible screen / Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger -- The mess of history or the unclean Hannah Höch / Maud Lavin -- Radical transformations : Claude Cahun and the masquerade of womanliness / Laurie J. Monahan -- Louise Bourgeois : deconstructing the phallus within the exile of the self / Rosi Huhn -- Carol Rama : heroic, exotic, heretic / Lea Vergine -- Yayoi Kusama : surface, stitch, skin / J.F. Rodenbeck -- The inadequacy of seeing and believing : the art of Martha Rosler / Laura Cottingham -- Bloody valentines : afterimages by Ana Mendieta / Miwon Kwon -- Carrie Mae Weems : diasporic landscapes of longing / bell hooks -- The mannerism of Nadine Tasseel / Leen De Backer and Lieven De Cauter -- Scenes of seduction : reflections on the work of Jana Sterbak / Desa Philippi -- Cultivated want : Ana Torf's video vocabulary / Edwin Carels -- Charlotte Salomon : autobiography as a resistance to history / Ernst van Alphen -- Mira Schendel : resisting the present / Sônia Salzstein -- Spero's other traditions / Benjamin H.D. Buchloh -- Work ennobles-- I'm staying bourgeois (Hanne Darboven) / Isabelle Graw -- Susan Hiller : Élan and other evocations / Jean Fisher -- Homage to-- : the pensive images of Lili Dujourie / Marianne Brouwer -- Marking time : memory and matter in the work of Avis Newman / Michael Newman -- Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger : images of absence in the inner space of painting / Christine Buci-Glucksmann -- Hysterical histories : Emily Carr and the Canadian west / Judith Mastai -- The taming of the saccadic eye : the work of Vieira da Silva in Paris / Serge Guilbaut -- Agnes Martin : the /cloud/ / Rosalind E. Krauss -- Gego : weaving the margins / Rina Carvajal -- Cecilia Vicuña's Ouvrage : knot a not, notes as knots / M. Catherine de Zegher -- Theresa Hak Kyung Cha : Passages Paysages / Lawrence Rinder -- Mona Hatoum : some any no every body / Desa Philippi -- Reveries on Lynn Silverman's 1:1 / Jean Fisher -- Sniffing elephant bones : the poetics of race in the art of Ellen Gallagher / Judith Wilson -- Inter-image : preliminary observations on the work of Nathalie Hervieux / Christophe Domino -- Kobro's disjunctive syntax / Yve-Alain Bois -- Sophie Taeuber-Arp against greatness / Yve-Alain Bois -- The proposal of Lygia Clark / Guy Brett -- Eva Hesse : on the threshold of illusions / William S. Wilson -- Vanishing points : the photography of Francesca Woodman / Margaret Sundell -- Anna Maria Maiolino : the doing hand / Paulo Venancio Filho -- Ann Veronica Janssens : images in places / Marie-Ange Brayer -- Something about how a Tuerlinckx machine traverses the exhibition machine / Frank Vande Veire.