Skin Crafts: Affect, Violence and Materiality in Global Contemporary Art, 2022
We are making ourselves more visible by making positive images of black women, we are reclaiming ... more We are making ourselves more visible by making positive images of black women, we are reclaiming history, linking national economics with colonialism and racism, with slavery, starvation and lynchings. 1 Crafting visibility The transatlantic slave trade was an early form of gore capitalism that resulted in a large African diaspora in Britain and other parts of the world. 2 African diasporic artist Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar (an island off the east coast of Africa) and currently lives and works in Preston (the UK). Himid won the Turner Prize in 2017, the first Black female artist to do so. Himid's work often engages with the history of slavery, and scholarship on the artist frequently discusses her interest in textiles. 3 Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service (2007) and the Jelly Mould Pavilion projects (2010/17) illuminate the various ways in which ceramic objects have also played a crucial role in her artistic practice. 4 Both projects also point to Himid's interest in everyday objects as symbolic containers for history, emotions and lived experiences, revealing that objects have 'social lives'. As Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff have shown, objects accumulate layers of often contradictory meanings over time. 5 Deborah Cherry notes that in 1989, when Himid's work The Ballad of the Wing was reassembled at a museum in Stoke-on-Trent in the heart of the pottery-making district of Britain, a specific everyday object, a small brown teapot with a 'Made in Britain' label, displayed with a mound of sugar cubes, evoked a 'commonplace daily activity' , the stirring of sugar into Britain's so-called 'national beverage'. But as Cherry notes, situated among a number of other resonant objects, the teapot and sugar 'came to have a much greater semiotic
This article examines Alfred Priest's (1874-1929) 'problem picture' Cocaine, which was exhibited ... more This article examines Alfred Priest's (1874-1929) 'problem picture' Cocaine, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919, and an advertisement for Kenilworth cigarettes, which was published in The Graphic only a month before a photograph of Cocaine was reproduced in that same periodical. Despite the differences in media, there are striking similarities between the images. In both the painting and the advertisement a man and woman lounge together on a couch in a domestic interior, and in both, the author argues, the men are using addictive substances to obliterate, or at least temporarily repress, memories of the First World War. The differences between the images unveil questions of gender and power. In Priest's painting the woman sits upright while the man lies unconscious with his head in her lap, and in the Kenilworth advertisement it is the man who sits upright while the woman leans into his body. While Cocaine appears to subvert traditional heteronormative gender relations, the Kenilworth advertisement set out to re-establish prewar gender roles in order to evoke a sense of familiarity for male viewers in 1919. It will be argued that both the painting and the advertisement solicit a consideration of the complex relationships between war, masculine vulnerability, visual culture and addictive substances.
Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months... more Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months after shipping date or we cannot be responsible for replacements. All rights reserved. Indexed in Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), Art Bibliographies Modern, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (ISI) and Wilson Full Text. The full text is also available through JSTOR's Arts & Sciences III Collection, www.jstor.org. Except as permitted under national laws or under the photocopy license described below, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the advance written permission of the publisher.
ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Introduction: Addiction and Visual Culture ... more ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Introduction: Addiction and Visual Culture 1 Chapter 2: Theory, Mothers and Hogarth’s Gin Lane 30 Chapter 3: George Cruikshank’s Addiction to Sobriety 65 Chapter 4: Addictive Architecture: The Crystal Palace, Gin Palaces and Women’s Desire 108 Chapter 5: Closeting Addiction: Confinement, Punishment and Concealment 153 Chapter 6: Masking Masculine Vulnerability: Cocaine and Cigarettes after World War I 207 Conclusion: Addiction Theory, Oscar Wilde and the Desire to Not Care 254
Journal of Art History, Theory and Criticism, 2020
This text approaches Teresa Margolles's textile works through the lens of gore capitalism, a conc... more This text approaches Teresa Margolles's textile works through the lens of gore capitalism, a concept theorized in Sayak Valencia's important 2018 book. Gore capitalism, according to Valencia, is the inevitable extension of globalization leading to the use of extreme violence in order to gain economic power and status. In 2009, Margolles was chosen to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale, and her installation included a number of large cloths that had been used to clean up scenes of narco-violence in northern Mexico. In 2012 and 2015, Margolles gave bloody textiles to groups of embroiderers who embroidered directly onto the cloths. In these and other works, Margolles's stained textiles index violent death in a range of global contexts, staging "soft interventions" that I interpret as political acts of resistance against gore capitalism, violent crime related to narco-empowerment, and femicide. The modernist framing of textiles as excessive is also interrogated, and it is argued that what Margolles's textile artworks unveil is not the innate excessiveness of textiles, but rather the excessiveness of violence.
Skin Crafts: Affect, Violence and Materiality in Global Contemporary Art, 2022
We are making ourselves more visible by making positive images of black women, we are reclaiming ... more We are making ourselves more visible by making positive images of black women, we are reclaiming history, linking national economics with colonialism and racism, with slavery, starvation and lynchings. 1 Crafting visibility The transatlantic slave trade was an early form of gore capitalism that resulted in a large African diaspora in Britain and other parts of the world. 2 African diasporic artist Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar (an island off the east coast of Africa) and currently lives and works in Preston (the UK). Himid won the Turner Prize in 2017, the first Black female artist to do so. Himid's work often engages with the history of slavery, and scholarship on the artist frequently discusses her interest in textiles. 3 Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service (2007) and the Jelly Mould Pavilion projects (2010/17) illuminate the various ways in which ceramic objects have also played a crucial role in her artistic practice. 4 Both projects also point to Himid's interest in everyday objects as symbolic containers for history, emotions and lived experiences, revealing that objects have 'social lives'. As Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff have shown, objects accumulate layers of often contradictory meanings over time. 5 Deborah Cherry notes that in 1989, when Himid's work The Ballad of the Wing was reassembled at a museum in Stoke-on-Trent in the heart of the pottery-making district of Britain, a specific everyday object, a small brown teapot with a 'Made in Britain' label, displayed with a mound of sugar cubes, evoked a 'commonplace daily activity' , the stirring of sugar into Britain's so-called 'national beverage'. But as Cherry notes, situated among a number of other resonant objects, the teapot and sugar 'came to have a much greater semiotic
This article examines Alfred Priest's (1874-1929) 'problem picture' Cocaine, which was exhibited ... more This article examines Alfred Priest's (1874-1929) 'problem picture' Cocaine, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919, and an advertisement for Kenilworth cigarettes, which was published in The Graphic only a month before a photograph of Cocaine was reproduced in that same periodical. Despite the differences in media, there are striking similarities between the images. In both the painting and the advertisement a man and woman lounge together on a couch in a domestic interior, and in both, the author argues, the men are using addictive substances to obliterate, or at least temporarily repress, memories of the First World War. The differences between the images unveil questions of gender and power. In Priest's painting the woman sits upright while the man lies unconscious with his head in her lap, and in the Kenilworth advertisement it is the man who sits upright while the woman leans into his body. While Cocaine appears to subvert traditional heteronormative gender relations, the Kenilworth advertisement set out to re-establish prewar gender roles in order to evoke a sense of familiarity for male viewers in 1919. It will be argued that both the painting and the advertisement solicit a consideration of the complex relationships between war, masculine vulnerability, visual culture and addictive substances.
Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months... more Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months after shipping date or we cannot be responsible for replacements. All rights reserved. Indexed in Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), Art Bibliographies Modern, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (ISI) and Wilson Full Text. The full text is also available through JSTOR's Arts & Sciences III Collection, www.jstor.org. Except as permitted under national laws or under the photocopy license described below, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the advance written permission of the publisher.
ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Introduction: Addiction and Visual Culture ... more ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Introduction: Addiction and Visual Culture 1 Chapter 2: Theory, Mothers and Hogarth’s Gin Lane 30 Chapter 3: George Cruikshank’s Addiction to Sobriety 65 Chapter 4: Addictive Architecture: The Crystal Palace, Gin Palaces and Women’s Desire 108 Chapter 5: Closeting Addiction: Confinement, Punishment and Concealment 153 Chapter 6: Masking Masculine Vulnerability: Cocaine and Cigarettes after World War I 207 Conclusion: Addiction Theory, Oscar Wilde and the Desire to Not Care 254
Journal of Art History, Theory and Criticism, 2020
This text approaches Teresa Margolles's textile works through the lens of gore capitalism, a conc... more This text approaches Teresa Margolles's textile works through the lens of gore capitalism, a concept theorized in Sayak Valencia's important 2018 book. Gore capitalism, according to Valencia, is the inevitable extension of globalization leading to the use of extreme violence in order to gain economic power and status. In 2009, Margolles was chosen to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale, and her installation included a number of large cloths that had been used to clean up scenes of narco-violence in northern Mexico. In 2012 and 2015, Margolles gave bloody textiles to groups of embroiderers who embroidered directly onto the cloths. In these and other works, Margolles's stained textiles index violent death in a range of global contexts, staging "soft interventions" that I interpret as political acts of resistance against gore capitalism, violent crime related to narco-empowerment, and femicide. The modernist framing of textiles as excessive is also interrogated, and it is argued that what Margolles's textile artworks unveil is not the innate excessiveness of textiles, but rather the excessiveness of violence.
Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes 1 Building upon the concept of meeting p... more Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes 1 Building upon the concept of meeting places, this essay considers the intersections between land, place, space, colonialism, art, and addiction in the contemporary Canadian context. Examining the work of several artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, the author employs the land-based metaphor of alternative paths to demonstrate how these artists have produced artworks that transcend and resist outgoing negative stereotypes related to addiction and Indigenous individuals. Artistic strategies chosen by the artists include tracing the oral histories of an Indigenous woman onto a map (Landon Mackenzie), occupying place and space with the artist's own body (Rebecca Belmore), using materials from the land to evoke a head-splitting hangover (Manasie Akpaliapik), and employing irony in order to reveal that both alcohol and humour can function as survival strategies for Indigenous peoples (Ron Noganosh). Ultimately, the essay is intended to destabilize and dislodge stereotypical images of addicted (or ostensibly addicted) individuals in Canada. Furthermore, the fact that recovery from addiction does and will continue to occur in Indigenous communities is inextricably linked with the concepts of empowerment, well-being, and self-determination for Indigenous peoples. À partir du concept de lieux de rencontre, cet article examine les intersections entre la terre, le lieu, l'espace, le colonialisme, l'art et la toxicomanie dans le contexte canadien contemporain. Étudiant les oeuvres de plusieurs artistes – autochtones et non autochtones –, l'auteure utilise la métaphore terrestre de voies de rechange pour illustrer comment ces artistes ont produit des oeuvres d'art qui dépassent et résistent aux stéréotypes négatifs liés à la toxicomanie chez les peuples autochtones. Les stratégies artistiques choisies par les artistes comprennent les suivantes : tracer les histoires orales d'une Autochtone sur une carte (Landon Mackenzie), occuper un lieu et un espace avec le corps même d'une artiste (Rebecca Belmore), utiliser du matériel prove-nant de la terre pour évoquer une terrible migraine causée par un excès d'alcool (Manasie Akpaliapik) et se servir d'ironie pour révéler que l'alcool et l'humour peuvent être tous les deux des stratégies de survie pour les Autochtones (Ron Noganosh). En bout de ligne, cet article veut déstabiliser et éliminer les images stéréotypes des toxicomanes (ou des personnes apparemment toxicomanes) au Canada. De plus, le fait que les Autoch-tones puissent et continuent de se rétablir de leur toxicomanie est lié de manière irrévocable aux concepts d'habilitation, de mieux-être et d'autodétermination chez les peuples autochtones.
The Alexander McQueen: Art Meets Fashion exhibition at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (M... more The Alexander McQueen: Art Meets Fashion exhibition at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is a celebration of Alexander McQueen's impact on the fashion industry from 1990 to 2010. Originally presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and curated by Clarissa M. Esguerra, the exhibition showcases sixty-nine iconic McQueen pieces sourced from Regina J. Drucker's private collection. This assembly, complemented by contributions from LACMA, MNBAQ , and sculptural works by Michael Schmidt, is structured around four central themes: Mythos, Fashioned Narratives, Technique and Innovation, and Evolution and Existence. This review explores McQueen's fusion of religion, mythology, and storytelling evident in the featured ensembles, as well as his skillful combination of innovation and craftsmanship. The author invites critical examination of the exhibition's curatorial intent, particularly in the 'Fashioned Narratives' section, raising important questions about representation, colonialism, and cultural sensitivity in Western museums. The comprehensive showcase of McQueen's ensembles is discussed in juxtaposition to historical paintings, contemporary multimedia, and an array of unique artifacts. As a result, the exhibition offers a multifaceted exploration of McQueen's legacy, inviting audiences to engage with an intricate interplay of art and fashion while fostering contemplation on representation and diverse artistic influences. Volume 4 Issue 2 Article 3
Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months... more Issues are shipped in May and November. Missed issues must be reported no later than three months after shipping date or we cannot be responsible for replacements. All rights reserved. Indexed in Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), Art Bibliographies Modern, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (ISI) and Wilson Full Text. The full text is also available through JSTOR's Arts & Sciences III Collection, www.jstor.org. Except as permitted under national laws or under the photocopy license described below, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the advance written permission of the publisher.
Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y ... more Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.
What I Saw on the Road is Kiki Smith's first solo exhibition at a public institution in Italy. It... more What I Saw on the Road is Kiki Smith's first solo exhibition at a public institution in Italy. It is a small show in the Pitti Palace's Andito degli Angiolini, and it is ostensibly an "exhaustive overview" of Smith's "more recent output, the result of an in-depth change in her expression and style" in the last twenty years. The exhibition is framed as a "splendid fairy tale" of nature in which the primary players are animals and where hierarchies have been abolished, but where, simultaneously, a woman's "revolutionary energy" is unleashed. Intriguingly, one of the curators has described the show as an invitation to reflect on the "precious vulnerability" of the human condition in relation to the complexity of life. As curators Renata Pintus and Eike Schmidt note, in the 1990s Smith became known for her sculptural works depicting bodies, particularly female bodies. Indeed, Smith made her mark with abject feminist sculptural works such as Blood Pool (Art Institute of Chicago, 1992), a painted bronze sculpture of a young woman, or girl, curled up in the fetal position. A row of teeth protrudes from her spine, suggesting, perhaps, an oral fixation and a transgression of the boundary between inside and outside of the body that characterized early 1990s abject art. Although the curators remark that in these more recent works Smith "goes outside the body," there are several human figures, almost always nude, represented in What I Saw on the Road. Most are young and female, although there is one nude male subject as well. The exhibition includes approximately forty artworks, encompassing brightly coloured jacquard cotton tapestries, bronze, silver, and wood sculptures, and works on paper. The tapestries are the most compelling works in the show by far, in part because they take up the most space, but also because they recall Smith's earlier engagement with bodies in order to unveil complex human experiences and fears.
of David Elliott's article on the unhappy patronage experienced by Ruskin's memorial copyist, Cha... more of David Elliott's article on the unhappy patronage experienced by Ruskin's memorial copyist, Charles Fairfax Murray. The closing chapter, by the editor, offers a welcome address to the problem of Ruskin's "Tory paternalism" in relation to Morris's critical admiration (168). Blewitt details the bare facts in claiming that, since "J. A. Hobson's 1898 study John Ruskin: Social Reformer, many scholars have perhaps presented him as being far more 'progressive' than he actually was" (182). This seems fair where Ruskin's views on governance and slavery are concerned, but there is a tonal question that also needs to be addressed. Ruskin's statements are not always meant to be read at face value: there is the strain of the satirist and the nonsense writer in him, so that when we read him stating "I AM. .. a violent Tory of the old School" (The Works of John Ruskin: Volume 35, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn [George Allen, 1908], 13) and a "Communist of the old schoolthe reddest of the red," it is worth pausing to consider whether this is a matter of allegiance, or something closer to a commentary on the structure of political categories (The Works of John Ruskin: Volume 27, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn [George Allen, 1907], 116). Equally, Ruskin's breadth of appeal may reflect more than misunderstanding or oversight in revealing affinities between different kinds of anti-capitalism. While readers would benefit from a more concerted approach to the central questions, this volume begins to put meat on the bones of that interrelation.
At the core of Thomas J. Lappas's extensively researched and illuminating book is the problem of ... more At the core of Thomas J. Lappas's extensively researched and illuminating book is the problem of white feminism. Indeed, Lappas's text is something of an apologia for the white members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on an immense amount of primary evidence, including speeches, temperance periodicals, and letters, Lappas builds on the work of scholars such as Sharon Anne Cook (in her 1995 book Through Sunshine and Shadow: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930), shedding further light on the maternal feminism and moral hygiene discourses that informed the WCTU's attempts to protect men, women, and children from the negative consequences of alcohol. In doing so, Lappas foregrounds the political activism of white women but with the additional objective of demonstrating Indigenous women's various roles in and around the WCTU. The fact is, however, that the vast majority of the white women in the WCTU were speaking and writing from a place of anti-Indigenous racism, and although Lappas does acknowledge this aspect of WCTU literature and beliefs, he does not go far enough in problematizing white women's racism, which was inextricably tied to their beliefs about eugenics and racial purity.
This review of Thierry Mugler: Couturissime approaches the exhibition through a feminist art-hist... more This review of Thierry Mugler: Couturissime approaches the exhibition through a feminist art-historical lens and attends to the various ways that both Mugler's clothing and the Mon-
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