Éditeur Groupement d'intérêt scientifique (GIS) Archives de la critique d'art Référence électroni... more Éditeur Groupement d'intérêt scientifique (GIS) Archives de la critique d'art Référence électronique Damien Delille, « Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories (sous la dir. d'Amelia Jones, Erin Silver) », Critique d'art [En ligne], Toutes les notes de lecture en ligne, mis en ligne le 09 mai 2018, consulté le 24 septembre 2020. URL :
... Waiting for Performance. Jennie Klein. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The Ends of Performa... more ... Waiting for Performance. Jennie Klein. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The Ends of Performance, New York: New York University Press, 1998. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson, eds., Performing the Body/Performing the Text, New York and London: Routledge, 1999. ...
In "Textual Strategies: The Politics of Art Making," first publ... more In "Textual Strategies: The Politics of Art Making," first published in Screen in 1980, Judith Barry and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis sounded what seemed to be the death knoll for feminist body art when they argued that it did "not challenge a fixed and rigid category of 'femininity,'" and ...
Self-described as "wild maid," "wild soul," "a wild wild weed," Nik... more Self-described as "wild maid," "wild soul," "a wild wild weed," Niki de Saint Phalle narrated herself as artistic subject in a concerted way that stands out in the history of art: as both creatively driven and emotionally renegade and excessive, as both definitively woman and definitively artist. In this essay I take this special case of self-narration, and the particular power of St. Phalle's work, as an opportunity to explore the relationship between. (auto-)biography and artistic practice. The case of St. Phalle, a radical sculptor, performance artist, writer, and filmmaker, allows us to understand the exaggerated way in which women artists were until very recently forced to adopt "fierce femininities" to make a place for themselves as artists. In this way, I suggest that St. Phalle represents a key inspirational force opening the door for second wave feminism and the feminist art movement.
The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment Euro... more The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment European concepts of individual autonomy and sovereign subjectivity—and thus of identity and meaning as these come to define and situate human expression as well as securing educated, middle-class, European white male hegemony in the Euro-American context. While we think of this conventional figure of the straight white male artist as old-fashioned, as having been relentlessly critiqued since the mid-twentieth century by artists, often from a feminist, queer, anti-racist, or decolonial perspective, this article asserts that the artistic author still drives much of the discourse as well as underlying the money and status attached to visual art today. Citing key works by a range of contemporary artists who have challenged these value systems—Cassils, rafa esparza, James Luna, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Susan Silton—this article foregrounds the critique of whiteness and masculinity and the inter...
(even those that are stigmatized and shameful) may be incoherent (although I am not completely co... more (even those that are stigmatized and shameful) may be incoherent (although I am not completely convinced of this), but what of an ethics without verifiable identities and acts? Such an ethics would not be a complete denial of identities and acts (how would such a denial ever be possible?), but would be an interruption in the discursive protocols that make identities and acts verifiable. This, then, would be an ethics without sexual content, what I am calling an erotic ethics: without a positive, epistemological ground, and therefore without a struggle for recognition (even a shameful recognition).
Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 1991
... 154 fluid integrations throughout the book of poststructuralist, Marxian, and psychoanalytic ... more ... 154 fluid integrations throughout the book of poststructuralist, Marxian, and psychoanalytic theories of culture ... trajectory (Changes: Thoughts on Myth, Narrative and Historical Experience [198S], and The ... They do this with some reluctance and many disclaimers (the article was ...
What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism con... more What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism connected to earlier moments, for example, in the 20th century? What can be the role of radical art and scholarship under the conditions of late capitalism? More generally, how can art and artists serve the ongoing struggle for social justice and the agendas of emancipatory social change? Finally, what kinds of art criticism and art historical scholarship are necessary to address the great challenges of our uncertain future?
on this and the next earliest copy of the text, now in Doha. 5 As a nonspecialist, I was struck t... more on this and the next earliest copy of the text, now in Doha. 5 As a nonspecialist, I was struck that so little attention seemed to have been hitherto paid to the colophon as a problematic physical object. Once this documentary anchor had been cut away, our group was able to speculate freely on date and provenance. We followed Savage-Smith on the dating (to the later twelfth century, perhaps?), but on provenance, judging by stylistic considerations of the drawings, we were naturally able to span the Islamic world, from central Asia to North Africa. I myself rather fancied an Egyptian attribution but, more seriously, I hope that further specialist study of this important manuscript will start with a close examination of the thing itself.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contempora... more The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contemporary Art curated by the art historian, Amelia Jones. Featuring local and international artists, this group exhibition delves primarily into art practices from North America, Europe, and New Zealand that are marked by a critical engagement with materiality, process, and the notion of the artist’s gesture.
I write four times here, around painting.' So states Jacques Derrida in section four of the first... more I write four times here, around painting.' So states Jacques Derrida in section four of the first chapter, 'Passe-Partout,' of his book Truth in Painting, published in 1978 in French and in 1987 in English (translated brilliantly by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod). At first I had remembered this (strongly) as the first sentence of Truth in Painting. But in fact the first sentence of the book, which is also the first sentence of 'Passe-Partout,' reads as follows: 'Someone, not me comes and says the words: "I am interested in the idiom in painting".' Derrida goes on, on the second page, to remind us of where the phrase 'truth in painting' comes from. It is 'signed by Cézanne,' who wrote to his fellow painter and friend Emile Bernard in 1905, 'I OWE YOU THE TRUTH IN PAINTING AND I WILL TELL IT TO YOU.' All of these sentences, but particularly 'I write four times here, around painting,' have stayed fresh in my mind for these almost thirty years, along with the last sentence of 'Passe-Partout' (one of my favorites in all poststructuralist theory): 'The internal edges of a passe-partout are often beveled.' 1 Four times. The sides of a frame, which signal the 'inside' of the work of art (its essence) by purporting to divide it from the 'outside' (the 'parergonal,' all that is extrinsic to its essential nature as art). Such is the grounding of aesthetics, which continues to inform our beliefs about this stuff we call 'art.' The four chapters of Truth in Painting after the prolegomenous "Passe-Partout"-1) 'Parergon'; 2) '+R (Into the Bargain)'; 3) 'Cartouches'; 4) 'Restitutions'-parallel this 'writing four times,' and mimic the four sides of a frame. A series of four (of four times), laying out an argument that itself 'frames' (correspondingly: 1) aesthetics and the use of framing to exclude that which is extrinsic to art (with the matte inside the frame, the 'passe-partout,' and its beveled edges); 2) the author and his signature as framing devices; 3) the dilemma that a work of art is always part of a series, and the question of origins; 4) demonstrating the impossibility of returning the work to its 'origin,' via a deconstruction of essays by Martin Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro). Nothing is truly extrinsic to this framing. The framing, it is clear, constitutes that which it presumes to delineate. The frame is thus part of the work. Derrida's 'four times' constitute the work (his work, deconstructing aesthetics) even as they pose themselves as philosophy, a metadiscourse; his arguments situate art within this broader 'framework.'
This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativ... more This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases. Addressing cultural forms from 1960s-70s sociology, performance art, and drag queen balls to more recent queer voguing performances by Pasifika and Māori people from New Zealand and pop culture television shows such as RuPaul's Drag Race, the book traces how and why "queer" and "performativity" seem to belong together in so many discussions around identity, popular modes of gender display, and performance art. Drawing on art history and performance studies but also on feminist, queer, and sexuality studies, and postcolonial, indigenous, and critical race theoretical frameworks, it seeks to denaturalize these assumptions by questioning the US-centrism and white-dominance of discourses around queer performance or performativity. The book's narrative is deliberately recursive, itself articulated in order performatively to demonstrate the specific valence and social context of each concept as it emerged, but also the overlap and interrelation among the terms as they have come to co-constitute one another in popular culture and in performance and visual arts theory, history, and practice. Written from a hybrid art historical and performance studies point of view, this will be essential reading for all those interested in art, performance, and gender, as well as in queer and feminist theory.
Swen Steinhäuser and Neil Macdonald:We identified in our call for contributions to this issue on ... more Swen Steinhäuser and Neil Macdonald:We identified in our call for contributions to this issue on ‘Performative Afterlife’ the possibility of distinguishing between two broad approaches to problematizing the conventional relations between an event and its archive: either by considering the archive to itself be active, inventive, performative, or by questioning the pure presence of the performative event, seeing it as already putting into play its future remains. How would you position yourself in relation to the two approaches thus delineated? More specifically, how does your position seek to problematize the conventions of the disciplines you primarily work within and across, namely, art history and performance studies? It seems to us that you have a strong investment in the critical, as well as self-critical commentary on certain disciplinary histories and obsessions. Finally, what for you are the stakes of such an explicit critical engagement with inherited and on-going preoccupations of the disciplines?
Discussions about sexuality and gender have resurfaced with a vengeance in US culture with the re... more Discussions about sexuality and gender have resurfaced with a vengeance in US culture with the recent debates about same-sex marriage and the rise in visibility of transgender subjects and themes in popular culture. Regarding the latter, most notable are the Amazon television show Transparent, featuring an older man who is transitioning and dealing with his children's bafflement, and the E! television show I Am Cait as well as the accompanying public interviews (in April, 2015 with Diane Sawyer on ABC television) and magazine articles (in July 2015 in Vanity Fair) documenting the transition of former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner into "Caitlyn." 1 Major newspapers such as the New York Times have, in response to this popular culture rush to embrace transgender issues, published news articles, including a major front-page story on a trans-female judge, Phyllis Frye, who has been a trans activist since the 1970s. 2
Éditeur Groupement d'intérêt scientifique (GIS) Archives de la critique d'art Référence électroni... more Éditeur Groupement d'intérêt scientifique (GIS) Archives de la critique d'art Référence électronique Damien Delille, « Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories (sous la dir. d'Amelia Jones, Erin Silver) », Critique d'art [En ligne], Toutes les notes de lecture en ligne, mis en ligne le 09 mai 2018, consulté le 24 septembre 2020. URL :
... Waiting for Performance. Jennie Klein. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The Ends of Performa... more ... Waiting for Performance. Jennie Klein. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The Ends of Performance, New York: New York University Press, 1998. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson, eds., Performing the Body/Performing the Text, New York and London: Routledge, 1999. ...
In "Textual Strategies: The Politics of Art Making," first publ... more In "Textual Strategies: The Politics of Art Making," first published in Screen in 1980, Judith Barry and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis sounded what seemed to be the death knoll for feminist body art when they argued that it did "not challenge a fixed and rigid category of 'femininity,'" and ...
Self-described as "wild maid," "wild soul," "a wild wild weed," Nik... more Self-described as "wild maid," "wild soul," "a wild wild weed," Niki de Saint Phalle narrated herself as artistic subject in a concerted way that stands out in the history of art: as both creatively driven and emotionally renegade and excessive, as both definitively woman and definitively artist. In this essay I take this special case of self-narration, and the particular power of St. Phalle's work, as an opportunity to explore the relationship between. (auto-)biography and artistic practice. The case of St. Phalle, a radical sculptor, performance artist, writer, and filmmaker, allows us to understand the exaggerated way in which women artists were until very recently forced to adopt "fierce femininities" to make a place for themselves as artists. In this way, I suggest that St. Phalle represents a key inspirational force opening the door for second wave feminism and the feminist art movement.
The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment Euro... more The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment European concepts of individual autonomy and sovereign subjectivity—and thus of identity and meaning as these come to define and situate human expression as well as securing educated, middle-class, European white male hegemony in the Euro-American context. While we think of this conventional figure of the straight white male artist as old-fashioned, as having been relentlessly critiqued since the mid-twentieth century by artists, often from a feminist, queer, anti-racist, or decolonial perspective, this article asserts that the artistic author still drives much of the discourse as well as underlying the money and status attached to visual art today. Citing key works by a range of contemporary artists who have challenged these value systems—Cassils, rafa esparza, James Luna, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Susan Silton—this article foregrounds the critique of whiteness and masculinity and the inter...
(even those that are stigmatized and shameful) may be incoherent (although I am not completely co... more (even those that are stigmatized and shameful) may be incoherent (although I am not completely convinced of this), but what of an ethics without verifiable identities and acts? Such an ethics would not be a complete denial of identities and acts (how would such a denial ever be possible?), but would be an interruption in the discursive protocols that make identities and acts verifiable. This, then, would be an ethics without sexual content, what I am calling an erotic ethics: without a positive, epistemological ground, and therefore without a struggle for recognition (even a shameful recognition).
Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 1991
... 154 fluid integrations throughout the book of poststructuralist, Marxian, and psychoanalytic ... more ... 154 fluid integrations throughout the book of poststructuralist, Marxian, and psychoanalytic theories of culture ... trajectory (Changes: Thoughts on Myth, Narrative and Historical Experience [198S], and The ... They do this with some reluctance and many disclaimers (the article was ...
What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism con... more What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism connected to earlier moments, for example, in the 20th century? What can be the role of radical art and scholarship under the conditions of late capitalism? More generally, how can art and artists serve the ongoing struggle for social justice and the agendas of emancipatory social change? Finally, what kinds of art criticism and art historical scholarship are necessary to address the great challenges of our uncertain future?
on this and the next earliest copy of the text, now in Doha. 5 As a nonspecialist, I was struck t... more on this and the next earliest copy of the text, now in Doha. 5 As a nonspecialist, I was struck that so little attention seemed to have been hitherto paid to the colophon as a problematic physical object. Once this documentary anchor had been cut away, our group was able to speculate freely on date and provenance. We followed Savage-Smith on the dating (to the later twelfth century, perhaps?), but on provenance, judging by stylistic considerations of the drawings, we were naturally able to span the Islamic world, from central Asia to North Africa. I myself rather fancied an Egyptian attribution but, more seriously, I hope that further specialist study of this important manuscript will start with a close examination of the thing itself.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contempora... more The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contemporary Art curated by the art historian, Amelia Jones. Featuring local and international artists, this group exhibition delves primarily into art practices from North America, Europe, and New Zealand that are marked by a critical engagement with materiality, process, and the notion of the artist’s gesture.
I write four times here, around painting.' So states Jacques Derrida in section four of the first... more I write four times here, around painting.' So states Jacques Derrida in section four of the first chapter, 'Passe-Partout,' of his book Truth in Painting, published in 1978 in French and in 1987 in English (translated brilliantly by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod). At first I had remembered this (strongly) as the first sentence of Truth in Painting. But in fact the first sentence of the book, which is also the first sentence of 'Passe-Partout,' reads as follows: 'Someone, not me comes and says the words: "I am interested in the idiom in painting".' Derrida goes on, on the second page, to remind us of where the phrase 'truth in painting' comes from. It is 'signed by Cézanne,' who wrote to his fellow painter and friend Emile Bernard in 1905, 'I OWE YOU THE TRUTH IN PAINTING AND I WILL TELL IT TO YOU.' All of these sentences, but particularly 'I write four times here, around painting,' have stayed fresh in my mind for these almost thirty years, along with the last sentence of 'Passe-Partout' (one of my favorites in all poststructuralist theory): 'The internal edges of a passe-partout are often beveled.' 1 Four times. The sides of a frame, which signal the 'inside' of the work of art (its essence) by purporting to divide it from the 'outside' (the 'parergonal,' all that is extrinsic to its essential nature as art). Such is the grounding of aesthetics, which continues to inform our beliefs about this stuff we call 'art.' The four chapters of Truth in Painting after the prolegomenous "Passe-Partout"-1) 'Parergon'; 2) '+R (Into the Bargain)'; 3) 'Cartouches'; 4) 'Restitutions'-parallel this 'writing four times,' and mimic the four sides of a frame. A series of four (of four times), laying out an argument that itself 'frames' (correspondingly: 1) aesthetics and the use of framing to exclude that which is extrinsic to art (with the matte inside the frame, the 'passe-partout,' and its beveled edges); 2) the author and his signature as framing devices; 3) the dilemma that a work of art is always part of a series, and the question of origins; 4) demonstrating the impossibility of returning the work to its 'origin,' via a deconstruction of essays by Martin Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro). Nothing is truly extrinsic to this framing. The framing, it is clear, constitutes that which it presumes to delineate. The frame is thus part of the work. Derrida's 'four times' constitute the work (his work, deconstructing aesthetics) even as they pose themselves as philosophy, a metadiscourse; his arguments situate art within this broader 'framework.'
This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativ... more This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases. Addressing cultural forms from 1960s-70s sociology, performance art, and drag queen balls to more recent queer voguing performances by Pasifika and Māori people from New Zealand and pop culture television shows such as RuPaul's Drag Race, the book traces how and why "queer" and "performativity" seem to belong together in so many discussions around identity, popular modes of gender display, and performance art. Drawing on art history and performance studies but also on feminist, queer, and sexuality studies, and postcolonial, indigenous, and critical race theoretical frameworks, it seeks to denaturalize these assumptions by questioning the US-centrism and white-dominance of discourses around queer performance or performativity. The book's narrative is deliberately recursive, itself articulated in order performatively to demonstrate the specific valence and social context of each concept as it emerged, but also the overlap and interrelation among the terms as they have come to co-constitute one another in popular culture and in performance and visual arts theory, history, and practice. Written from a hybrid art historical and performance studies point of view, this will be essential reading for all those interested in art, performance, and gender, as well as in queer and feminist theory.
Swen Steinhäuser and Neil Macdonald:We identified in our call for contributions to this issue on ... more Swen Steinhäuser and Neil Macdonald:We identified in our call for contributions to this issue on ‘Performative Afterlife’ the possibility of distinguishing between two broad approaches to problematizing the conventional relations between an event and its archive: either by considering the archive to itself be active, inventive, performative, or by questioning the pure presence of the performative event, seeing it as already putting into play its future remains. How would you position yourself in relation to the two approaches thus delineated? More specifically, how does your position seek to problematize the conventions of the disciplines you primarily work within and across, namely, art history and performance studies? It seems to us that you have a strong investment in the critical, as well as self-critical commentary on certain disciplinary histories and obsessions. Finally, what for you are the stakes of such an explicit critical engagement with inherited and on-going preoccupations of the disciplines?
Discussions about sexuality and gender have resurfaced with a vengeance in US culture with the re... more Discussions about sexuality and gender have resurfaced with a vengeance in US culture with the recent debates about same-sex marriage and the rise in visibility of transgender subjects and themes in popular culture. Regarding the latter, most notable are the Amazon television show Transparent, featuring an older man who is transitioning and dealing with his children's bafflement, and the E! television show I Am Cait as well as the accompanying public interviews (in April, 2015 with Diane Sawyer on ABC television) and magazine articles (in July 2015 in Vanity Fair) documenting the transition of former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner into "Caitlyn." 1 Major newspapers such as the New York Times have, in response to this popular culture rush to embrace transgender issues, published news articles, including a major front-page story on a trans-female judge, Phyllis Frye, who has been a trans activist since the 1970s. 2
On the heels of the recent publication of their books _Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Hi... more On the heels of the recent publication of their books _Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories_ and _Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender_, Amelia Jones and David Getsy initiated a conversation about these books and the current state of and future directions for art history's engagements with gender and sexuality. The following dialogue was conducted by email over the course of the summer of 2017, and it is presented by caa.reviews as part of its commitment to engage with new ideas in art-historical and art-critical writing.
Published open access at http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3426#.WocHXGaZPex
Uploads
Papers by Amelia Jones
Published open access at http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3426#.WocHXGaZPex