I am professor of art history and theory at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. My research focuses on critical theory and modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on body art and performance, minimalism and conceptual art, women's art, and Latin American art.
I am the author of Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (2011) and Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography (2016). Both books were awarded the prize for best book by the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. My latest book is "It's not personal: Post 1960s Body Art and Performance" (2021)
I'm currently working on a history of Indigenous art in South East Queensland with Bianca Beetson and Elisabeth Findlay. Phone: 61 7 3735 3281 Address: Queensland College of Art Griffith University PO Box 3370 South Bank QLD 4101 Australia
It's not personal: post 60s body art and performance, 2021
This chapter considers the recurrent quest for impersonality,
focusing in particular on late-mode... more This chapter considers the recurrent quest for impersonality, focusing in particular on late-modern art, the period that has seemingly set the tone for current practice. I briefly consider some earlier precedents from the modern period, specifically those identified by key analysts of this phenomenon: Yve-Alain Bois and Maria Gough. However, my concern is not so much with the historical coordinates of this impulse, but rather with the curious appeal and strange generativity in evidence. Think of the range of strategies that has been invented to counteract the expression of subjectivity and feeling. Serial or modular methods, chance operations, task-like actions, non-composition, revealing the medium, ready-made objects and already made compositions, collective production, delegated production and performance, appropriation – these are just some of the ways in which artists have sought to reject personal expression across the twentieth century.
Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde, 2011
This chapter examines how the earth-body sculptures in
Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral... more This chapter examines how the earth-body sculptures in Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral and haunting, as well as expressive and non-expressive.
It's not personal: Post 60s body art and performance, 2021
This chapter unpacks the idea of the self without autobiography and some of the different ways th... more This chapter unpacks the idea of the self without autobiography and some of the different ways this is figured. The focus of the chapter is works using one body, mostly the artist’s own body, although on occasions the performance is delegated. The use of a singular body often raises the issue of gender, or at least that has been the case for many women and non-binary artists. The contemporary work I focus on in the second part of the chapter, Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014), plunges into the diaristic and the autobiographical, only to withdraw from both when the illusion of the confessional narrative is unveiled. It is a fitting successor to the first generation of feminist work on the gendered body. And, indeed, this work draws the kind of ire about narcissism and the nature of femininity previously directed at certain women artists of the 1960s and 70s.
The term ‘feminist art’ is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of A... more The term ‘feminist art’ is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of Art History—a codification that includes restrictive definitions of geography, chronology, style, materials, influence, and other definitions inherent to Art Historical and museological classifications. Employing a different approach, A Companion to Feminist Art defines ‘art’ as a dynamic set of material and theoretical practices in the realm of culture, and ‘feminism’ as an equally dynamic set of activist and theoretical practices in the realm of politics. Feminist art, therefore, is not a simple classification of a type of art, but rather the space where feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect. The Companion provides readers with an overview of the developments, concepts, trends, influences, and activities within the space of contemporary feminist art—in different locations, ways of making, and ways of thinking.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
The term “feminist art” is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of a... more The term “feminist art” is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of art history—a codification that includes restrictive definitions of geography, chronology, style, materials, influence, and other definitions inherent to art historical and museological classifications. Employing a different approach, A Companion to Feminist Art defines “art” as a dynamic set of material and theoretical practices in the realm of culture, and “feminism” as an equally dynamic set of activist and theoretical practices in the realm of politics. Feminist art, therefore, is not a simple classification of a type of art, but rather the space where feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect. The Companion provides readers with an overview of the developments, concepts, trends, influences, and activities within the space of contemporary feminist art—in different locations, ways of making, and ways of thinking.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
This book offers a new way of thinking about the role of politically engaged art. It examines the... more This book offers a new way of thinking about the role of politically engaged art. It examines the work of four women photographers from the southern hemisphere who are pioneering a reparative approach to art about shameful histories such as: the harsh and unjust treatment of indigenous peoples; the cruel institutionalisation of vulnerable groups; the disappearance of dissidents; and the carnage of civil war.
These artists make a radical break with the dominant approaches to political art (ideology critique, identity politics), which still follow the precepts of the anti-aesthetic tradition. The anti-aesthetic tradition privileges critique over aesthetic engagement, and rejects the importance of traditional aesthetic concerns such as beauty, feeling, expression and judgment. In contrast, these artists use a range of complex aesthetic strategies to engage audiences with these histories and to transform our feelings about them.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Guilt and Shame: Current debates in affect studies
Chapter 2 Witnessing Fever
Chapter 3 Shame and the Convict Stain: Anne Ferran’s Lost to Worlds
Chapter 4 Fiona Pardington: Colonialism and Repair in the Southern Seas
Chapter 5 Rosângela Rennó: “Little Stories of the Downtrodden and the Vanquished”
Chapter 6 Our dark side: Milagros de la Torre’s The Lost Steps
This book has three interconnected aims: to challenge the dominant characterisation of the art of... more This book has three interconnected aims: to challenge the dominant characterisation of the art of the 1960s and 1970s as anti-aesthetic and affectless, to introduce feeling to the analysis of late modern and contemporary art, and to thereby properly acknowledge the specific contribution of leading women artists to this period. The book focuses on four well-known and highly respected North and South American artists of the period: Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I show how their work transforms the avant-garde protocols of the period by introducing an affective dimension to late modern art. This aspect of their work, while frequently noted, has never been analysed in detail.
"Visualizing Feeling" also addresses a methodological blind spot in art history: the interpretation of feeling, emotion and affect. It demonstrates that the affective dimension, alongside other materials and methods of art, is part of the artistic means of production and innovation. This is the first thorough re-appraisal of aesthetic engagement with affect in post-1960s art.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Minimalism and Subjectivity: Aesthetics and the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition
2 Feeling and Late Modern Art
3 Participation, Affect and the Body: Lygia Clark
4 Eva Hesse’s Late Sculptures: Elusive Expression and Unconscious Affect
5 Ana Mendieta: Affect Miniaturization, Emotional Ties and the Silueta Series
6 The Dream of the Audience: The Moving Images of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Conclusion: Which anthropomorphism?
Book endorsements:
"At last, here is, a book that lifts the ban on affect imposed on art criticism and theory by the "anti-aesthetic" school that has been dominating the scene in the last forty years! Taking her clues from four of the best women artists whose work spans the period, Susan Best convincingly demonstrates that if you close the door of the house of art to feelings, they enter through the window. What’s more, this is valid for the supposedly ‘anaesthetic’ art movements - minimal and conceptual art - that form the contextual background of her case studies: they are no less aesthetic than the art of the past or the most recent present." -- Thierry de Duve, Historian and Theorist of contemporary art and Professor at University of Lille
"Susan Best's remarkably lucid and paradoxical project begins the process of recovering feeling and emotion in late modern art. Her landmark study of four women artists - Hesse, Clark, Mendieta and Cha - rescues both the feminine and the aesthetic from the ghetto, by an astute combination of psycho-analysis and art history." -- Dr. Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, Sydney University Museums
"Visualizing Feeling develops a compelling argument for focusing on precisely the centrality of affect and feeling in any understanding of the art of the 1960s and 1970s, where it seemed that affect no longer had a place. In exploring the work of four powerful and sometimes neglected women artists, she shows how it is paradoxically where affect is consciously minimized that it nevertheless returns to haunt the art work as its most powerful force. Art works affect before they inform, perform or communicate. Sue Best demonstrates that by restoring the question of affect and emotion to the art work, new kinds of questions can be asked about the feminine in art, questions that affirm the personal and political power of these works of art." -- Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University, author of Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, 2008
Reviews: Choice, Feb (2012), Art & Australia, 49.4 (2012), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 12 (2012), Cassone, Feb (2013), Parallax (2013).
This book examines two decades of sculpture, public art and installation by the Australian artist... more This book examines two decades of sculpture, public art and installation by the Australian artist Robyn Backen. It considers her work in relation to the idea of the elemental, a term borrowed from Emmanuel Levinas, to describe a non-appropriative relation to the enviromment. In addition, the book also positions Backen's work in relation to recent debates about site-specificity.
In this chapter, I use queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about affect to consider the ... more In this chapter, I use queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about affect to consider the recent work of Cindy Sherman. Sherman’s work uncannily mirrors the shift in methodology from an anti‐aesthetic focus on meaning and representation to a more expansive approach that elicits feeling. Her work thus provides an ideal site to examine the difference to feminist analysis that affect makes.
A Sun Dance is a site specific dance performance for the National Gallery of Australia. Starting ... more A Sun Dance is a site specific dance performance for the National Gallery of Australia. Starting outside the gallery and proceeding inside it hightlghted the way in which sun penetrated the building.
This article examines artworks by three emerging Australian Indigenous artists who are revitalizi... more This article examines artworks by three emerging Australian Indigenous artists who are revitalizing Indigenous cultural traditions. The author argues that their work is reparative in the manner described by queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; that is, their art addresses the damage of traumatic colonial histories while being open to pleasure, beauty and surprise. The artists are all based in Brisbane and completed a degree in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art at Queensland College of Art-the only degree of this nature in Australia. The artists are Carol McGregor, Dale Harding and Robert Andrew. McGregor's work draws on possum skin cloak making, Harding has incorporated the stencil technique of rock art into his practice and Andrew uses a traditional pigment ochre and Yawuru language.
Catalogue essay for Natalya Hughes' exhibition, The Interior, at IMA Brisbane. The essay examines... more Catalogue essay for Natalya Hughes' exhibition, The Interior, at IMA Brisbane. The essay examines key psychoanalytic terms addressed by the exhibition.
It's not personal: post 60s body art and performance, 2021
This chapter considers the recurrent quest for impersonality,
focusing in particular on late-mode... more This chapter considers the recurrent quest for impersonality, focusing in particular on late-modern art, the period that has seemingly set the tone for current practice. I briefly consider some earlier precedents from the modern period, specifically those identified by key analysts of this phenomenon: Yve-Alain Bois and Maria Gough. However, my concern is not so much with the historical coordinates of this impulse, but rather with the curious appeal and strange generativity in evidence. Think of the range of strategies that has been invented to counteract the expression of subjectivity and feeling. Serial or modular methods, chance operations, task-like actions, non-composition, revealing the medium, ready-made objects and already made compositions, collective production, delegated production and performance, appropriation – these are just some of the ways in which artists have sought to reject personal expression across the twentieth century.
Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde, 2011
This chapter examines how the earth-body sculptures in
Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral... more This chapter examines how the earth-body sculptures in Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral and haunting, as well as expressive and non-expressive.
It's not personal: Post 60s body art and performance, 2021
This chapter unpacks the idea of the self without autobiography and some of the different ways th... more This chapter unpacks the idea of the self without autobiography and some of the different ways this is figured. The focus of the chapter is works using one body, mostly the artist’s own body, although on occasions the performance is delegated. The use of a singular body often raises the issue of gender, or at least that has been the case for many women and non-binary artists. The contemporary work I focus on in the second part of the chapter, Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014), plunges into the diaristic and the autobiographical, only to withdraw from both when the illusion of the confessional narrative is unveiled. It is a fitting successor to the first generation of feminist work on the gendered body. And, indeed, this work draws the kind of ire about narcissism and the nature of femininity previously directed at certain women artists of the 1960s and 70s.
The term ‘feminist art’ is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of A... more The term ‘feminist art’ is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of Art History—a codification that includes restrictive definitions of geography, chronology, style, materials, influence, and other definitions inherent to Art Historical and museological classifications. Employing a different approach, A Companion to Feminist Art defines ‘art’ as a dynamic set of material and theoretical practices in the realm of culture, and ‘feminism’ as an equally dynamic set of activist and theoretical practices in the realm of politics. Feminist art, therefore, is not a simple classification of a type of art, but rather the space where feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect. The Companion provides readers with an overview of the developments, concepts, trends, influences, and activities within the space of contemporary feminist art—in different locations, ways of making, and ways of thinking.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
The term “feminist art” is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of a... more The term “feminist art” is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of art history—a codification that includes restrictive definitions of geography, chronology, style, materials, influence, and other definitions inherent to art historical and museological classifications. Employing a different approach, A Companion to Feminist Art defines “art” as a dynamic set of material and theoretical practices in the realm of culture, and “feminism” as an equally dynamic set of activist and theoretical practices in the realm of politics. Feminist art, therefore, is not a simple classification of a type of art, but rather the space where feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect. The Companion provides readers with an overview of the developments, concepts, trends, influences, and activities within the space of contemporary feminist art—in different locations, ways of making, and ways of thinking.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
This book offers a new way of thinking about the role of politically engaged art. It examines the... more This book offers a new way of thinking about the role of politically engaged art. It examines the work of four women photographers from the southern hemisphere who are pioneering a reparative approach to art about shameful histories such as: the harsh and unjust treatment of indigenous peoples; the cruel institutionalisation of vulnerable groups; the disappearance of dissidents; and the carnage of civil war.
These artists make a radical break with the dominant approaches to political art (ideology critique, identity politics), which still follow the precepts of the anti-aesthetic tradition. The anti-aesthetic tradition privileges critique over aesthetic engagement, and rejects the importance of traditional aesthetic concerns such as beauty, feeling, expression and judgment. In contrast, these artists use a range of complex aesthetic strategies to engage audiences with these histories and to transform our feelings about them.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Guilt and Shame: Current debates in affect studies
Chapter 2 Witnessing Fever
Chapter 3 Shame and the Convict Stain: Anne Ferran’s Lost to Worlds
Chapter 4 Fiona Pardington: Colonialism and Repair in the Southern Seas
Chapter 5 Rosângela Rennó: “Little Stories of the Downtrodden and the Vanquished”
Chapter 6 Our dark side: Milagros de la Torre’s The Lost Steps
This book has three interconnected aims: to challenge the dominant characterisation of the art of... more This book has three interconnected aims: to challenge the dominant characterisation of the art of the 1960s and 1970s as anti-aesthetic and affectless, to introduce feeling to the analysis of late modern and contemporary art, and to thereby properly acknowledge the specific contribution of leading women artists to this period. The book focuses on four well-known and highly respected North and South American artists of the period: Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I show how their work transforms the avant-garde protocols of the period by introducing an affective dimension to late modern art. This aspect of their work, while frequently noted, has never been analysed in detail.
"Visualizing Feeling" also addresses a methodological blind spot in art history: the interpretation of feeling, emotion and affect. It demonstrates that the affective dimension, alongside other materials and methods of art, is part of the artistic means of production and innovation. This is the first thorough re-appraisal of aesthetic engagement with affect in post-1960s art.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Minimalism and Subjectivity: Aesthetics and the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition
2 Feeling and Late Modern Art
3 Participation, Affect and the Body: Lygia Clark
4 Eva Hesse’s Late Sculptures: Elusive Expression and Unconscious Affect
5 Ana Mendieta: Affect Miniaturization, Emotional Ties and the Silueta Series
6 The Dream of the Audience: The Moving Images of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Conclusion: Which anthropomorphism?
Book endorsements:
"At last, here is, a book that lifts the ban on affect imposed on art criticism and theory by the "anti-aesthetic" school that has been dominating the scene in the last forty years! Taking her clues from four of the best women artists whose work spans the period, Susan Best convincingly demonstrates that if you close the door of the house of art to feelings, they enter through the window. What’s more, this is valid for the supposedly ‘anaesthetic’ art movements - minimal and conceptual art - that form the contextual background of her case studies: they are no less aesthetic than the art of the past or the most recent present." -- Thierry de Duve, Historian and Theorist of contemporary art and Professor at University of Lille
"Susan Best's remarkably lucid and paradoxical project begins the process of recovering feeling and emotion in late modern art. Her landmark study of four women artists - Hesse, Clark, Mendieta and Cha - rescues both the feminine and the aesthetic from the ghetto, by an astute combination of psycho-analysis and art history." -- Dr. Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, Sydney University Museums
"Visualizing Feeling develops a compelling argument for focusing on precisely the centrality of affect and feeling in any understanding of the art of the 1960s and 1970s, where it seemed that affect no longer had a place. In exploring the work of four powerful and sometimes neglected women artists, she shows how it is paradoxically where affect is consciously minimized that it nevertheless returns to haunt the art work as its most powerful force. Art works affect before they inform, perform or communicate. Sue Best demonstrates that by restoring the question of affect and emotion to the art work, new kinds of questions can be asked about the feminine in art, questions that affirm the personal and political power of these works of art." -- Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University, author of Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, 2008
Reviews: Choice, Feb (2012), Art & Australia, 49.4 (2012), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 12 (2012), Cassone, Feb (2013), Parallax (2013).
This book examines two decades of sculpture, public art and installation by the Australian artist... more This book examines two decades of sculpture, public art and installation by the Australian artist Robyn Backen. It considers her work in relation to the idea of the elemental, a term borrowed from Emmanuel Levinas, to describe a non-appropriative relation to the enviromment. In addition, the book also positions Backen's work in relation to recent debates about site-specificity.
In this chapter, I use queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about affect to consider the ... more In this chapter, I use queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about affect to consider the recent work of Cindy Sherman. Sherman’s work uncannily mirrors the shift in methodology from an anti‐aesthetic focus on meaning and representation to a more expansive approach that elicits feeling. Her work thus provides an ideal site to examine the difference to feminist analysis that affect makes.
A Sun Dance is a site specific dance performance for the National Gallery of Australia. Starting ... more A Sun Dance is a site specific dance performance for the National Gallery of Australia. Starting outside the gallery and proceeding inside it hightlghted the way in which sun penetrated the building.
This article examines artworks by three emerging Australian Indigenous artists who are revitalizi... more This article examines artworks by three emerging Australian Indigenous artists who are revitalizing Indigenous cultural traditions. The author argues that their work is reparative in the manner described by queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; that is, their art addresses the damage of traumatic colonial histories while being open to pleasure, beauty and surprise. The artists are all based in Brisbane and completed a degree in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art at Queensland College of Art-the only degree of this nature in Australia. The artists are Carol McGregor, Dale Harding and Robert Andrew. McGregor's work draws on possum skin cloak making, Harding has incorporated the stencil technique of rock art into his practice and Andrew uses a traditional pigment ochre and Yawuru language.
Catalogue essay for Natalya Hughes' exhibition, The Interior, at IMA Brisbane. The essay examines... more Catalogue essay for Natalya Hughes' exhibition, The Interior, at IMA Brisbane. The essay examines key psychoanalytic terms addressed by the exhibition.
Exitbook: revista de libros de arte y cultura visual, 2011
... Repensando el placer visual: estética y afecto. Autores: Susan Best; Localización: Exitbook: ... more ... Repensando el placer visual: estética y afecto. Autores: Susan Best; Localización: Exitbook: revista de libros de arte y cultura visual, Nº. 15, 2011 , págs. 50-59. Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. Acceso de usuarios registrados Usuario. Contraseña. Entrar. ...
This article examines the series by Australian artist Anne Ferran titled 1-38 (2003). This work i... more This article examines the series by Australian artist Anne Ferran titled 1-38 (2003). This work is based on a cache of archival images of women incarcerated in a mental institution in Sydney found in the State Library.
Catalogue essay by Susan Best and Ann Stephen for Mondspiel a Bauhaus-inspired installation and p... more Catalogue essay by Susan Best and Ann Stephen for Mondspiel a Bauhaus-inspired installation and performance by Justene Williams and Mikala Dwyer part of 'Bauhaus Now' at Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne 2019. The germ of the work began in the shortlisted project for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The project was then titled 'Cross of the South' after the title of a brooch by a Bauhaus artist exiled in Sydney--Gertrude Herzger. Curators Ann Stephen and Susan Best worked with artists, Mikala Dwyer and Justene Williams. The catalogue essay explains some of the sources for the final work.
This article examines the endurance performance--The Second Woman. It considers the maternal mode... more This article examines the endurance performance--The Second Woman. It considers the maternal model of seriality used to turn the tables on typical gender politics.
Is conceptual art interesting? In what way? And what can it tell us about post-conceptual contemp... more Is conceptual art interesting? In what way? And what can it tell us about post-conceptual contemporary art?
This article examines the six coloured etchings in the series, the holes in the land (2015), by A... more This article examines the six coloured etchings in the series, the holes in the land (2015), by Australian Indigenous artist Judy Watson. The series resulted from a residency in the British Museum in 2013 where Watson had access to Aboriginal artefacts from near to her country in north-west Queensland. Watson is a Waanyi artist with maternal ties to north-west Queensland. I analyse the series as ground-breaking in a number of important ways. First, the tone of her visually seductive work departs from the norm of anger proposed as the dominant affect in urban Aboriginal art by Ian McLean. Secondly, the series has the kind of complex ambivalence so well described by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her account of reparative approaches to cultural material. And finally, Watson’s vibrant and engaging way of representing the land aligns her with the tenets of Walter Mignolo’s decolonial approach.
This is a midway PhD project – produced as part of an exhibition (also titled 'The Museum of Diss... more This is a midway PhD project – produced as part of an exhibition (also titled 'The Museum of Dissensus), part of a series ('Ex Libris Fisherarium') exploring intersections between plastic and literary art forms, curated by David Corbet at the Fisher Library, University of Sydney, from October 2016-February 2016. It contains an introductory essay by David Corbet and essays and text extracts by several other writers: Susan Best, Ivan Muñiz Reed and Matt Poll. It features images and texts (from numerous cited sources) exploring the work of 49 artists: Abdul Abdullah, Jumana Emil Abboud, Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, Tania Bruguera, Nick Cave, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Chimurenga, Dadang Christanto, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Karla Dickens, Fiona Foley, Félix González-Torres, Guerrilla Girls, Julie Gough, Dale Harding, Edgar Heap of Birds, Pierre Huyghe, Guo Jian, Jonathan Jones, Jumaadi, Yuki Kihara, Glenn Ligon, Laura Lima, Teresa Margolles, Shaghayegh Mazloom, Queenie Nakarra McKenzie, Kent Monkman, Zanele Muholi, Clinton Nain, Paulo Nazareth, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Fiona Pardington, Mike Parr, Ben Quilty, Imran Qureshi, Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub, Marwan Rechmaoui, Lisa Reihana, Doris Salcedo, Alex Seton, Hito Steyerl, James Tylor, Adriana Verejão, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Kara Walker, Jason Wing.
Halsall et all eds. Special Edition of the “Journal of Visual Art Practice”
Susan Best, ‘Minimali... more Halsall et all eds. Special Edition of the “Journal of Visual Art Practice” Susan Best, ‘Minimalism, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics: Rethinking the Anti-aesthetic Tradition in late-modern art’ Anna Dezeuze, ‘Everyday life, “Relational Aesthetics”, and the “Transfiguration of the Common-Place”’ Riikka Haapalainen, ‘Contemporary Art and the Role of Museum as Situational Media’ Andy Hamilton, ‘Indeterminacy and Reciprocity: Contrasts and Connections between Natural and Artistic Beauty’ Joanna Lowry, ‘Putting Painting in the Picture (Photographically)’ Toni Ross, ‘Aesthetic Autonomy and Interdisciplinarity: A Response to Nicolas Bourriaud’s “Relational Aesthetics”’ William P. Seeley, ‘Naturalizing Aesthetics: Art and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision’ Jeremy Spencer, ‘Body and Embodiment in Modernist Painting’
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focusing in particular on late-modern art, the period that has
seemingly set the tone for current practice. I briefly consider some
earlier precedents from the modern period, specifically those
identified by key analysts of this phenomenon: Yve-Alain Bois and
Maria Gough. However, my concern is not so much with the historical
coordinates of this impulse, but rather with the curious appeal and strange generativity in evidence. Think of the range of strategies that has been invented to counteract the expression of subjectivity and feeling. Serial or modular methods, chance operations, task-like actions, non-composition, revealing the medium, ready-made objects and already made compositions, collective production, delegated production and performance, appropriation – these are just some of the ways in which artists have sought to reject personal expression across the twentieth century.
Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral and haunting, as well as expressive and non-expressive.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
These artists make a radical break with the dominant approaches to political art (ideology critique, identity politics), which still follow the precepts of the anti-aesthetic tradition. The anti-aesthetic tradition privileges critique over aesthetic engagement, and rejects the importance of traditional aesthetic concerns such as beauty, feeling, expression and judgment. In contrast, these artists use a range of complex aesthetic strategies to engage audiences with these histories and to transform our feelings about them.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Guilt and Shame: Current debates in affect studies
Chapter 2 Witnessing Fever
Chapter 3 Shame and the Convict Stain: Anne Ferran’s Lost to Worlds
Chapter 4 Fiona Pardington: Colonialism and Repair in the Southern Seas
Chapter 5 Rosângela Rennó: “Little Stories of the Downtrodden and the Vanquished”
Chapter 6 Our dark side: Milagros de la Torre’s The Lost Steps
http://bloomsbury.com/au/reparative-aesthetics-9781472529862/
Reviews: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (2018), caareviews (2017), EyeContact (2017)
"Visualizing Feeling" also addresses a methodological blind spot in art history: the interpretation of feeling, emotion and affect. It demonstrates that the affective dimension, alongside other materials and methods of art, is part of the artistic means of production and innovation. This is the first thorough re-appraisal of aesthetic engagement with affect in post-1960s art.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Minimalism and Subjectivity: Aesthetics and the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition
2 Feeling and Late Modern Art
3 Participation, Affect and the Body: Lygia Clark
4 Eva Hesse’s Late Sculptures: Elusive Expression and Unconscious Affect
5 Ana Mendieta: Affect Miniaturization, Emotional Ties and the Silueta Series
6 The Dream of the Audience: The Moving Images of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Conclusion: Which anthropomorphism?
Book endorsements:
"At last, here is, a book that lifts the ban on affect imposed on art criticism and theory by the "anti-aesthetic" school that has been dominating the scene in the last forty years! Taking her clues from four of the best women artists whose work spans the period, Susan Best convincingly demonstrates that if you close the door of the house of art to feelings, they enter through the window. What’s more, this is valid for the supposedly ‘anaesthetic’ art movements - minimal and conceptual art - that form the contextual background of her case studies: they are no less aesthetic than the art of the past or the most recent present." -- Thierry de Duve, Historian and Theorist of contemporary art and Professor at University of Lille
"Susan Best's remarkably lucid and paradoxical project begins the process of recovering feeling and emotion in late modern art. Her landmark study of four women artists - Hesse, Clark, Mendieta and Cha - rescues both the feminine and the aesthetic from the ghetto, by an astute combination of psycho-analysis and art history." -- Dr. Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, Sydney University Museums
"Visualizing Feeling develops a compelling argument for focusing on precisely the centrality of affect and feeling in any understanding of the art of the 1960s and 1970s, where it seemed that affect no longer had a place. In exploring the work of four powerful and sometimes neglected women artists, she shows how it is paradoxically where affect is consciously minimized that it nevertheless returns to haunt the art work as its most powerful force. Art works affect before they inform, perform or communicate. Sue Best demonstrates that by restoring the question of affect and emotion to the art work, new kinds of questions can be asked about the feminine in art, questions that affirm the personal and political power of these works of art." -- Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University, author of Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, 2008
Reviews: Choice, Feb (2012), Art & Australia, 49.4 (2012), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 12 (2012), Cassone, Feb (2013), Parallax (2013).
focusing in particular on late-modern art, the period that has
seemingly set the tone for current practice. I briefly consider some
earlier precedents from the modern period, specifically those
identified by key analysts of this phenomenon: Yve-Alain Bois and
Maria Gough. However, my concern is not so much with the historical
coordinates of this impulse, but rather with the curious appeal and strange generativity in evidence. Think of the range of strategies that has been invented to counteract the expression of subjectivity and feeling. Serial or modular methods, chance operations, task-like actions, non-composition, revealing the medium, ready-made objects and already made compositions, collective production, delegated production and performance, appropriation – these are just some of the ways in which artists have sought to reject personal expression across the twentieth century.
Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series are visceral and haunting, as well as expressive and non-expressive.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art.
These artists make a radical break with the dominant approaches to political art (ideology critique, identity politics), which still follow the precepts of the anti-aesthetic tradition. The anti-aesthetic tradition privileges critique over aesthetic engagement, and rejects the importance of traditional aesthetic concerns such as beauty, feeling, expression and judgment. In contrast, these artists use a range of complex aesthetic strategies to engage audiences with these histories and to transform our feelings about them.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Guilt and Shame: Current debates in affect studies
Chapter 2 Witnessing Fever
Chapter 3 Shame and the Convict Stain: Anne Ferran’s Lost to Worlds
Chapter 4 Fiona Pardington: Colonialism and Repair in the Southern Seas
Chapter 5 Rosângela Rennó: “Little Stories of the Downtrodden and the Vanquished”
Chapter 6 Our dark side: Milagros de la Torre’s The Lost Steps
http://bloomsbury.com/au/reparative-aesthetics-9781472529862/
Reviews: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (2018), caareviews (2017), EyeContact (2017)
"Visualizing Feeling" also addresses a methodological blind spot in art history: the interpretation of feeling, emotion and affect. It demonstrates that the affective dimension, alongside other materials and methods of art, is part of the artistic means of production and innovation. This is the first thorough re-appraisal of aesthetic engagement with affect in post-1960s art.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Minimalism and Subjectivity: Aesthetics and the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition
2 Feeling and Late Modern Art
3 Participation, Affect and the Body: Lygia Clark
4 Eva Hesse’s Late Sculptures: Elusive Expression and Unconscious Affect
5 Ana Mendieta: Affect Miniaturization, Emotional Ties and the Silueta Series
6 The Dream of the Audience: The Moving Images of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Conclusion: Which anthropomorphism?
Book endorsements:
"At last, here is, a book that lifts the ban on affect imposed on art criticism and theory by the "anti-aesthetic" school that has been dominating the scene in the last forty years! Taking her clues from four of the best women artists whose work spans the period, Susan Best convincingly demonstrates that if you close the door of the house of art to feelings, they enter through the window. What’s more, this is valid for the supposedly ‘anaesthetic’ art movements - minimal and conceptual art - that form the contextual background of her case studies: they are no less aesthetic than the art of the past or the most recent present." -- Thierry de Duve, Historian and Theorist of contemporary art and Professor at University of Lille
"Susan Best's remarkably lucid and paradoxical project begins the process of recovering feeling and emotion in late modern art. Her landmark study of four women artists - Hesse, Clark, Mendieta and Cha - rescues both the feminine and the aesthetic from the ghetto, by an astute combination of psycho-analysis and art history." -- Dr. Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, Sydney University Museums
"Visualizing Feeling develops a compelling argument for focusing on precisely the centrality of affect and feeling in any understanding of the art of the 1960s and 1970s, where it seemed that affect no longer had a place. In exploring the work of four powerful and sometimes neglected women artists, she shows how it is paradoxically where affect is consciously minimized that it nevertheless returns to haunt the art work as its most powerful force. Art works affect before they inform, perform or communicate. Sue Best demonstrates that by restoring the question of affect and emotion to the art work, new kinds of questions can be asked about the feminine in art, questions that affirm the personal and political power of these works of art." -- Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University, author of Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, 2008
Reviews: Choice, Feb (2012), Art & Australia, 49.4 (2012), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 12 (2012), Cassone, Feb (2013), Parallax (2013).
It contains an introductory essay by David Corbet and essays and text extracts by several other writers: Susan Best, Ivan Muñiz Reed and Matt Poll.
It features images and texts (from numerous cited sources) exploring the work of 49 artists: Abdul Abdullah, Jumana Emil Abboud, Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, Tania Bruguera, Nick Cave, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Chimurenga, Dadang Christanto, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Karla Dickens, Fiona Foley, Félix González-Torres, Guerrilla Girls, Julie Gough, Dale Harding, Edgar Heap of Birds, Pierre Huyghe, Guo Jian, Jonathan Jones, Jumaadi, Yuki Kihara, Glenn Ligon, Laura Lima, Teresa Margolles, Shaghayegh Mazloom, Queenie Nakarra McKenzie, Kent Monkman, Zanele Muholi, Clinton Nain, Paulo Nazareth, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Fiona Pardington, Mike Parr, Ben Quilty, Imran Qureshi, Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub, Marwan Rechmaoui, Lisa Reihana, Doris Salcedo, Alex Seton, Hito Steyerl, James Tylor, Adriana Verejão, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Kara Walker, Jason Wing.
Susan Best, ‘Minimalism, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics: Rethinking the Anti-aesthetic Tradition in late-modern art’
Anna Dezeuze, ‘Everyday life, “Relational Aesthetics”, and the “Transfiguration of the Common-Place”’
Riikka Haapalainen, ‘Contemporary Art and the Role of Museum as Situational Media’
Andy Hamilton, ‘Indeterminacy and Reciprocity: Contrasts and Connections between Natural and Artistic Beauty’
Joanna Lowry, ‘Putting Painting in the Picture (Photographically)’
Toni Ross, ‘Aesthetic Autonomy and Interdisciplinarity: A Response to Nicolas Bourriaud’s “Relational Aesthetics”’
William P. Seeley, ‘Naturalizing Aesthetics: Art and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision’
Jeremy Spencer, ‘Body and Embodiment in Modernist Painting’