Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art

233 Pages·2014·7.989 MB·English

by  Grant, Catherine;Waxman, Lori

Tracking the figure of the girl across the fields of contemporary art and film,
this book moves effortlessly between cultural criticism, art history, and
feminist theory. Be forewarned, however: the girls in contemporary art are
anything but docile or well-behaved. From baby butches to bad girls, from
reluctant Lolitas to hysterical orphans, these girls make terrific trouble in the
lavishly imagined worlds they inhabit. And the women who do that imagining?
They are some of the leading artists and filmmakers of our day. And thanks to
Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art they get their critical due.
— Richard Meyer, University of Southern California
Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art is the missing link in the new feminist
art history/criticism. It engages with that crucial and ambiguous period
where children become women. In a way, one might say that girlhood lies at
the root of Freud’s question ‘what do women want?’ at the same time that
it mystifies this originary moment in women’s history. These texts hit the
crucial questions in girl representation, running the whole gamut from charm
to hysteria to murder.
— Linda Nochlin, New York University
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Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art
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Girls! Girls! Girls!
in Contemporary Art

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GiWrhlsy! WGei rMlsa!k eG Airrlts!
at why it is taught
in Contemporary Art
Edited by Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman
by Richard Hickman
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First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect,
The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Holly Rose
Typesetting: John Teehan
Cover image: Anna Gaskell, Untitled #30 (override), 1997, C-print, 15.24 x 18.415 cm, courtesy
the artist and Yvon Lambert Paris, New York.
The cost of images for Harriet Riches’ essay was supported by Kingston University.
The publication of this volume was supported by a faculty grant from The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago.
ISBN 978–1–84150-348-6 / EISBN 978-1-84150-528-2
Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, Wales.
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: The Girl in Contemporary Art 1
Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman
Through the Looking-Glass with Heart-Shaped Sunglasses: Searching for
Alice and Lolita in Contemporary Representations of Girls 17
Lori Waxman
Dial ‘P’ for Panties: Narrative Photography in the 1990s (with a New
Afterword by the Author) 45
Lucy Soutter
Girlish Games: Playfulness and ‘Drawingness’ in the Work of
Francesca Woodman and Lucy Gunning 63
Harriet Riches
Marlene McCarty’s Murder Girls 87
Maud Lavin
Haunted: Writing with the Girl 107
Taru Elfving
Oh Mother Where Art Thou? Sue de Beer’s Hysterical Orphan Girls 125
Kate Random Love
Mi-girl, Mi-kick, Mi-fire, Mi-sin, Mi-soul, MI-WA: A Fairy Tale in Blue 147
Carol Mavor
Baby Butches and Reluctant Lolitas: Collier Schorr and Hellen van Meene 161
Catherine Grant
Author Biographies 187
Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art
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Acknowledgements
Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman
We are grateful to the many friends, family members and colleagues who helped us in
countless ways during the long making of this book.
I (Lori) would like to thank the folks at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
for their continued support of my work in this area. Dean Lisa Wainwright provided
funding for this book at a crucial moment. Maud Lavin oversaw the earliest versions
of my ‘Searching for Alice and Lolita’ essay and was instrumental in pushing me to
co-develop this volume, to which she so generously contributed an essay of her own.
Stanley Murashige offered me the opportunity to teach an experimental seminar on the
representation of girls in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism, a class
co-taught with artist Stephanie Knowles, to whom more thanks are due for years of
conversation and collaboration on the subject of girls. My thinking on this subject was
challenged and expanded by the students in those classes, in particular Anna Wilson,
Auden O’Connell, Lee Foley, Noe Cuellar, Maria Gaspar and Amber Hawk Swanson.
Amber also contributed to an earlier version of this book, along with Melanie Archer,
Jenny Gheith, Katrina Kuntz, Lyz Nagan, Hiromi Nakazawa, Britany Salsbury, Nikki
Sorg, Jovana Stokic and Michelle Zis, and I thank them all for their efforts.
I (Catherine) would like to thank my colleagues at the Courtauld Institute of Art,
particularly my PhD supervisor Mignon Nixon, and fellow researchers who read and
commented on various parts of my work on girls. These include Judith Batalion, James
Boaden, Sarah James, Dominic Johnson and Kate Random Love. I would also like to
thank the following: Althea Greenan of the Women’s Art Library and Francis Summers,
who have put in many hours of reading and conversing on the topic. Laura Andre, whose
session at the CAA Annual Conference in 2005 on ‘Tomboys and Girly Girls’ brought
Lori and I together for the first time, and inspired the title of my essay here. Maud Lavin,
whose enthusiasm for this project brought Lori and I together again. The writers in this
collection with whom I have had many years’ worth of conversations about girls, and who
have inspired and challenged my own thinking. Lucy Soutter for last-minute funding.
The gallerists and archivists who have been generous with their time and images: Bruce
Hackney for the Karlheinz Weinberger Estate and Simon Greenberg for 303 Gallery.
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