the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar
Anna Chave
High Tide: Deploying Fluid in Women’s Art Practice
This lecture took place on November 30th, 2010 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union
Lecture introduction
In view of the way fluid has historically been gendered (with “turbulent flow” conventionally coded feminine in hydrological discourse) and the way female bodily fluids have historically factored in feminist theory--notably that of Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous--this lecture will argue for the liberating and strategic effects of foregrounding fluidity (including, but not limited to menstrual imagery) in the practice of artists ranging from Louise Bourgeois, Shigeko Kubota, Ana Mendieta, and Lynda Benglis, to Laurie Anderson and Pipilotti Rist (her 2008 Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)).
About Anna Chave
Anna C. Chave is Professor of Art History at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and has also taught at Harvard and Yale universities. She has published many essays concerned with issues of reception, interpretation, gender and identity, mainly with respect to 20th century art. Recent writings include “’Is this good for Vulva?’: Female Genitalia in Contemporary Art,” in The Visible Vagina (New York: Francis Naumann Gallery, 2010); “Sculpture, Gender, and the Value of Labor,” American Art 24, no. 1 (spring 2010): 26-30; and “Dis/Cover/ing the Quilts of Gee’s Bend” (Journal of Modern Craft [Victoria and Albert Museum], July 2008). Her artist subjects have ranged from early Picasso, and O’Keeffe, to Pollock, and Wilke. She is known besides for her revisionist readings of Minimalism, including “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power” (Arts, January 1990), “Minimalism and Biography” (Art Bulletin, March 2000), and “Revaluing Minimalism: Patronage, Aura, and Place” (Art Bulletin, September 2008). In addition, Chave has authored monographs on Rothko and Brancusi (Yale University Press, 1991 and 1993).