What are the best books on gender and sexuality in art?

March 19, 2023 3:08 PM

I would love to read things, especially recently published, about gender and sexuality in visual art. Any recommendations would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance!
posted by mortaddams to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

I can speak to one of the "best" even if it's far from recent -- a classic, but a base for much that comes after: Ways of Seeing by John Berger. Origin of the phrase "male gaze" then used by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey. (Both a BBC 2 series and then a book).
posted by ojocaliente at 4:24 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

You might enjoy A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt
posted by prewar lemonade at 4:24 PM on March 19, 2023

How about Christopher Reed's Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas (2011)
posted by xaryts at 4:58 PM on March 19, 2023

You'll want to take a close look at Linda Nochlin's work, even if it's not "recently published".
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:06 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is maybe a little adjacent to your question, but Jeanette Winterson has written beautifully about art in essay and novel form in Art Objects and Art and Lies, maybe more as a feminist/queer critique, questioning and examining what makes art art. (Not just visual art, but also music and literature.)
posted by amusebuche at 2:32 PM on March 20, 2023

Amelia Jones (at the University of Southern California) is one of the go-to authors and editors on this topic at the moment/for the past 10 years. Her co-edited (with Erin Silver) volume, Otherwise, has some brilliant essays by a range of authors so there's lots to chase up -- but you can't really go wrong with anything in this book list on Wikipedia.
posted by obliquicity at 2:32 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

In addition to Amelia Jones (great suggestion), I'd recommend a couple of new books:
Lex Lancaster on queer abstraction
Catherine Grant on how contemporary artists are revisiting the history of feminism
Lorraine O'Grady's writings on her career as an artist
(and Duke is running a 50% off sale right now!!)
Julia Bryan-Wilson on feminism and craft/textile art

Duke, Chicago, Princeton, and MIT are all good university presses to pay attention to for this kind of work.

In addition, the catalogs for recent shows featuring Black feminist artists:
We Wanted a Revolution (Brooklyn Museum 2017)
Just Above Midtown (closed last month at MoMA)
Everything about Simone Yvette Leigh's "Loophole of Retreat" project, featured at the Venice Biennale last year
Wangechi Mutu at the New Museum

You might also find this list of Distinguished Feminist artists and critics from the College Art Association to be interesting!
posted by kickingthecrap at 8:42 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]