SEXUALITY

Sexuality is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art.

'The poems, critical essays, interviews, manifestos and even letters to the editors brilliantly assembled here by Amelia Jones suggest that there is simply nothing more beguiling, more arousing, more to the point about art than sex. Straight sex, queer sex, s/m, porn and sex too subtle to name are all brought to bear on modern and contemporary art's possibilities and exclusions. Politically sensitive and boldly polemical, Sexuality is a great collection for teaching and for being taught anew all we thought we knew.'

— Peggy Phelan, Ann O'Day Maples Chair in the Arts; Professor of English, Theatre and Performance Studies, Stanford University

It has been argued, most notably in psychoanalytic and modernist art discourse, that the production of works of art is fundamentally driven by sexual desire. It has further been argued, particularly since the early 1970s, that sexual drives and desires also condition the distribution, display and reception of art. This anthology traces how and why this identification of art with sexual expression or repression arose and how the terms have shifted in tandem with artistic and theoretical debates, from the era of the rights movements to the present. Among the subjects it discusses are abjection and the ‘informe’, or formless; pornography and the obscene; the ‘performativity’ of gender and sexuality; and the role of sexuality in forging radical art or curatorial practices, in response to such issues as state-sponsored repression and anti-feminism in the broader social realm.

Artists surveyed include Vito Acconci, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Gerard Byrne, George Chakravarthi, Judy Chicago, Vaginal Davis, Wim Delvoye, Elmgreen & Dragset, Valie Export, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Harmony Hammond, Claudette Johnson, Mary Kelly, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Legorreta, Lee Lozano, Paul McCarthy, Sarah Maple, Shirin Neshat, Lorraine O’Grady, Yoko Ono, Catherine Opie, Orlan, William Pope.L, Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel, Barbara Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Alina Szapocznikow, Del LaGrace Volcano, Hannah Wilke, David Wojnarowicz and Ming Wong.

Writers include Malek Alloula, Norman O. Brown, Judith Butler, Douglas Crimp, Angela Dimitrakaki, Michel Foucault, Daniel Guérin, Eleanor Heartney, Jonathan D. Katz, Rosalind Krauss, Julia Kristeva, Pawel Leszkowicz, Herbert Marcuse, Kobena Mercer, Laura Mulvey, Lawrence Rinder, Jacqueline Rose, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Stephen Whittle.

Amelia Jones is Grierson Chair in Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Her books include Self/Image: Technology, Representation and the Contemporary Subject (2006) and Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification in the Visual Arts (2012).