Erotic Ambiguities - The Female Nude in Art

Synopsis
Erotic Ambiguities explores how feminist artists have responded to traditional depictions of the "ideal female body" which proliferate throughout contemporary sexually visual culture. Across photography, fashion, painting and performance art, McDonald shows how feminist artists have employed the
idea of ambiguity to counter negative images of women and to dismantle the elusive classical ideal enshrined in "the nude."
Examining the work of key artists from Barbara Kruger, Judy Chicago, and Mary Duffy, to Zoe Leonard, Tracey Moffat, Pat Barrington and Sally Smart, McDonald traces the shift in
feminist art practices from the early deconstruction of patriarchal representations to the more ambivalent contemporary practices.
Library Journal
McDonald (fine arts, Univ. of Melbourne) presents an academicstyle volume based upon the unquestionable fact that ambiguity exists in the perception or reading of successful
visual art but also adds the proposal that "art is always erotic." The venue for examining these issues is mostly feminist performance body art as seen in photography and on screen. These works are viewed through the theories of Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstructivism, and dissertations covering the
conceptual ideal of an erotically female body as seen in poststructuralist feminist criticism, notably Judith Butlers Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (LJ 12/89). Most of the illustrations document work created by women of Australia, including the Aborigine, and much of the feminist imagery in the
roughly 75 plates is fairly recent or little known, making this an important offering to those looking for work produced outside the usual centers. McDonald, however, steps beyond her topic of the "degendering" of feminist body art and criticism and tarnishes the subject by writing on deregulating
intergenerationalist sex.
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