Sexuality

It has been argued, most notably in psychoanalytic and modernist art discourse, thatthe production of works of art is fundamentally driven by sexual desire. It has been further 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 thisidentification of art with sexual expression or repression arose and how the terms have shifted intandem 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; pornographyand the obscene; the performativity of gender and sexuality; and the role of sexuality in forgingradical art or curatorial practices in response to such issues as state-sponsored repression andanti-feminism in the broader social realm.

Artists surveyedincludeVito Acconci, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, GerardByrne, George Chakravarthi, Judy Chicago, Vaginal Davis, Wim Delvoye, Elmgreen & Dragset, ValieExport, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Harmony Hammond, Claudette Johnson, Mary Kelly,Yayoi Kusama, Robert Legorreta, Paul McCarthy, Sarah Maple, Shirin Neshat, Lorraine O'Grady, YokoOno, Catherine Opie, Orlan, William Pope.L, Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel,Barbara Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Alina Szapocznikow, Del LaGrace Volcano, Hannah Wilke, DavidWojnarowicz

Writers includeMalek Alloula, Norman O. Brown,Judith Butler, Douglas Crimp, Angela Dimitrakaki, Michel Foucault, Daniel Guerin, 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, Stephen Whittle

Amelia Jones is Grierson Chair in Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. Her books include Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (MIT Press), Self/Image: Technology, Representation and the Contemporary Subject, and Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification in the Visual Arts.