<i>From the Preface:</i><br>"The essays in <i>Feminist Art Criticism</i> are theoretical, and we selected them for several reasons. First, they show a diversity of concerns. These include spirituality, sexuality, the representation of women in art, the necessary inter-relationship of theory and action, women as artmakers, ethnicity, language itself, so-called postfeminism and critiques of hte art world, the discipline of art history and the practice of art criticism. Second, the contributors' work has not been either widely disseminated or readily available. Third, the essays, especially arranged as they are (chronologically), demonstrate a continuous feminist discourse in art from the early 1970s through the present, a discourse that is neither monolithic nor intellectually trendy but that rather exhibits many elements, the polemical, Marxist, lyrical, and poststructuralist being only a few."

Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (ICON EDITIONS)

Arts & Photography

Raven, Arlene

Frueh, Joanna

Langer, Cassandra

History & Criticism

Westview Press

<p>This follow-on from "Feminist Art Criticism"is an anthology using art as a basis for discussing a broad range of issues and problems at the forefront of the feminist movement. Using art and artists as a point of departure, the essays explore issues and problems of culture, language, identification, creativity, sexuality, gender, race and aging. Though diverse in style, perspective and theme, the articles share a common interest in feminism as a symbol of meaningful change and as a vehicle for intellectual exploration, and individual communication and understanding.</p>

New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (ICON EDITIONS)

Langer, Cassandra L.

Erotic Faculties

The erotic and the intellectual come together to create a new kind of criticism in the lushly written work of Joanna Frueh. Addressing sexuality in ways that are usually hidden or left unsaid, Frueh—a noted performance artist and art historian—explores subjects such as aging, beauty, love, sex, pleasure, contemporary art, and the body as a site and vehicle of knowledge. Frueh's language is explicit, graphic, fragmented. She assumes multiple voices: those of lover, prophet, daughter, mythmaker, art critic, activist, and bleeding heart. What results is an utterly original narrative that frees us from the false objectivity of traditional critical discourse and affirms the erotic as a way to ease human suffering.Through personal reflection, parody, autobiography, and poetry, Frueh shows us what it means to perform criticism, to personalize critical thinking. Rejecting postmodern, deconstructed prose, she recuperates the sentimental, proudly asserts a romantic viewpoint, and disrupts academic and feminist conventions. Erotic Faculties seeks to free the power of our unutilized erotic faculties and to expand the possibilities of criticism; it is a wild ride and a consummate pleasure.

University of California Press

<p>The erotic and the intellectual come together to create a new kind of criticism in the lushly written work of Joanna Frueh. Addressing sexuality in ways that are usually hidden or left unsaid, Frueh—a noted performance artist and art historian—explores subjects such as aging, beauty, love, sex, pleasure, contemporary art, and the body as a site and vehicle of knowledge. Frueh's language is explicit, graphic, fragmented. She assumes multiple voices: those of lover, prophet, daughter, mythmaker, art critic, activist, and bleeding heart. What results is an utterly original narrative that frees us from the false objectivity of traditional critical discourse and affirms the erotic as a way to ease human suffering.<br><br>Through personal reflection, parody, autobiography, and poetry, Frueh shows us what it means to perform criticism, to personalize critical thinking. Rejecting postmodern, deconstructed prose, she recuperates the sentimental, proudly asserts a romantic viewpoint, and disrupts academic and feminist conventions. <i>Erotic Faculties</i> seeks to free the power of our unutilized erotic faculties and to expand the possibilities of criticism; it is a wild ride and a consummate pleasure.</p>

Literature & Fiction

Erotica

<p>This daring, intensely personal book challenges both conventional and feminist ideas about beauty by asking us to take pleasure in beauty without shame, and to see and feel the erotic in everyday life. Bringing together her varied experiences as a poet, art historian, bodybuilder, and noted performance artist, Joanna Frueh shows us how to move beyond society's equation of youth with beauty toward an aesthetic for the fully erotic human being.<br><br> A lush combination of autobiography, theory, photography, and poetry, this book continues to develop the ideas about the erotic, beauty, older women, sex, and pleasure that Frueh first addressed in <i>Erotic Faculties. Monster/Beauty</i> examines these issues using a provocative, often explicit, set of examples. Frueh admiringly looks at the bodies and mindsets of midlife female bodybuilders, rethinks the vampire, and revises our ideas about traditional models of beauty, such as Aphrodite. Above all, she boldly brings her personal experience into the text, weaving her reflections on female sensuality with contemporary theory.<br><br>These linked essays are as much a performance as they are a discussion, breaking down the barriers between the personal and the academic, and the erotic and the intellectual. Frueh writes passionately and beautifully, and the result is a much-needed exploration of beauty myths and taboos.</p>

Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love

<p>This daring, intensely personal book challenges both conventional and feminist ideas about beauty by asking us to take pleasure in beauty without shame, and to see and feel the erotic in everyday life. Bringing together her varied experiences as a poet, art historian, bodybuilder, and noted performance artist, Joanna Frueh shows us how to move beyond society's equation of youth with beauty toward an aesthetic for the fully erotic human being. <br><br> A lush combination of autobiography, theory, photography, and poetry, this book continues to develop the ideas about the erotic, beauty, older women, sex, and pleasure that Frueh first addressed in <i>Erotic Faculties. Monster/Beauty</i> examines these issues using a provocative, often explicit, set of examples. Frueh admiringly looks at the bodies and mindsets of midlife female bodybuilders, rethinks the vampire, and revises our ideas about traditional models of beauty, such as Aphrodite. Above all, she boldly brings her personal experience into the text, weaving her reflections on female sensuality with contemporary theory. <br><br>These linked essays are as much a performance as they are a discussion, breaking down the barriers between the personal and the academic, and the erotic and the intellectual. Frueh writes passionately and beautifully, and the result is a much-needed exploration of beauty myths and taboos. </p>

<p><div>The erotic and the intellectual come together to create a new kind of criticism in the lushly written work of Joanna Frueh. Addressing sexuality in ways that are usually hidden or left unsaid, Frueh--a noted performance artist and art historian--explores subjects such as aging, beauty, love, sex, pleasure, contemporary art, and the body as a site and vehicle of knowledge. Frueh's language is explicit, graphic, fragmented. She assumes multiple voices: those of lover, prophet, daughter, mythmaker, art critic, activist, and bleeding heart. What results is an utterly original narrative that frees us from the false objectivity of traditional critical discourse and affirms the erotic as a way to ease human suffering.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Through personal reflection, parody, autobiography, and poetry, Frueh shows us what it means to perform criticism, to personalize critical thinking. Rejecting postmodern, deconstructed prose, she recuperates the sentimental, proudly asserts a romantic viewpoint, and disrupts academic and feminist conventions. Erotic Faculties seeks to free the power of our unutilized erotic faculties and to expand the possibilities of criticism; it is a wild ride and a consummate pleasure.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.</div></p>

Reference

Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004

The performance artist Joanna Frueh has emerged over the past twenty-five years as a wildly original voice in feminist art. Her uninhibited performances are celebrations of beauty, sensuality, eroticism, and pleasure. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert), which features eighteen of her essential performance texts, is a celebration of this remarkable artist and her work. Arranged chronologically, from The Concupiscent Critic (1979) through Ambrosia (2004), the pieces reveal Frueh’s evolution as an artist and intellectual over the course of her career. Many of these texts have never before been published; others have not been readily available until now. Among the sixteen color photographs in this richly illustrated book are pictures of Frueh performing and images from Joanna in the Desert, a 2006 collaboration between Frueh and the artist and scholar Jill O’Bryan.Frueh’s performances are unabashedly autobiographical, as likely to reflect her scholarship as a feminist art historian as her love affairs or childhood memories. For Frueh, eros and self-love are part of a revolutionary feminist strategy; her work exemplifies the physicality and embrace of pleasure that she finds wanting in contemporary feminist theory. Scholarly and rigorous yet playful in tone, her performances are joyful, filled with eroticism, flowers, sexy costumes, and beautiful colors, textures, and scents. Recurring themes include Frueh’s passionate attachment to the desert landscape and the idea of transformation: a continual reaching for clarity of thought and feeling.In an afterword as lyrical and breathless as her performance pieces, Frueh explores her identification with the desert and its influence on her art. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) includes a detailed chronology of Frueh’s performances.

Individual Artists

Duke University Press Books

<p>Pictured in two centuries of images, the hypermuscular and physically strong woman is studied here for the first time as a major player in popular culture and contemporary art. Using the bodybuilder as prototype, a rich variety of authors engage with her particular physicality, and how it resonates with social issues such as female pleasure and gender stereotypes. From the sublime to the gritty, this volume presents modern amazons as a culture with a history, a dazzling and transgressive current phenomenon, and avatars of the future. <br><br>Packed with illustrations, <i>Picturing the Modern Amazon</i> investigates the representation of hypermuscular women in a range of visual sources. Historical images and archival materials dating from the late 1700s through the present century illustrate older notions of female strength, providing a solid base of comparison for the modern materials. Contemporary art explores a diversity of issues surrounding the physically strong woman; artists represented include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Nicole Eisenman, Annie Leibovitz, Alison Saar, Andre Serrano, Cindy Sherman, and Nancy Spero. Comic artists address the amazon through comic strips, comic books, and unique art works that focus on muscular female characters and superheros; artists include Robert Crumb, Diane DiMassa, Roberta Gregory, John Howard, and Turtel Onli. Photographs of some of today's top bodybuilding competitors capture the stunning strength and definition of the hypermuscular woman. <br><br>Co-edited by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein, and Judith Stein, the volume's contributors are Michael Cunningham, Nathalie Gassel, Leslie Heywood, Irving Lavin, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Al Thomas, Jan Todd, Steve Wennerstrom, and Carla Williams. Interviews with noted bodybuilders-both the sport's pioneers and today's top competitors-provide a personal perspective. <br></p>

Picturing The Modern Amazon (New Museum Books)

Rizzoli

When her parents died and her marriage disintegrated within the span of a few months, art historian and performance artist Joanna Frueh entered a painful period of grief and mourning. This book is about how she healed herself and in the process explored the vast range of her potential as a woman, for mind inseparable from the body, for being truly alive. Swooning Beauty is an ornate, intimate memoir of discovery and healing. Frueh’s path to recovery lay through a profound examination of her intuitions, desires, fantasies, dreams, and emotions, her capacity for pleasure—visual, sensual, intellectual, gastronomic, and erotic; and her sense of her own heroic female identity. Hers is the passionate voice of a creative, intelligent woman scrutinizing the nature of love in all its forms—including self-love—and the ways of being that make us free, flexible, more fully real and more fully human. The result is an engaging view into the rich and colorful inner life of a woman at the threshold of middle age, of the blossoming of mind and spirit that comes after suffering and self-realization. Pleasure, she concludes, "is the absence of lack. Self-love is a necessary plenitude. Vigilance in love brings us freedom. Freedom is not an absolute whose attainment is humanly impossible. Yogis say that the self that is not ego is free. That self is the spacious heart, the spacious mind." Frueh offers us wisdom and comfort for the journey into middle age, and the deep pleasure of encountering a generous, lively spirit and a remarkably spacious mind.

Swooning Beauty: A Memoir Of Pleasure

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University of Nevada Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frueh, Joanna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Frueh, Joanna

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frueh, Joanna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (ICON EDITIONS)

New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (ICON EDITIONS)

Erotic Faculties

Erotic Faculties

Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love

Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love

Erotic Faculties

Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004

Picturing The Modern Amazon (New Museum Books)

Swooning Beauty: A Memoir Of Pleasure