Clare Nicholls / SMP 2010 / bibliography

Clare Nicholls ST. MARY'S PROJECT, 2010

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Arnold, Rebecca. Fashion, Desire, and Anxiety. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Print.
Arnold tries to draw connections in fashion that demonstrates that it is not just a vehicle for societal fantasizing, but it also subverts itself by eliciting anxiety as well as pleasure. She talks about the function of fashion in society and how it can become a comment on society itself, which is certainly one of my own interests.
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and its Double. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. Print.
Artaud likens the theater to the citizens of a plague-doomed city rioting and looting the houses of their neighbors. He calls it, "an immediate gratuitousness provoking acts without use or profit" (24). He is against conventional theatre of his time, which privileges language, the actual script, over the audience's corporeal experience, mise-en-scene. I also think that performance is more than language, and I enjoyed his sense of poetry and connecting theatre back to religious rites.
Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994. Print.
Barber is an archeologist who focuses on textiles, one of the least preserved (and preservable) artifacts in human history. One reason why "women's wok" may not seem historically important is because it is more ephemeral than ceramics, stone, or metal, and literally has not survived the thousands of years. She writes about the role of women's work and textiles in ancient contexts, such as Phoenicia, Greece, and Crete. This books has been helpful because it has enabled me to see how textiles have been used in non-modern contexts.
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Print.
Brechtian theatre is an important theory on theatre and performance, and it was interesting to read about how one must distance the audience in order to make them critical and active members of society. Brecht's theories about distancing and epic theater informed the generation of feminist artists in the 1980s, as they opted to not depict the female body at all as a distancing device.
Evans, Caroline. "Desire and Dread: Alexander McQueen and the Contemporary Femme Fatale." Body Dressing. Eds. Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson. New York: Berg, 2001. Print.
Evans discusses McQueen in a feminist context and how he feels that his fashions empower women. McQueen feels that clothing can be like armor, and I feel that his feelings towards fashion can illustrate the monstrous feminine.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. Print.
Freud's text informed my thinking about the uncanny and the monstrous, and it was especially helpful because of its discussion of the etymology of the German phrase Das Unheimliche and how (like all the best German words) is not exactly translatable into English. Freud was also helpful because how he defined "the uncanny" as a sort of forced repetition, and how that repetition created the unsettled or uncanny feeling.
Gingerich, Willard. "Three Nahuatl Hymns on the Mother Archetype: An Interpretive Commentary." Mexican Studies / Estudios: 4.2 (Summer, 1988): 191-244. JSTOR. Web. 29 April 2010.
Gingerich discusses some of the versions of the vagina dentata myth in a Central and South American context. He also helpfully talks about vagina dentata generally and how variations on that same theme are found throughout many cultures over the world.
Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001. Print
This book contains a brief yet thorough overview of the history of performance art in the 20th century. Goldberg discusses not only the history of performance art, but different reasons why artists have turned to performance art instead of object-based art. It was valuable resource grounding me in performance art history, as it helped me narrow down the issues on which I wanted to concentrate.
Grosz, Elizabeth. "Animal Sex: Libido as Desire and Death." Sexy bodies: the strange carnalities of feminism. Eds. Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn. New York: Routledge, 1995. 278-299. Google Scholar. 29 April 2010.
Grosz also talks about vagina dentata in this essay, and how the fact that these myths exist is representative of how phallocentrism is significant in our thinking about female sexuality and desire.
Ho, Ting-jui. "East Asian Themes in Folktales of the Formosan Aborigines." Asian Folklore Studies: 23.2 (1964): 35-47. JSTOR. Web. 29 April 2010.
Ho discusses versions of vagina dentata myths in a general context, explaining their widespread nature, as well as within a general East Asian context, and finally within a certain subgroup, the Formosan Aborigines.
Jackson, Bruce. "Vagina Dentata and Cystic Teratoma." The Journal of American Folklore: 84.333: (Jul. - Sep., 1971). 341-342. JSTOR. 29 April 2010.
In this brief essay, Jackson argues that there may be a reason that vagina dentata myths have persisted: the dermoid cyst, a type of cystic teratoma. He does not insist that this reason is the cause of the myths entirely (he says that he agrees that they are based on fears of sexual difference), but the placement of the dermoid cyst, on or near the ovaries, and the fact that these cysts are more often than not filled with hair and teeth, may have been proof enough for ancient peoples. I personally liked that there may be a connection between the myth and an actual condition, if only because both are interests of mine.
Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Print.
Amelia Jones theorizes that the issue that is central to postmodernism is the inherent subjectivity involved in creating, reading, and writing about art, reframing body art from the 1960s and 1970s as feminist, denying that genre's contextualization in the 1980s as inherently anti-feminist. She talks about Brechtian ideas of alienation; feminist artists in the 1980s thought that depicting the female body was inherently complicit with the patriarchy because it presented the female body as an object to be desired, but Jones posits that that particular read of '60s and '70s body art denies the original artists' particularization and subjectivity. This has been a central work that I have considered when thinking about the female body in my art making.
Kershaw, Baz. The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.
Reading Brecht and Artaud is very useful, and even though that they are considered relatively recent theorists, considering the lengthy history of theatre, but this book has been useful because it talks about more contemporary performance theory, and isn't necessarily grounded in the theatre itself. Kershaw also discusses
Martin, Richard. Fashion and Surrealism. New York: Rizzoli, 1990. Print.
It has been interesting to see how the Surrealists moved from the picture plane onto the body. Reading this book has helped me decide where if fit in art historically, as well as why I am using embroidery in the way that I am--a way that is slightly different than the Surrealists.
Stern, Radu. Against Fashion: Clothing as Art, 1850 - 1930. North Adams, MA: MIT Press. 2003. Print.
One thing I like about turn of the century avant-garde movements is that they got into everything and every media, including fashion. This book goes through various radical dress movements (including images of Giacomo Balla's Futurist suits!) and how art has influenced fashion and used fashion as a means to express their ideas.
Vergine, Lea. Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. Milan: Skia, 2007. Print.
This is an excellent survey of a wide variety of body-based art, containing both images and artists' writing about their work. The work is organized into themed sections. It was interesting to see an assortment of body work, and it framed my understanding of pervious body based art works.
Warr, Tracey, and Amelia Jones, eds.. The Artist's Body. London: Phaidon Press, 2000. Print.
This is another survey of body based art, featuring many excellent images, primary sources of artists' writings, as well as secondary critical essays. It helped me to figure out my feelings about performance and documentation.

Clare Nicholls ST. MARY'S PROJECT, 2010
	Artist Statement Bibliography Image Gallery Home Close Portfolio (and return to smp index)	Arnold, Rebecca. Fashion, Desire, and Anxiety. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Print. Arnold tries to draw connections in fashion that demonstrates that it is not just a vehicle for societal fantasizing, but it also subverts itself by eliciting anxiety as well as pleasure. She talks about the function of fashion in society and how it can become a comment on society itself, which is certainly one of my own interests. Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and its Double. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. Print. Artaud likens the theater to the citizens of a plague-doomed city rioting and looting the houses of their neighbors. He calls it, "an immediate gratuitousness provoking acts without use or profit" (24). He is against conventional theatre of his time, which privileges language, the actual script, over the audience's corporeal experience, mise-en-scene. I also think that performance is more than language, and I enjoyed his sense of poetry and connecting theatre back to religious rites. Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994. Print. Barber is an archeologist who focuses on textiles, one of the least preserved (and preservable) artifacts in human history. One reason why "women's wok" may not seem historically important is because it is more ephemeral than ceramics, stone, or metal, and literally has not survived the thousands of years. She writes about the role of women's work and textiles in ancient contexts, such as Phoenicia, Greece, and Crete. This books has been helpful because it has enabled me to see how textiles have been used in non-modern contexts. Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Print. Brechtian theatre is an important theory on theatre and performance, and it was interesting to read about how one must distance the audience in order to make them critical and active members of society. Brecht's theories about distancing and epic theater informed the generation of feminist artists in the 1980s, as they opted to not depict the female body at all as a distancing device. Evans, Caroline. "Desire and Dread: Alexander McQueen and the Contemporary Femme Fatale." Body Dressing. Eds. Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson. New York: Berg, 2001. Print. Evans discusses McQueen in a feminist context and how he feels that his fashions empower women. McQueen feels that clothing can be like armor, and I feel that his feelings towards fashion can illustrate the monstrous feminine. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. Print. Freud's text informed my thinking about the uncanny and the monstrous, and it was especially helpful because of its discussion of the etymology of the German phrase Das Unheimliche and how (like all the best German words) is not exactly translatable into English. Freud was also helpful because how he defined "the uncanny" as a sort of forced repetition, and how that repetition created the unsettled or uncanny feeling. Gingerich, Willard. "Three Nahuatl Hymns on the Mother Archetype: An Interpretive Commentary." Mexican Studies / Estudios: 4.2 (Summer, 1988): 191-244. JSTOR. Web. 29 April 2010. Gingerich discusses some of the versions of the vagina dentata myth in a Central and South American context. He also helpfully talks about vagina dentata generally and how variations on that same theme are found throughout many cultures over the world. Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001. Print This book contains a brief yet thorough overview of the history of performance art in the 20th century. Goldberg discusses not only the history of performance art, but different reasons why artists have turned to performance art instead of object-based art. It was valuable resource grounding me in performance art history, as it helped me narrow down the issues on which I wanted to concentrate. Grosz, Elizabeth. "Animal Sex: Libido as Desire and Death." Sexy bodies: the strange carnalities of feminism. Eds. Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn. New York: Routledge, 1995. 278-299. Google Scholar. 29 April 2010. Grosz also talks about vagina dentata in this essay, and how the fact that these myths exist is representative of how phallocentrism is significant in our thinking about female sexuality and desire. Ho, Ting-jui. "East Asian Themes in Folktales of the Formosan Aborigines." Asian Folklore Studies: 23.2 (1964): 35-47. JSTOR. Web. 29 April 2010. Ho discusses versions of vagina dentata myths in a general context, explaining their widespread nature, as well as within a general East Asian context, and finally within a certain subgroup, the Formosan Aborigines. Jackson, Bruce. "Vagina Dentata and Cystic Teratoma." The Journal of American Folklore: 84.333: (Jul. - Sep., 1971). 341-342. JSTOR. 29 April 2010. In this brief essay, Jackson argues that there may be a reason that vagina dentata myths have persisted: the dermoid cyst, a type of cystic teratoma. He does not insist that this reason is the cause of the myths entirely (he says that he agrees that they are based on fears of sexual difference), but the placement of the dermoid cyst, on or near the ovaries, and the fact that these cysts are more often than not filled with hair and teeth, may have been proof enough for ancient peoples. I personally liked that there may be a connection between the myth and an actual condition, if only because both are interests of mine. Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Print. Amelia Jones theorizes that the issue that is central to postmodernism is the inherent subjectivity involved in creating, reading, and writing about art, reframing body art from the 1960s and 1970s as feminist, denying that genre's contextualization in the 1980s as inherently anti-feminist. She talks about Brechtian ideas of alienation; feminist artists in the 1980s thought that depicting the female body was inherently complicit with the patriarchy because it presented the female body as an object to be desired, but Jones posits that that particular read of '60s and '70s body art denies the original artists' particularization and subjectivity. This has been a central work that I have considered when thinking about the female body in my art making. Kershaw, Baz. The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London: Routledge, 1999. Print. Reading Brecht and Artaud is very useful, and even though that they are considered relatively recent theorists, considering the lengthy history of theatre, but this book has been useful because it talks about more contemporary performance theory, and isn't necessarily grounded in the theatre itself. Kershaw also discusses Martin, Richard. Fashion and Surrealism. New York: Rizzoli, 1990. Print. It has been interesting to see how the Surrealists moved from the picture plane onto the body. Reading this book has helped me decide where if fit in art historically, as well as why I am using embroidery in the way that I am--a way that is slightly different than the Surrealists. Stern, Radu. Against Fashion: Clothing as Art, 1850 - 1930. North Adams, MA: MIT Press. 2003. Print. One thing I like about turn of the century avant-garde movements is that they got into everything and every media, including fashion. This book goes through various radical dress movements (including images of Giacomo Balla's Futurist suits!) and how art has influenced fashion and used fashion as a means to express their ideas. Vergine, Lea. Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. Milan: Skia, 2007. Print. This is an excellent survey of a wide variety of body-based art, containing both images and artists' writing about their work. The work is organized into themed sections. It was interesting to see an assortment of body work, and it framed my understanding of pervious body based art works. Warr, Tracey, and Amelia Jones, eds.. The Artist's Body. London: Phaidon Press, 2000. Print. This is another survey of body based art, featuring many excellent images, primary sources of artists' writings, as well as secondary critical essays. It helped me to figure out my feelings about performance and documentation.
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