Hannah Wilke

The first monograph on an artist whose provocative and ultimately deeply moving work played an essential part in women's transformation of the art world. Hannah Wilke's artwork, like her life, frames a heroic story about formal invention and social activism, personal loyalties and individual freedom, and, above all, breathtaking risk. A defining presence in the emerging community of women artists in the 1960s and 70s, Wilke developed a unique and controversial visual language in response to her own and women s experience. An unapologetic individualist, she celebrated her relationships with men as well as women and frankly explored the pleasures of sexuality. Using a wide range of nontraditional mediums, including latex and chewing gum as well as photography and film, she irreverently paid tribute to predecessors from Marcel Duchamp to David Smith. Focusing on the body as instrument and object of visual expression. Wilke's art is inseparable from Wilke the person: bold, sometimes outrageous, and, ultimately, heartbreakingly courageous.

Hardcover: 168 pages
Publisher: Prestel (May 20, 2010)
ISBN-10: 3791339729
ISBN-13: 978-3791339726
 

The act of folding is the salient gesture in the sculptures of American artist Hannah Wilke (1940-1993). Taking such materials as clay, bubble gum and Play-Doh, Wilke fashioned serial forms that folded inward or opened out with overtly labial sensuousness. Wilke often placed these objects in compromising situations--hinged with pins or glued to walls and boards, placed freely on the floor, always seemingly on the verge of disaster. Today she is famed for her many nude self-portraits, which have threatened to eclipse the sculptural basis of both the portraits themselves and her work in general. By emphasizing folding as a gesture, this catalogue--the first on the artist to appear in many years--unites Wilke's sculpture and photography under the rubric of performance, and the performing of material. With an abundance of color reproductions and critical commentary, Hannah Wilke: Gestures offers a fresh assessment of a pioneer in sculpture, feminist art and performance.

Paperback: 108 pages
Publisher: Neuberger Museum of Art; 1 edition (August 30, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0979562929
ISBN-13: 978-0979562921

Published on the occassion of the retrospective exhibition held at Gallery 210,
University of Missouri, St. Louis, April 3 - 28, 1989.

For Hannah Wilke, the point of departure was always the body and its discontinuous relationship with language. In the 1970s, Wilke’s work-particularly the way that she used the body in her artistic practices-was considered controversial by many feminist critics. Today, however, when theoretical and artistic strategies have changed and when art is increasingly cognizant of social context, Wilke’s work has found rightful place among the most important artwork of the past thirty years. This catalogue presents a unique survey of Wilke’s oeuvre, with reproductions of her videos and films four essays focusing on different aspects of her life and work, including a detailed biography, and a selected biography, a complete list of her works and an exhibition checklist.

Hardcover: 168 pages
Publisher: University of Missouri Press (July 31, 1989)
ISBN-10: 0826207030
ISBN-13: 978-0826207036