AIDS and Representation
Queering Portraiture during the AIDS Crisis in America
«Johnstone’s book provides excellent context for the emergence of visual art in the time of crisis – and during the emergency years of the AIDS crisis in particular. AIDS changed art, this book argues, showing us how to develop a complex appreciation and understanding of these crucial portraits.»
Monica Pearl, Senior Lecturer, Twentieth Century American Literature and Film, University of Manches
How might artists choose to represent themselves before their own death? What visual language can possibly convey the experience of living with a stigmatic and life-threatening condition that was misunderstood and a source of hysterical fear and revulsion? How might an artist respond to the loss of a loved one under such circumstances, and how can art transform private grief into an act of political engagement?
In Representing AIDS, Fiona Johnstone argues that the epidemic necessitated a radical new approach to conceptualising and visualising the human body.
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How might artists choose to represent themselves before their own death? What visual language can possibly convey the experience of living with a stigmatic and life-threatening condition that was misunderstood and a source of hysterical fear and revulsion? How might an artist respond to the loss of a loved one under such circumstances, and how can art transform private grief into an act of political engagement?
In Representing AIDS, Fiona Johnstone argues that the epidemic necessitated a radical new approach to conceptualising and visualising the human body. In the early years of the crisis the photographic portrait emerged as the predominant response and established the normative imagery of AIDS `victims’ and `heroes’. In response, the artists explored in this book, such as Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz and Félix González-Torres offered a more nuanced consideration of their own condition and that of others. They rejected stereotypical direct depiction to produce imaginative self-portraits that constituted profoundly moving personal narratives and penetrating critiques into the visual politics of an epidemic.
In Representing AIDS, Fiona Johnstone argues that the epidemic necessitated a radical new approach to conceptualising and visualising the human body. In the early years of the crisis the photographic portrait emerged as the predominant response and established the normative imagery of AIDS `victims’ and `heroes’. In response, the artists explored in this book, such as Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz and Félix González-Torres offered a more nuanced consideration of their own condition and that of others. They rejected stereotypical direct depiction to produce imaginative self-portraits that constituted profoundly moving personal narratives and penetrating critiques into the visual politics of an epidemic.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Innbinding
- Innbundet
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 264
- ISBN
- 9781788311885
- Utgivelsesår
- 2023
- Format
- 22 x 14 cm
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«Johnstone’s book provides excellent context for the emergence of visual art in the time of crisis – and during the emergency years of the AIDS crisis in particular. AIDS changed art, this book argues, showing us how to develop a complex appreciation and understanding of these crucial portraits.»
Monica Pearl, Senior Lecturer, Twentieth Century American Literature and Film, University of Manches
«Arguing for a more expansive understanding of self-portraiture in its revisiting and queering of AIDS portraiture in the 1980s and 1990s, this book offers a critical reappraisal of the significance of portraiture as an aesthetic and activist response to crisis.»
Lisa Diedrich. Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University, USA
«Enjoyable and accessible, this book bears witness to Mark Morrisroe, Robert Blanchon, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ queer tactics of portraiture, meanwhile locating their work within well researched and fascinating contexts that illuminate a kinship of ideas, connections, and tensions across disciplines and timelines.»
Theodore (ted) Kerr, co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Pr