A Dirty Double Mirror: Drawing, Autobiography and Feminism
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Fortnum2
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- A Companion to Contemporary Drawing
- Publisher
- Wiley
- ISBN
- 9781119194545
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The book includes 27 specially commissioned chapters from authors worldwide (including João Ribas, Parul Dave Mukherji, Griselda Pollock and Bridget Cooks) that take a fresh look at the way drawing is used by contemporary artists to understand and comment on the world, including transformed notions of observation, representation and audience. As editors, we conceived the book from a decolonised and intersectional feminist perspective emerging from an extensive editorial survey of contemporary drawing over five years.
The chapter continues my recent reappraisal of what can be considered feminist art. It establishes drawing and autobiography as positioned at disciplinary margins and uniquely useful within feminist expression. The writing speculates how certain drawing can function as a narrative of self that both articulates and exceeds the individual, aiding the feminist project by granting women not only interiority but also agency. It draws on and expands Anne Wagner’s examination of autobiography’s mode of reading as a ‘mutually reflexive substitution’ (Paul de Man, 1979) allied to self-portraiture, which I see as allowing the woman artist a form in which to evolve a complex set of relations to their self and their viewer. Through an exploration of three contemporary practitioners: Frances Stark, Emma Talbot and Nicola Tyson, the chapter suggests that drawing is not only able to articulate women’s subjectivity but can also bring into play a highly productive ‘ambivalence’, (Molesworth, 2007), shaping and contributing to new forms of feminist thought.
The article emerges from long-standing publishing on feminism and visual art including The Politics and Practices of Women’s Contemporary Painting (2004),* British Contemporary Women Artists (2007),* numerous essays and a keynote address at Coventry University (2018). The book was launched in the Drawing Room website through a series of short filmed interviews, including Fortnum with Tyson in February/March 2021.
*previous REF outputs
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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