This is like a catalog for an exhibition that could never be mounted (at least not with the actual works). It is a collection of documents of various performance artists whose works deal with the human body as both the subject and object of their art. The book divides the works into various categories and creates some very interesting and surprising comparisons. By grouping such 'painterly' aritists as Gunter Brus, Paul McCarthy and Karen Finley, the authors present new avenues of interpretation for each. The captions function in much the same way as wall labels for a gallery show would and encourage the reader to think about the complex meanings of works that are not often discussed beyond their sensational surface. The introductory essay is good but it is the captions, photographs and the artist statements at the end where the real action takes place. The book also includes works by sculptors and photographers whose works are performative in nature. I was happy to see that Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is included. Her imaginative and playful objects are often overlooked because their gentle qualities are usually overshadowed by the more sexually explicit works of other artists.

everyone should buy this book - everyone

This book contains art and essays that advance an exciting new way to consider the contemporary visual arts, and the social world in which Americans in particular swim. White Americans swim in racial preference, though they usually don't know it, so like the fish in water, can't describe it (an imperfect metaphor, given the mental capacities of most fish, but it'll do). The essays included here, including one by leading whiteness studies scholar David Roediger, are very helpful in seeing how the budding area of critical whiteness studies can further enrich our appreciation of contemporary visual art. The reproductions are fabulous, and the works included intriguing in the ways they can stimulate viewers to ponder race, and class (and even sometimes gender and sexuality). Humorous at times, these works (and essays) do not uniformly seek to confront white America with its racist past and present.

This is a book that richly deserves wider distribution, beyond the museum giftshop.

Just recieved this item, the book gets 4 stars for layout and image quality, a good art book. The book gets 2 stars for the quality of the work it contains.

If you like Sherman than this is a good book for you,though I'd suggest re-evaluating you asthetic awarness :) If your looking for great art look elsewhere. Sherman is an overhyped artist. Popular because her work fits into the politically correct agendas and philosophies of the contemporary artworld, not because the work is good. Just read one of the reviews here. The book contains some good peices, some that are atleast interesting but far to many fall into the just plain bad category as represented in this book.

While recently attending a group critique an undergradute ceramics major stated she was a "process orientated" artist(said with artsy fartsy flair to make up for the fact she really didn't have anything to show). Sherman reminds me of her, a bad contemporary cliche masking itself behind feminist artworld dogma. If thats what you want, look at Jenny Saville, atleast she is a good painter, even if her content is often trite.

A great overview of Cindy Sherman's art with very few gaps. A quick response to an above statement: The disgust you feel is a great part of how one should look at her work. One of the most fascinating aspects in all her photos is the ability she has to construct blantant lies that we react to almost as passionately as what we feel to be genuine. As for her dolls, it's more along the lines of her very merrily reconstructing versions of the human body that are obviously false yet we still search for their anatomical processes. The aspects of them that one finds disgusting are more like the silly goo of a cheap horror movie or the ridiculous body part shots of the sleaziest silicone laden porno. Despite our knowing it's inherent phoniness, we still are frightened, disgusted, and aroused. As I said before, that's a key to her work. Frankly, if you are that disturbed by plastic excrement and genitalia, but not phased at all by the phycological twisting and tension so prevelant in her earlier work, then maybe modern art overall just isn't your cup of tea.

I can't believe it's taken this long for a compilation of Cindy Sherman's body of work to appear. But maybe that's the real measure of a major artist in this place at this time. Sherman is one of the strongest,most meticulous and most original artists to appear since the early 1930s. I'm not going to analyze the photographs, they've been analyzed to death and are far beyond analysis in any case. Suffice to say the quality and layout are excellent. A thrilling book! I do have one reservation which has nothing to do with CS. The accompanying essays are highly ideological (which CS ain't) and serve Sherman far less than their own agendas plus at least one of them is almost unreadable mumbo jumbo.

The main problem with this book is the confusion attending Jones' inadequate construction/theorization of her basic concepts, such as, "the self" "the other" "the subject" "sexuality," "narcissism." Among many glaring problems is the total absence of any engagement or theorization of the unconscious, any true dialogue or understanding of psychoanalysis, particularly Lacanian, even though she depends so heavily on concepts derived from psychoanalysis. What is the subject? Is it the ego? The ego + body? The "social self?" The "subject" has in fact a very precise meaning in Lacanian theory--the subject of the signifier, which also, is utterly absent from this book. There is no conception of the signifier--because she tends to lump anything to do with "form" into the straw man of "Greenbergian Mondernist formalism." The result is that Jones is often trapped in a binary--there is no third term, no theory of desire and no Other--except that which was theorized at one time by Merleau-Ponty, evidently, though, it is nowhere in THIS text. There is a valiant attempt to get out of the spheric binary, but there is nothing there to help construct it, besides the incessant footnoting and referencing of "French philosophy" and "French poststructuralist theory," which is just a way of deferring the process, not entering into it. The "radical" structure she talks about so much is just not part of the production of her text, her process, her methodology. She remains totally at the level of the University Professor talking about people who somewhere else have broken down the borders she seems to want to cross, butdoesn't seem to know how herself.

What is sexuality? How can you speak about sexuality without a concept of the unconscious? In a footnote, Jones disregards Lacan's formulas of sexual difference--allegedly because of his "misogyny," though one could also argue that any true "engagement" and understanding of Lacanian theory would be both too disruptive and too complex and problematic for her book, for the models she wants to work with. But her superficial and clumsy reading of Lacan is the same as every other "philosopher" she quotes.

My quesion is: is "Lacan" and "psychoanalysis," perhaps even "the phallus", the truly repressed and excluded middle of Jones's own form of postmodernism? As Modernism represses the potential for its own disruption and dispersal--where is it in Jones work? I think its in the highly UNtheorized relation to analysis and anaytic concepts. Perhaps she does not wish to deal with the "phallus" precisely because she is so identified with it?

The simultaneous "visible and invisible" quality of her problematic relation to psychoanalytic concepts (particularly, but not only those of Lacan), is epitomized right at the beginning by her choice of Schneeman pulling a scroll out of her vagina. It doesn't take a genius (or Merleau-Ponty, or any "French poststructuralist philosopher") to understand she's constructing not a penis, but a phallus, veiled in the form of a text (a book on Body Art?)(or vice versa? What is the relationship between the phallus, writing, and a hole?). The iconic power of this image speaks to the "subject position" of Jones herself, I believe, and it is precisely this position which goes unacknowledged and unrecognized in all her conscious representations of herself. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, given the ironic (or is it?) work of Schneeman. Whatever the case, Jones misses an opportunity to TRULY implicate herself in her writing.

This is just a very tedious and tiresome book-typical for academe, and typical that Jones herself is utterly blind to HER positioning in the University, of which she is so obviously a product.

excellent book, well written; the author is a brilliant and well respected art historian

The body we inhabit is a contested space, one which artists have beenspeaking of and from for a long time. My own hyper recognition of theproblematics of speaking from the body came in the early 70's whenconfronted by the naked body of Vito Acconci in a hallway at the artschool I was attending. I did not know who he was, only that he was infront of me pulling hairs from his chest... This confrontation wasanything but academic. I was freaked and equally intrigued. Far fromrunning away from or theorizing on what was happening, I entered intoa space of what Roland Barthes calls "twice fascinated", onebody in visceral relationship feeling attraction, repulsion, slips ofidentification etc., another body in simultaneous psychologicalassessment and witnessing of the event. Both bodies were mine...notsplit, rather simultaneous. As I look back at my own production of thepast 30 years I see myself consistently in struggle to express thissimultaneity. The pitfalls have not only been the Cartesianimperatives imbedded within culture, but my own, historically seatedwithin my body.Reading Amelia Jones' book reminds me of the stressesand tensions which are inevitable when re-aligning our ideationalcritiques to mirror our corporeal experiences. It is not an easyposition given that definitions of body, self, other are not fixed. Ihighly recommend this book to all who are committed to reshaping ourtired dualism of nature/culture while aware of our inherentcollusions. It is refreshing to read a writing which is not afraid toslip as it intends to slide.