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 made her art an unremitting self-exploration without false modesty (when her naked body was an uncomplicated delight to behold) or shame (when it was mercilessly blighted by cancer). Wilke's art is inseparable from Wilke the person bold, sometimes outrageous, and, ultimately, heartbreakingly courageous.

Hannah Wilke (1940-1993) was a defining presence in the community of women artists who emerged in the 1960s, determined to expose (and fix) the inequities of the fast-growing art world. She developed a bold visual language responsive to female experience; at the same time she was an unapologetic individualist who celebrated in her work her relationships with men as well as women and frankly explored the pleasures of sexuality. Using a wide range of unconventional media, including latex and chewing gum as well as photography and film, she paid tribute to predecessors like Marcel Duchamp with humorous irreverence. Her key concern was the body as instrument and object of visual expression; Wilke was most boldly honest in an unremitting self-exploration that she undertook without false modesty (when her naked body was an uncomplicated delight to behold) or shame (when it was mercilessly blighted by cancer). The first monograph to comprehensively survey Wilke's artistic career, this book celebrates the achievement of a pioneering and provocative artist whose controversial and ultimately deeply moving work is now being recognized.
Born in New York in 1940, Hannah Wilke grew up in New York City and suburban Long Island, and received a B.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1962. By the middle 1960s, she had begun making vaginally shaped sculptures, mostly in ceramic, that ranged from raw to elegant. Developing this imagery throughout her career as a feminist statement and also out of interest in its formal possibilities, she went on to explore similarly sensual abstract forms in latex wall sculptures of the 1970s. A pioneer of video and performance art. Wilke staged events in which her own body, often mostly or entirely unclothed, became the vehicle of some of her most radical provocations. Her mother's illness with cancer, followed by her own, dramatically changed the direction of Willke's work, adding a disturbing and powerful dimension to her achievement. She died in 1993, at 52.
Nancy Princenthal, a New York-based Critic and lecturer, has been writing about contemporary art for 25 years. A long-time contributor to Art in America and a former Senior Editor there, she has written extensively for many other publications as well, including the New York Times, Artext, ArtUS, Art on Paper, Bookforum, and Parkett. Among the books she has written of contributed to are After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art, Alfredo Jaar: The Fire Next Time, and monographs and catalogues on the work of Rona Pondick, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Mangold, and Doris Salcedo.