A wide range of images of women are considered in the context of currrent
debates which centre around the body.How have women artists taken possession of the female body? What is the
relationship between looking and embodiment in art made by women? In a series
of original readings of the work of artists from Kathe Kollwitz and Georgia
O'Keefe to Helen Chadwick and Laura Godfrey Issacs, Rosemary Betterton explores
how women artists have addressed the changing relationship between women, the
body and its representation in art. In detailed critical essays that range from
the analysis of maternal imagery in the work of German artists at the turn of
the century, to the unrepresented body in contemporary abstract painting,
Betterton argues that women's art practices offer new ways of engaging with our
fascinations and fears of the female body. Reflecting the shift within feminist
art over the last decade, An Intimate Distance sets the reinscription of the
body within women's art practice in the context of current debates on the body,
including reproductive science, maternal subjectivity and the concept of 'body
horror' in relation to food, ageing and sex.; Drawing on recent theories of embodiment developed within feminist
philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, the essays reveal how the permeable
boundaries between nature and culture, the female body and technology are being
crossed in the work of women artists.
