Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America

David E. Kemp is professor emeritus of drama at Queen’s University.

Jayne Wark is an associate professor of art history at the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design. Radical Gestures is the first comprehensive
history of feminist performance art in North America within the context
of the feminist movement and avant-garde art from the 1970s to 2000. In
the book, the author shows how individual artists drew upon feminist
politics to create works that, following a long period of modernist
aesthetic detachment, made a unique contribution to the
re-politicization of art.

Wark provides a detailed analysis and viewing of individual pieces of
performance art. Using those pieces as a point of reference, she
reassesses assumptions about the characteristics of feminist art,
placing feminist performance within the wider context of minimalism,
conceptualism, land art, and “happenings.” The author brings a
perceptive analysis to bear on the contradictions, complexities, and
shifts in theory and criticism that have accrued over the 30 years of
her study and introduces a clarity of vision that underlines the work
she has chosen. She includes in her study detailed notes and a
remarkably comprehensive bibliography that in itself is worth the price
of the book.