Rachel Middleman

Edited by Susan Davidson, the monograph is the first comprehensive publication dedicated to Wesselmann s most famous body of work, the Great American Nudes (1961 73), which combines sensual depictions of the female figure with references to art history and popular culture. The book will include full-color reproductions of each artwork in the series (totaling one hundred numbered works, plus proofs, and all color variations for editioned works), as well as related drawings, studies, and relevant works from associated series. Tom Wesselmann (1931 2004) was one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s. Departing from Abstract Expressionism, he went on to explore classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape, while incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera.

In the 1960s, the fascination with erotic art generated a wave of exhibitions and critical discussion on sexual freedom, visual pleasure, and the nude in contemporary art. Radical Eroticism examines the importance of women's contributions in fundamentally reconfiguring representations of sexuality across several areas of advanced art-performance, pop, postminimalism, and beyond. This study shows that erotic art made by women was integral to the profound changes that took place in American art during the sixties, from the crumbling of modernist aesthetics and the expanding field of art practice to the emergence of the feminist art movement. The works of Carolee Schneemann, Martha Edelheit, Marjorie Strider, Hannah Wilke, and Anita Steckel exemplify the innovative approaches to the erotic that explored female sexual subjectivities and destabilized assumptions about gender. Rachel Middleman reveals these artists' radical interventions in both aesthetic conventions and social norms.