Post-Partum Document

by Mary Kelly

Conceived as an installation in six consecutive sections, Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document has been widely exhibited and intensely debated since its first scandalous appearance in the 1970s. Now, more than twenty years later, the Document's initial challenge to conceptual art and its impact on the emerging discourse of sexual difference have taken on a new significance. For many younger artists and critics, the republication of Kelly's artwork in book form will provide the opportunity to engage directly with the visual and intertextual strategies that spawned a generation of "thinking bad girls."

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Mary Kelly is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer. Mary Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings.

Reviews

[Savannah Elmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of this book sounded really cool to me, but once I started flipping through it I felt like there were crucial parts I just didn't understand. I do wonder if I may have appreciated it or understood more seeing it in person as an exhibit, but the Freudian analysis parts really kinda threw me. This is maybe one to come back to later and give another go but I'm setting it aside for now.

[Hallie]

proof that psychoanalysis demands whimsy. actually reminds me a lot of Borges <3

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

all of her work is a revelation - it is always odd to come late to a party thrown for all your favorite things. she is more invested, educated, academic than i could ever be -the kind of artist that gives the word its honor, but from my small corner of the room i am thrilled to have found a text-driven artist of such profound and relentless female identity.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitive text on second wave feminist artist Mary Kelly. Its very dense but really so very cool, so very now. Kelly visualizes her belief that motherhood is a social construction through the vehicle of her own "child-care" experience. Top Ten Conceptual Artist for me.

[Mills College Library]

709.2 K297p 1999