The Eighth Square: Gender, Life and Desire in Art Since 1960 / Das achte Feld: Geschlechter, Leben und Begehren in der Kunst seit 1960

by Judith Butler, Douglas Crimp, Diedrich Diederichsen

In chess, when a pawn reaches the eighth square on the far side of the board, the player can swap it for a piece from his opponent's set. So the pawn—a lowly foot soldier—can transform into a queen, the least powerful figure can transform into the epitome of power, and a man can become a woman—just like that. Issues of sexuality are playing out around us all the time, quaking and transmuting under the surface of every family exchange and embedded in all of our popular media images. This scholarly and yet still erotic compendium examines, through works by more than 70 artists, historical and social developments in human sexuality, taking on all facets of drag, gender, queerness and transsexuality. Artists include Diane Arbus, Francis Bacon, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tracey Moffatt, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rauschenberg and Cindy Sherman.

Genres: Art

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Judith Butler is an American philosopher, feminist, and queer theorist whose work has profoundly shaped gender studies, political philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish family, Butler was raised in a Jewish cultural and ethical environment that fostered an early engagement with philosophy, ethics, and questions of identity, attending Hebrew school and specialized ethics classes as a teenager. They studied philosophy at Bennington College before transferring to Yale University, where they earned a BA in 1978 and a PhD in 1984, focusing on German idealism, phenomenology, and French theory, including Hegel, Sartre, and Kojève. Butler taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1993, where they co-founded the Program in Critical Theory, served as Maxine Elliot Professor, directed the International Consortium of Critical Theory, and also hold the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. Butler is best known for Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, works in which they introduced the theory of gender performativity, arguing that gender is constituted through repeated social acts rather than a fixed identity, a concept that became foundational in feminist and queer theory. They have also published Excitable Speech, examining hate speech and censorship, Precarious Life, analyzing vulnerability and political violence, Undoing Gender, on the social construction of sexual norms, Giving an Account of Oneself, exploring ethical responsibility and the limits of self-knowledge, and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, addressing public protest and collective action, while their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence, emphasizes ethical engagement in social and political struggles. Butler has engaged in global activism, supporting LGBTQIA rights, opposing anti-gender ideology, advocating for Palestinian rights, critiquing aspects of contemporary Israeli policy, and participating in movements such as Occupy Wall Street, while navigating controversies including critiques of their comments on Hamas and Hezbollah, debates over TERF ideology, and disputes over the Adorno Prize, illustrating the intersections of their scholarship and public interventions. Their work extends into ethical theory, exploring vulnerability, interdependence, mourning, and the recognition of marginalized lives, as well as the performative dimensions of identity and the social construction of sex and gender. They have influenced contemporary feminist, queer, and critical theory, cultural studies, and continental philosophy, shaping debates on gender, sexuality, power, and social justice, while also participating in public discourse and advocacy around education, political violence, and anti-discrimination. Butler is legally non-binary in California, uses they/them pronouns, identifies as a lesbian, and lives in Berkeley with their partner Wendy Brown and their son.

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Remarkable, Historically Significant Exhibition Catalogue

THE EIGHTH SQUARE: GENDER, LIFE AND DESIRE IN THE ARTS SINCE 1960 was an exhibition staged in the Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany in 2006. It was one of the more daring exhibitions of its time (and remains so to this date) in that it ventured into the furthest fringes of sexuality. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue represented the first time that artists' approaches to marginalized sexuality had received such a comprehensive showing. The exhibition includeed over 260 works from more than 80 artists, giving a broad overview of transsexuality, homosexuality and intersexuality, transgender, gender-crossing, drag and cross-dressing in art.

From the catalogue, as well written as it is visual, the following is stated: 'the title "The Eighth Square" comes from a rule in chess. If a pawn makes it to the eighth square, it will transform into a queen. A gender change that turns everything on its head: the weak become strong, and losers become winners.' The exhibition illustrated this transformation, which countermands the dominant heterosexual gender roles, and call for the possibility of a free, deregulated sexuality. "The Eighth Square" traces out the desire to transmute into another sex and toy with gender ascriptions. And this highlights the fact that sexuality - especially when outside the norm - is a matter of trembling and transmuting, of passion and power, seduction and sadness, misery and magnificence. But the exhibition also recalls the social and political struggles through which sexual self-determination had to and still must be wrested - and often precisely by artists. For art alone allows the subject to be experienced in all its fascination. Not only does it permit a riskfree game with gender and forbidden desires, but it alone can encompass all the contradictions. What does this mean for divergent desires? What does it mean after liberalisation, in a world standardized to death? How does this world look to feminine men and to masculine women?'

The artists exhibited both in the show and in the catalogue are some rarely seen images form such artists as Diane Arbus, Kenneth Anger, David Armstrong, Francis Bacon, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Monica Bonavicini, Nicole Eisenman, Robert Gober, David Hockney, Peter Hujar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Zoe Leonard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Michaela Melián, Annette Messager, Piotr Nathan, Catherine Opie, Dayanita Singh, Paul Thek, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Wolfgang Tillmans, David Wojnarowicz among others less well known. Kaspar Konig's Foreword traces the history of the works and their significance in the changing society of the 1960s and onward. For us this book represents a moment in history that permanently changed the way we respond to human sexuality and society's changing response to this subject. This is a major book about a major exhibition and should fine a place in all art schools as well as human behavior studies.

Grady Harp