Valie Export: Fragments of the Imagination

by Roswitha Mueller

An early, groundbreaking radical performance artist, Valie Export created a philosophy of "Feminist Actionism" and in multimedia performances used the female body to critique male spectatorship. Roswitha Mueller examines Export's performance and installation work; her photography; her avant-garde film experiments and her four feature films; and her critical writings and interviews. Valie Export's primary object of study is the female human body, and as a multimedia artist, she has merged the discourses of the avant-garde and of feminism to reappropriate women's gestures, postures, images, and rights. This comprehensive and extensively illustrated study also includes an interview with Export.

Genres: Art

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Evan Pincus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure, it's a work of 90's feminist criticism, so there's a lot of Mulvey (not a bad thing, just a reminder of a time in The Discourse where she was all we had!) and some discussions of Freud and Barthes that I don't quite gel with, but it's an intelligent and comprehensive overview of an intelligent and comprehensive artist, which is just about exactly what I was hoping for when I picked it up. I was largely unfamiliar with Export's work, having only seen a performance of Abstract Film no. 1 (remarkable!), and this book made me hungry to engage with more of it!

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A satisfactory if perhaps a bit functional gloss/overview on Valie Export's entire oeuvre.