Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art: Activism in the Work of Nancy Spero

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Between 1966 and 1976, American artist Nancy Spero completed some of her most aggressively political work. Made at a time when Spero was a key member of the anti-war and feminist arts-activism that burgeoned in the New York art world during the period, her works demonstrate a violent and bodily rejection of injustice.

Considering the ways in which anti-war and feminist art used emotion as a means to persuade and protest, Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art examines the history of this crucial decade in American art politics through close attention to Speros practice. Situating her work amongst the activism that defined the era, this book examines the ways in which sensation and emotion became political weapons for a generation of artists seeking to oppose patriarchy and war.

Exemplary of the way in which artists were using metaphors of sensation and emotion in their work as part of the anti-Vietnam war and feminist art movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Speros practice acts as a model for representing how politics feels. By exploring Spero's political engagement anew, this book offer a profound recontextualization of the important contribution that Spero made to Feminist thought, politics and art in the US.

Reviews

Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art is a timely account of the aesthetics and ethics of pain as a physical, social, and psychic force. Warriners richly contextual analysis presents a compelling new picture of the work of Spero and of pain as a crucial subject and strategy for feminist and anti-war art and activism. * Lucy Bradnock, Reader in Modern and Contemporary Art and Vice-Dean for Research, The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK *
Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art not only offers a fresh take on the work of Nancy Spero, but a methodological intervention in the study of political art. The focus on pain offers a framework for understanding empathy, representation and affect, while Warriner's close attention to the psychic, the embodied and the social give much needed nuance to the feminist refrain the "personal is political". * Amy Tobin, Assistant Professor, History of Art, University of Cambridge, UK *

Author Bio

Rachel Warriner is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art, UK, where her research focuses on the important contribution of activist collectives to the American feminist art movement during the 1970s. She has published widely on feminist art and poetry.