Chloë Ashby

The shock of the new in feminist art

Laura Elkin looks at women artists from the past century onwards who boldly portray the female body from their own intimate experience

‘Self-portrait with Stick’, 1971, by the Austrian painter Maria Lassnig. [© Maria Lassnig Foundation] 
issue 15 July 2023

  • Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art

    Lauren Elkin

    Chatto & Windus, pp. 336, £25

Lauren Elkin begins her book about bodily art with a charming ode to the punctuation mark that she in American English calls a ‘slash’ and we in British English call a ‘stroke’. She likes the way it expresses ‘division yet relation’. Brings disparate things together. Makes space for ambiguity. Blends and blurs.

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