Picturing The Modern Amazon

by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein (Editor), Judith Stein (Editor)

Pictured in two centuries of images, the hypermuscular and physically strong woman is studied here for the first time as a major player in popular culture and contemporary art. Using the bodybuilder as prototype, a rich variety of authors engage with her particular physicality, and how it resonates with social issues such as female pleasure and gender stereotypes. From the sublime to the gritty, this volume presents modern amazons as a culture with a history, a dazzling and transgressive current phenomenon, and avatars of the future.
Packed with illustrations, "Picturing the Modern Amazon" investigates the representation of hypermuscular women in a range of visual sources. Historical images and archival materials dating from the late 1700s through the present century illustrate older notions of female strength, providing a solid base of comparison for the modern materials. Contemporary art explores a diversity of issues surrounding the physically strong woman; artists represented include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Nicole Eisenman, Annie Leibovitz, Alison Saar, Andre Serrano, Cindy Sherman, and Nancy Spero. Comic artists address the amazon through comic strips, comic books, and unique art works that focus on muscular female characters and superheros; artists include Robert Crumb, Diane DiMassa, Roberta Gregory, John Howard, and Turtel Onli. Photographs of some of today's top bodybuilding competitors capture the stunning strength and definition of the hypermuscular woman.
Co-edited by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein, and Judith Stein, the volume's contributors are Michael Cunningham, Nathalie Gassel, Leslie Heywood, Irving Lavin, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Al Thomas, Jan Todd, Steve Wennerstrom, and Carla Williams. Interviews with noted bodybuilders-both the sport's pioneers and today's top competitors-provide a personal perspective.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2000

About the author

Joanna Frueh (1948-2020) was an artist, writer and feminist scholar. In 2008 she was awarded a Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. Her book Monster Beauty: Building the Body of Love, dealing with the aesthetics of beauty, pleasure and the erotic in everyday life was published by the University of California Press. Her writing combined theory with autobiography, photography, and poetry to develop these concepts. She was also a performance artist.

Frueh received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in History of Culture. She was Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she served from 1990 to 2006. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor of art history at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, (1983-1985) and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1981-1983).

She authored and edited several books, notably Erotic Faculties (University of California Press, 1996) and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective (1989); and was coeditor of Picturing the Modern Amazon (2000), Feminist Art Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (1994), and Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (1991). She wrote articles and reviews for Art in America, Art Journal, AfterImage, High Performance Magazine, and New Art Examiner, among others

Reviews

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

this looks at the muscled woman and her place in society. share some history of the muscled woman and then some interviews of muscled women. includes women in comics. insightful.