Tracking the figure of the girl across the fields of contemporary art and film, this book moves effortlessly between cultural criticism, art history, and feminist theory. Be forewarned, however: the girls in contemporary art are anything but docile or well-behaved. From baby butches to bad girls, from reluctant Lolitas to hysterical orphans, these girls make terrific trouble in the lavishly imagined worlds they inhabit. And the women who do that imagining? They are some of the leading artists and filmmakers of our day. And thanks to Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art they get their critical due. — Richard Meyer, University of Southern California Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art is the missing link in the new feminist art history/criticism. It engages with that crucial and ambiguous period where children become women. In a way, one might say that girlhood lies at the root of Freud’s question ‘what do women want?’ at the same time that it mystifies this originary moment in women’s history. These texts hit the crucial questions in girl representation, running the whole gamut from charm to hysteria to murder. — Linda Nochlin, New York University i Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art ii Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art (cid:52)(cid:72)(cid:69)(cid:0)(cid:52)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:83)(cid:84)(cid:85)(cid:83)(cid:0)(cid:48)(cid:76)(cid:65)(cid:89)(cid:83) GiWrhlsy! WGei rMlsa!k eG Airrlts! at why it is taught in Contemporary Art Edited by Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman by Richard Hickman (cid:27)(cid:156)(cid:152)(cid:202)(cid:47)(cid:213)(cid:204)(cid:204)(cid:143)(cid:105) (cid:94)(cid:99)(cid:105)(cid:90)(cid:97)(cid:97)(cid:90)(cid:88)(cid:105)(cid:1)(cid:55)(cid:103)(cid:94)(cid:104)(cid:105)(cid:100)(cid:97)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:64)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:1)(cid:56)(cid:93)(cid:94)(cid:88)(cid:86)(cid:92)(cid:100)(cid:33)(cid:21)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:54) First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover design: Holly Rose Typesetting: John Teehan Cover image: Anna Gaskell, Untitled #30 (override), 1997, C-print, 15.24 x 18.415 cm, courtesy the artist and Yvon Lambert Paris, New York. The cost of images for Harriet Riches’ essay was supported by . The publication of this volume was supported by a faculty grant from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. ISBN 978–1–84150-348-6 / EISBN 978-1-84150-528-2 Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, Wales. Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: The Girl in Contemporary Art 1 Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman Through the Looking-Glass with Heart-Shaped Sunglasses: Searching for Alice and Lolita in Contemporary Representations of Girls 17 Lori Waxman Dial ‘P’ for Panties: Narrative Photography in the 1990s (with a New Afterword by the Author) 45 Lucy Soutter Girlish Games: Playfulness and ‘Drawingness’ in the Work of Francesca Woodman and Lucy Gunning 63 Harriet Riches Marlene McCarty’s Murder Girls 87 Maud Lavin Haunted: Writing with the Girl 107 Taru Elfving Oh Mother Where Art Thou? Sue de Beer’s Hysterical Orphan Girls 125 Kate Random Love Mi-girl, Mi-kick, Mi-fire, Mi-sin, Mi-soul, MI-WA: A Fairy Tale in Blue 147 Carol Mavor Baby Butches and Reluctant Lolitas: Collier Schorr and Hellen van Meene 161 Catherine Grant Author Biographies 187 Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art viii Acknowledgements Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman We are grateful to the many friends, family members and colleagues who helped us in countless ways during the long making of this book. I (Lori) would like to thank the folks at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for their continued support of my work in this area. Dean Lisa Wainwright provided funding for this book at a crucial moment. Maud Lavin oversaw the earliest versions of my ‘Searching for Alice and Lolita’ essay and was instrumental in pushing me to co-develop this volume, to which she so generously contributed an essay of her own. Stanley Murashige offered me the opportunity to teach an experimental seminar on the representation of girls in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism, a class co-taught with artist Stephanie Knowles, to whom more thanks are due for years of conversation and collaboration on the subject of girls. My thinking on this subject was challenged and expanded by the students in those classes, in particular Anna Wilson, Auden O’Connell, Lee Foley, Noe Cuellar, Maria Gaspar and Amber Hawk Swanson. Amber also contributed to an earlier version of this book, along with Melanie Archer, Jenny Gheith, Katrina Kuntz, Lyz Nagan, Hiromi Nakazawa, Britany Salsbury, Nikki Sorg, Jovana Stokic and Mich elle Zis, and I thank them all for their efforts. I (Catherine) would like to thank my colleagues at the Courtauld Institute of Art, particularly my PhD supervisor Mignon Nixon, and fellow researchers who read and commented on various parts of my work on girls. These include Judith Batalion, James Boaden, Sarah James, Dominic Johnson and Kate Random Love. I would also like to thank the following: Althea Greenan of the Women’s Art Library and Francis Summers, who have put in many hours of reading and conversing on the topic. Laura Andre, whose session at the CAA Annual Conference in 2005 on ‘Tomboys and Girly Girls’ brought Lori and I together for the first time, and inspired the title of my essay here. Maud Lavin, whose enthusiasm for this project brought Lori and I together again. The writers in this collection with whom I have had many years’ worth of conversations about girls, and who have inspired and challenged my own thinking. Lucy Soutter for last-minute funding. The gallerists and archivists who have been generous with their time and images: Bruce Hackney for the Karlheinz Weinberger Estate and Simon Greenberg for 303 Gallery. ix