The following books were selected in support of the exhibition As Is: Beauty and the Body in Contemporary Art, on view in the GVSU Art Gallery (PAC 1121) August 26 - November 4, 2022.

The Body in Contemporary Art

Sally O'Reilly
New York: Thames & Hudson, 2009
Book

The Body in Contemporary Art presents an international survey of art made since the early 1990s that has the body as its focus. It examines such areas as nature and technology, the grotesque, identity politics and the place of the individual in society.

The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art

Martha Buskirk
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003
eBook

An exploration of transformations in the nature of the art object and artistic authorship in the last four decades.

Bodies of Work: Contemporary Figurative Painting

Lauren P. Della Monica
Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 2015
Book

Human forms can be intensely intimate or broadly universal. Here, figurative artists use the human form as a tool to express varied content and contemporary issues. These paintings depict our feelings and sentiments, our sense of belonging to a larger community in the contemporary world, while capturing the impulses behind the range of figuration presented by today's contemporary international artists.

Drawing People: The Human Figure in Contemporary Art

Roger Malbert
New York, NY: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2015.
Book

Drawing People is a thoughtful and beautifully illustrated survey of the most compelling and inventive drawings of the human form being produced today by 70 contemporary artists from around the world. 

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory

Judith Butler
Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-531 (13 pages)
The Johns Hopkins University Press
eArticle

In this seminal essay, theorist Judith Butler argues that gender is an ongoing performance and not an essential quality of the body.

The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture

Joanne Finkelstein
London: I.B. Tauris, 2007
Book

Both an exploration of the ways In which we fashion our public Identity and a manual of modern sociability, this lively and readable book explores the techniques we use to present ourselves to the world: body language, tone of voice, manners, demeanour, 'personality' and personal style.

Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography

Sarah Brophy, Janice Hladki
eBook

From reality television to film, performance, and video art, autobiography is everywhere in today’s image-obsessed age. With contributions by both artists and scholars, Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography is a unique examination of visual autobiography’s involvement in the global cultural politics of health, disability, and the body.