To browse Academia. Theories of women artists and the conditions for studio-based sculpture, in conjunction with the exhibition catalog, Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 1. La cassetta degli attrezzi della Geopolitica, International journal for research in applied science and engineering technology, Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
Need an account? Click here to sign up. Preciousness is a term used to denigrate abstraction. And rightly so. Postwar, it took nearly half a century for the art of difference and identity to achieve true recognition, and a place at the table. Art made and exhibited during the s critiqued the museums that had ignored nondominant histories and experiences. The vast majority of this art had a conceptual bent: it posited a viewpoint or offered a position, directed viewers to ask difficult questions, or engage with new perceptions and narratives.
A great deal of this work was also collaborative in nature. These issue-oriented explorations, the social engagements that characterized the s, were exciting and fresh, full of provocations and generative criticality. Lensbased technologies were the media in which these ideas seemed best expressed, or captured: video, photography, film, and performance. Traditional media such as painting—and especially sculpture—receded into the background, mothballed and shifted to the back of the closet like clothing that had gone out of fashion.
The artist making objects alone in her studio suddenly seemed terribly fussy, out of touch with the urgency of pressing social issues. A derogatory term began to circulate among critics and curators: precious, which denoted overly refined handwork, excessive decoration, or art that was overworked, flagrantly preoccupied with its materials.
If an artwork was too beautiful, too ethereal, too opulent or decorative, or overly exquisite; if it was too afraid to fail, too attached to itself, too inward-looking; if its maker was too absorbed in her project, unconcerned with the world outside, her art was marked as precious, one of the most humiliating words of the era.
