Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004
by Joanna Frueh
Duke University Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-0-8223-9046-6 | Paper: 978-0-8223-4040-9 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-4021-8 Library of Congress Classification PS3556.R78C55 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 812.057089287
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The performance artist Joanna Frueh has emerged over the past twenty-five years as a wildly original voice in feminist art. Her uninhibited performances are celebrations of beauty, sensuality, eroticism, and pleasure. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert), which features eighteen of her essential performance texts, is a celebration of this remarkable artist and her work. Arranged chronologically, from The Concupiscent Critic (1979) through Ambrosia (2004), the pieces reveal Frueh’s evolution as an artist and intellectual over the course of her career. Many of these texts have never before been published; others have not been readily available until now. Among the sixteen color photographs in this richly illustrated book are pictures of Frueh performing and images from Joanna in the Desert, a 2006 collaboration between Frueh and the artist and scholar Jill O’Bryan.
Frueh’s performances are unabashedly autobiographical, as likely to reflect her scholarship as a feminist art historian as her love affairs or childhood memories. For Frueh, eros and self-love are part of a revolutionary feminist strategy; her work exemplifies the physicality and embrace of pleasure that she finds wanting in contemporary feminist theory. Scholarly and rigorous yet playful in tone, her performances are joyful, filled with eroticism, flowers, sexy costumes, and beautiful colors, textures, and scents. Recurring themes include Frueh’s passionate attachment to the desert landscape and the idea of transformation: a continual reaching for clarity of thought and feeling. In an afterword as lyrical and breathless as her performance pieces, Frueh explores her identification with the desert and its influence on her art. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) includes a detailed chronology of Frueh’s performances.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Joanna Frueh is a performance artist, writer, scholar, and teacher. For more than twenty-five years, she has performed one-woman shows throughout the United States and abroad. She is Professor of the Practice of Art at the University of Arizona and Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of Swooning Beauty: A Memoir of Pleasure; Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love; Erotic Faculties; and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective. She is a coeditor of Picturing the Modern Amazon; New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action; and Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. Her art, essays, and criticism have appeared in many publications, including Art Journal, New Art Examiner, Art in America, Artforum, Hypatia, and High Performance. Frueh lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Jill O’Bryan is an independent scholar and artist. She is the author of Carnal Art: Orlan’s Refacing.
REVIEWS
“Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) is an artful, insightful, and important collection of performance texts by artist and scholar Joanna Frueh. Indeed, Clairvoyance could be considered an essential primer for feminists.”
-- Joanna Chlebus Feminist Review blog
“Clairvoyance couples the strength of her words and the stage direction, to give the reader quite a vivid look into the life of this exceptional artist.”
-- Jenna V. Loceff Curve
“[A] a beautiful and very pink 400-page tome that looks great on a coffee table. . . . Clairvoyance is a great place to start learning about not just 20th-century performance art, but also about one of the more intriguing and unheralded performance artists of our time.”
-- Jarret Keene Tucson Weekly
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Nota Bena xv
Fucking Hot: An Introduction / Jill O'Brien 4
Joanna Frueh's Writing
The Concupiscent Critic (1979) 51
BRUMAS (1982) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 57
Justifiable Anger (1982–83) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 76
Dual Conception (1983) Written by Joanna Frueh for a piece to be performed by Frueh and Thomas Kochheiser 93
Solar Shores (1984) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 108
A Few Erotic Faculties (1985–86) 121
Clairvoyance (For Those in The Desert) (1985–86) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 152
Breathing (1988) A Proposal for a Performance by Joanna Frueh and Russell Dudley, written by Frueh 168
Vermilion (1988) 169
Mouth Piece (1989) 180
Amazing Grace (1990) Written and Performed by Joanna Frueh and Russell Dudley 209
Pythia (1994) 225
Dressing Aphrodite (1997) 251
Sade, My Sweet, My Truffle; or, Giving a Fuck (1999) 278
The Aesthetics of Orgasm (2002) 287
Voyaging to Cythera (2003) 312
The Performance of Pink (2003) 319
Ambrosia (2004) 326
Shaking out the Dead: An Afterword by Joanna Frueh 337
Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004
by Joanna Frueh
Duke University Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-0-8223-9046-6 Paper: 978-0-8223-4040-9 Cloth: 978-0-8223-4021-8
The performance artist Joanna Frueh has emerged over the past twenty-five years as a wildly original voice in feminist art. Her uninhibited performances are celebrations of beauty, sensuality, eroticism, and pleasure. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert), which features eighteen of her essential performance texts, is a celebration of this remarkable artist and her work. Arranged chronologically, from The Concupiscent Critic (1979) through Ambrosia (2004), the pieces reveal Frueh’s evolution as an artist and intellectual over the course of her career. Many of these texts have never before been published; others have not been readily available until now. Among the sixteen color photographs in this richly illustrated book are pictures of Frueh performing and images from Joanna in the Desert, a 2006 collaboration between Frueh and the artist and scholar Jill O’Bryan.
Frueh’s performances are unabashedly autobiographical, as likely to reflect her scholarship as a feminist art historian as her love affairs or childhood memories. For Frueh, eros and self-love are part of a revolutionary feminist strategy; her work exemplifies the physicality and embrace of pleasure that she finds wanting in contemporary feminist theory. Scholarly and rigorous yet playful in tone, her performances are joyful, filled with eroticism, flowers, sexy costumes, and beautiful colors, textures, and scents. Recurring themes include Frueh’s passionate attachment to the desert landscape and the idea of transformation: a continual reaching for clarity of thought and feeling. In an afterword as lyrical and breathless as her performance pieces, Frueh explores her identification with the desert and its influence on her art. Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) includes a detailed chronology of Frueh’s performances.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Joanna Frueh is a performance artist, writer, scholar, and teacher. For more than twenty-five years, she has performed one-woman shows throughout the United States and abroad. She is Professor of the Practice of Art at the University of Arizona and Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of Swooning Beauty: A Memoir of Pleasure; Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love; Erotic Faculties; and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective. She is a coeditor of Picturing the Modern Amazon; New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action; and Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. Her art, essays, and criticism have appeared in many publications, including Art Journal, New Art Examiner, Art in America, Artforum, Hypatia, and High Performance. Frueh lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Jill O’Bryan is an independent scholar and artist. She is the author of Carnal Art: Orlan’s Refacing.
REVIEWS
“Clairvoyance (For Those In The Desert) is an artful, insightful, and important collection of performance texts by artist and scholar Joanna Frueh. Indeed, Clairvoyance could be considered an essential primer for feminists.”
-- Joanna Chlebus Feminist Review blog
“Clairvoyance couples the strength of her words and the stage direction, to give the reader quite a vivid look into the life of this exceptional artist.”
-- Jenna V. Loceff Curve
“[A] a beautiful and very pink 400-page tome that looks great on a coffee table. . . . Clairvoyance is a great place to start learning about not just 20th-century performance art, but also about one of the more intriguing and unheralded performance artists of our time.”
-- Jarret Keene Tucson Weekly
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Nota Bena xv
Fucking Hot: An Introduction / Jill O'Brien 4
Joanna Frueh's Writing
The Concupiscent Critic (1979) 51
BRUMAS (1982) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 57
Justifiable Anger (1982–83) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 76
Dual Conception (1983) Written by Joanna Frueh for a piece to be performed by Frueh and Thomas Kochheiser 93
Solar Shores (1984) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 108
A Few Erotic Faculties (1985–86) 121
Clairvoyance (For Those in The Desert) (1985–86) ) Lyrics and text by Joanna Frueh, music by Thomas Hochheiser 152
Breathing (1988) A Proposal for a Performance by Joanna Frueh and Russell Dudley, written by Frueh 168
Vermilion (1988) 169
Mouth Piece (1989) 180
Amazing Grace (1990) Written and Performed by Joanna Frueh and Russell Dudley 209
Pythia (1994) 225
Dressing Aphrodite (1997) 251
Sade, My Sweet, My Truffle; or, Giving a Fuck (1999) 278
The Aesthetics of Orgasm (2002) 287
Voyaging to Cythera (2003) 312
The Performance of Pink (2003) 319
Ambrosia (2004) 326
Shaking out the Dead: An Afterword by Joanna Frueh 337