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9781478018674 Academic Inspection Copy

Dragging Away

Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art
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In Dragging Away Lex Morgan Lancaster traces the formal and material innovations of contemporary queer and feminist artists, showing how they use abstraction as a queering tactic for social and political ends. Through a process Lancaster theorizes as a drag-dragging past aesthetics into the present and reworking them while pulling their work away from direct representation-these artists reimagine midcentury forms of abstraction and expose the violence of the tendency to reduce abstract form to a bodily sign or biographical symbolism. Lancaster outlines how the geometric enamel objects, grid paintings, vibrant color, and expansive installations of artists ranging from Ulrike Muller, Nancy Brooks Brody, and Lorna Simpson to Linda Besemer, Sheila Pepe, and Shinique Smith offer direct challenges to representational and categorical legibility. In so doing, Lancaster demonstrates that abstraction is not apolitical, neutral, or universal; it is a form of social praxis that actively contributes to queer, feminist, critical race, trans, and crip politics.
Lex Morgan Lancaster is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Edging Geometry 34 2. Feeling the Grid 60 3. Flaming Color 86 4. Transforming Everyday Matter 110 Epilogue. Dragging the Flag 133 Notes 147 Bibliography 165 Index 177
"Lancaster's study represents an important contribution to scholarship on queer art in particular and contemporary art more generally. For those new to the field, the judiciously illustrated, lively text offers a generous introduction to a range of timely debates about the politics of abstraction and queer representation. For those well acquainted with these debates, Lancaster presents compelling and at times nonintuitive arguments with nuance." - Sarah Louise Cowan (Woman's Art Journal)
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