Review of Art Monsters : Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin

*Art Monsters* by Lauren Elkin (2023). Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

One of my biggest loves, and something I’ve been dedicating part of my career to now in graduate school, is researching the role of women throughout history. Art and literary history are my personal fortes, but it’s always been so shocking to see how women have been historically shot down.

With my work at New Perspectives Theatre Company, I built a massive database on women playwrights before the sixties, and there are so many women around the world who simply don’t get acknowledgement despite the incredible depth of work they created in, for example, the 1500s. And most of the time they’re branded as selfish, autobiographical, and weak because of the fact they dared to be women writing.

Anyways, one of my favorite slogans is from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which is: “Can you name five women artists?” Most people see the shirt I bought with it and think it means singers, which also shows an implicit bias against the arts in general. Many don’t know much about feminist art and even women who create art in general, and it’s time to change that.

It’s why I picked up a copy of books like Art Monster for pre-order, although this review is a product of an advanced copy through the publisher and NetGalley. I was so excited to get this advanced copy because this is right up my alley. I’ve rambled enough—let’s get into the review!

A deep dive into women’s art and literature, bodies, and how they’re depicted and seen.

Throughout the course of Art Monsters, Elkin picks different artists and hones in on their work. There are illustrations throughout the book, but some things you might want to jot down in your journal or have a phone handy to look up while you’re reading (or after). Several of the artists I knew already simply because I’m deep in the beginnings of research when it comes to feminist art and who is involved with it, but others were artists I was overjoyed to learn about for the first time.

She does a an examination on some of their works, such as Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures. One of the more prominent literary texts mentioned that I spotted was Theresa Ha Kyung Cha’s DICTEE, which is a hybrid masterpiece.

Unfortunately, Cha was murdered by a security guard only a week after the book came out in the eighties, cutting short such a brilliant life in the process. I’ve read portions of DICTEE but never had the chance to go through the book in one sitting—I’ve been hunting down a copy of it at thrift stores with no luck so far.

I also think one of the more defining aspects of this book is how accessible it can—I’m in a graduate program where I took a class called The Human, and several things we discussed in the class theory-wise are woven into the infrastructure of this book.

Abject and affect are two concepts that came up quite a bit when we were discussing different forms of performance and how we present ourselves to others, which means that Elkin was tapping into an academic sense to guide her work her. Which is incredible to me personally, as a lot of academic info is locked inside of the ivory tower.

There are also several big theorists in feminist theory that are brought into the fold of this book as well. I recognized Helene Cixous immediately because I’ve briefly read some of her work, leading me to be familiar with the kinds of ideas she’s vaulting out into the stratosphere.

Susan Sontag is the other big name, as it’s kind of impossible to escape Sontag if you’re talking about feminism, photography, and performance when it comes to theory.

But again, I really liked at how Elkin made these kinds of concepts more accessible for an audience outside of academic. I thought her explanations and tying in wasn’t massively convoluted in the way that you’d be like “what am I reading” after poking through the book. It all comes together really nicely to question bodies and spaces, asking the question of who is and is not an art monster.

Overall Thoughts

I think this is a book everyone should read at least once, especially if they’re into art and literary history. I don’t care if you’re nonbinary, a man, or a woman. Too often classrooms neglect these kind of artists, and they’ve even been historically shamed throughout the years for the kind of work they’ve created.

The interdisciplinary approach to all of this is absolutely critical, as it shows the direct correlations across mediums, as well as the fact art incorporates many different things in its creation. Pick up a copy of this book if you haven’t already if even seems vaguely interested—it’s definitely worth it!

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