Eleanor Antin: Historical Takes

A pioneering conceptual and multidisciplinary artist, Antin has lately turned her attention to creating enormous photo-realist settings based on Greek and Roman history and mythology. Gathered here for the first time in book form, these works, often displayed as two-page spreads, are both comic and psychologically complex re-enactments from literature: Roman Allegories, Last Days of Pompeii, and Helen s Odyssey. Employing her friends as models, Antin has created a series of tableaux which touch on themes of herstory while commenting on the roles women play in allegory and myth. Including a foreword by the San Diego Museum of Art director Derrick Cartwright, an interview with the artist by critic Max Kozloff, and essays by Betti-Sue Hertz and Amelia G. Jones, this volume also contains a selection of works from three earlier projects from the 1970s and 1980s: The King, Angel of Mercy, and Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev. Designed to echo a neoclassical work from the nineteenth century, this volume is an indispensable survey of Antin s influential work in photography.