50 minutes
June 2020
Download (MP4 SD)

State of the Art 4: Sexuality

The five major artists featured in this film question our understandings of ideas of female and male, of fantasy and desire and power.

Cindy Sherman, filmed creating one of her iconic photographs, challenges conventional images of women using performance and theatricality and transgressing conventions. Alexis Hunter’s work was informed by involvement in the women’s movement in the 1970s, and she discusses her Passionate Instincts series.

Eric Fischl paints intimate, voyeuristic scenes of suburban life in the United States, unsettling and disturbing the ways in which we look at women and men. Mary Kelly employs writing and images for her series, Interim, which tackles issues of concern for women in the middle of their lives. And Barbara Kruger employs the forms and languages of advertising and consumer culture to challenge the dominant representations of sexuality and power.

Complete Series on DVD and download
Episode 1 History
Episode 2 Value
Episode 3 Imagination
Episode 4 Sexuality
Episode 5 Politics
Episode 6 Identity

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State of the Art returns  6 November 2006
Basquiat and the return of history 19 April 2018