Hannah Wilke
HANNAH WILKE. ARTIST AS WORK OF ART. ROLE MODEL AND HER OWN MODEL. SHE WAS GOOD LOOKING AND GOOD TO LOOK AT. IN THE HISTORY OF ART, SHE WAS THE ICONOGRAPHY. THE STYLE ICONOGRAPHY.
The book is Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective. Published in 1989. A superbook then and more so now. It is a book of her work, which, by definition, is a book of her.
The woman and her work. Wilke put herself into her art from the mid-seventies onwards. She was criticised for being too beautiful to be taken seriously. You won't find that complaint made here. That's what IDEA is all about. Pictures of people looking cool. Nothing wrong with that. Besides which, we are loving the oversized jumbo knit and gaucho hat!
Like just how cool. The art. Those pants. Joan Didion looked amazing around this time too and that didn't make her any less than the best writer in the world. The art and artist is the complete picture.
Wilke worked throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties. She died in 1993, aged 52, from lymphoma. In her last years she documented her illness and the decay of her body. For that she was taken very seriously (in part, of course, because it was a beautiful body that was dying). The irony of it.
We may remember her differently. Naked but for a hat in these video works. Dressed, as below, like the male lead in a Visconti film.
Not entirely sure than any artist ever looked better.
The book is brilliant. And the book is rare. What's more this copy is signed and inscribed. It is very special.
Try and buy it on the button below. We have one copy and there are more than a few of you but someone will be pefect for it and vice versa. Of that we are sure.