Imaging Desire (Writing Art) Book

"Mary Kelly's writings. . . are models of sophistication, clear, deeply intelligent essays. . . " -- Book Forum

Imaging Desire, Mary Kelly's long-awaited collection of writings from 1976 to 1995, asks fundamental questions about the analysis of current practices in art and makes rigorous arguments for a criticism informed by semiotics, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Few artists have made such a strong contribution to critical discourse and art as Mary Kelly, who for more than twenty years has pushed the boundaries of the visual, the textual, the sexual, and the political in her writing and her art.

Imaging Desire contains all the seminal texts and reveals crucial points of intersection between written and visual expression in a career known for its intertextual, interdiscursive features. Here the visible, the oral, the gestural, and the readable continually converge to frame questions about the body in ways that redefine its cultural and visual status, and to explore the relation between images and desire.