Rematerializing the art object : Eleanor Antin’s Carving : A Traditional Sculpture in context with The Eight Temptations

Rematerializing the Art Object examines Eleanor Antin's The Eight Temptations and Carving: A Traditional Sculpture. Temptations re-presents Antin's diet for Carving in a formal language of camp, mocking the dominant avant-garde culture and inspiring a less idea-based interpretation. Section one contextualizes Carving's formal qualities within a broader aesthetic history of photography and sculpture. Section two focuses on how Antin creates an amalgam of Renaissance and Baroque imagery in Temptations. Section three argues that Antin constructs a camp adaptation of the diet reducing the impact of an overly emotional woman and the seriousness of conceptualism to a cliché. Throughout, the thesis centers on the formal and aesthetic manifestations of Antin's humor. A performance within a performance, Temptations's parodic art history denounces pragmatic photography and empowers Antin as an artist and as a woman.