Lifework
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- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- Publication date:
- 10 February 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781526172488
- 9781526172471
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- Weight & Pages:
- Subjects:
- Art: General Interest, Art
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- Art: General Interest, Art
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Book description
Lifework explores the autobiographical impulse in art since 1970. Following the scepticism fostered over the notion of the ‘self’ as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists looked to test the problem posed by autobiography both as a genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent rise of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic production, as first outlined in the writings of Roland Barthes, examining a diverse set of practices in the visual arts and literature that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book’s chapters cut across medium, geography, and time, together uncovering how both the marginalisation and promotion of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural, and political implications. The volume is loosely arranged into five sections, the first of which variously considers artistic practices that mine how mediated the self has become under the technocracy of late capitalism. The remaining sections focus heavily on the work of women artists and writers, exploring ways in which the idea of ‘lifework’ both lends itself to analyses of their work and is augmented by these practices. It also features several examples of autotheoretical writing, as well as reflections on autotheory’s relevance and its potential for understanding the work of contemporary art and, indeed, of various ways of living life.
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