Husain, Amber;
(2025)
More-than-Bare Art: Psychosomatic Aesthetics in Early Neoliberal Britain.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis examines the historical scope for art in early neoliberal Britain to advance a critique of medical biopolitics. Engaging with a period (1982–1997) in which the bodies of artists, workers and patients were increasingly defined according to biological values, my research is focused on three sets of artist case studies – works by Helen Chadwick, Donald Rodney and Jo Spence – many of which were made as part of state-backed and privately resourced ‘art and health’ initiatives coherent with a medico-political agenda. This thesis tests the possibility for art’s ongoing problematisation of biomedical knowledge despite the constraints of biomedical and artworld institutions, redressing a widespread gloom in art-historical and political-philosophical literatures as to the scope for criticality’s survival under neoliberal conditions. Taking seriously Josephine Berry’s speculation that ‘there is no purely biological life, and thus there can be no totally bare art’, this study explores the development through art of a ‘psychosomatic’ sensibility, defined as a form of self-questioning with respect to the body, being and health. In doing so, it asks what kinds of ‘life’ it was possible to articulate aesthetically at this time beyond the promotion of health as a biological category, defined in terms of productivity, national security and responsibility. Based on archival research into the work and working conditions of Chadwick, Rodney and Spence – each of whom used the body as a starting point for artistic enquiry into health and illness – this work identifies counter-hegemonic imaginaries of the human subject that range from ideas as well-worn as its ‘social entanglement’ to those as heterodox as its sexually charged metaphysical constitution by proliferating non-human elements. In doing so, this project suggests not only a reframing of body art as a site of biopolitical critique, but also an art-historical contribution to the growing field of transdisciplinary psychosomatics.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | More-than-Bare Art: Psychosomatic Aesthetics in Early Neoliberal Britain |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History of Art |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203564 |
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