





Martha Rosler
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| Editor(s) | Luise Leyer, Sebastian Baden |
| Author(s) | Luise Leyer, Nicholas C. Morgan, Sebastian Baden |
| Design | Bureau Sandra Doeller |
| Size | 23 x 30 cm |
| Cover | Softcover |
| Pages | 144 |
| Illustrations | 330 |
| Language(s) | German, English |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-124-5 |
The American conceptual artist and pioneer of critical feminism Martha Rosler (b. 1943 in Brooklyn, NY, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) has influenced numerous contemporary artists with the radicalism of her artistic position. Rosler’s work is always political and examines questions of power and violence, the ideals of beauty and their demolition, and the purported contrasts between war and consumption. For her sociocritical collages and videos, Rosler uses found pictorial material that has already been published. The artist delights in working with photos from public sources like magazines and newspapers, which she processes and arranges in new contexts in order to visualize inequality and protest. Following on from Rosler’s iconic series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (ca. 1967–1972), at the heart of the publication lies the confrontation with warlike disputes as conveyed in the media, together with the associated dissonance between the private and the political.
Martha Rosler received a Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1965 and a Master of Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 1985. In 1975 she began to write reviews for Artforum and other art magazines. She teaches at School of Arts of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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