The paradox of identity politics as an agent in critical art: 1970s to the 1990s

This dissertation traces a trajectory of critical art based in identity, positioning it within debates around politically committed art. Commencing in the 1970s, I highlight exemplary practitioners who analyze the construction of identity in relation to the aesthetic forms of the neo-avant-garde, and the movements that followed it, by tackling the challenge I name the "paradox of identity politics." Their artwork stemmed from an understanding that designations of community based on sexual, racial, or gender identity utilized the very terms constitutive of intolerance. Identifying identity as paradoxical enabled these artists to utilize the terms of self-definition while dismantling their oppressive operation. While some identity-based artistic strategies eventually became palatable for a mainstream audience---contained under the category of multiculturalism---I claim that practices engaging the paradox sustained a critical dialogue with the dominant institutions and, in their aesthetic analysis of the vocabulary of art and its context, effected a major contribution to conceptual art and institutional critique.;Chapter One traces how Adrian Piper brought issues of gender, class and race to bear on conceptual art as early as the 1970s, drawing an analogy between racial stereotypes and the conventions of art. Chapter Two observes the contribution of identity politics to institutional critique, from the subtle commentary of Jimmie Durham to Fred Wilson's analysis of the institutional vocabulary of display. Chapter Three compares the artwork and reception of Robert Mapplethorpe with the artistic approach of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, arguing that both oeuvres, conservative or analytic, can ultimately be seen as critical, because the context of the AIDS crisis and the culture wars had shifted the terms of discussion. Chapter Four examines the 1993 Whitney Biennial as a test case for the influence of identity politics on art criticism. Contrary to the debates pitting a critical approach to identity against its embrace, I argue that the Biennial, in summarizing identity politics as a movement, sheds a new light on the methodologies of political art. I claim that practices centered on identity informed by cultural theory and activism continue the project of the political avant-garde by interrogating identity's relation to representation.