Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface
What does a black burlesque star have to do with some of the most enduring and passionate ideas in modern aesthetic theory? The spectacular Josephine Baker emerges in this fascinating untold story as a principal figure in the drama behind the making of Euro-American Modernism. Instead of seeing her nude performances as a Primitivist given, the author argues that Baker's famous skin was central to the debates about and desire for "pure surface" that crystallized at the convergence of modern art, architecture, machinery, and philosophy. Taking the reader across the Atlantic, through real stages and imagined houses; banana plantations and ocean liners; metallic bodies and radiant cities, this study tracks the ardent and protean conversation between the making of a Modernist style and the staging of a new black visuality. In this account, the author and the Modernists known to have adored and objectified her in fact shared a common dream: the fantasy of remaking and wearing the skin of the other
234 pages, 10 editions
English edition · First published 2010 by Oxford University Press · ISBN 9780195387056
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Editions
10 editions
English
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2011 · ISBN 9780195387056 This page
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2023 · ISBN 9780197748398
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2023 · ISBN 9780197748411
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2023 · ISBN 9780197748381
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2023 · ISBN 9780197748404
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2013 · ISBN 9780199988167
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2010 · ISBN 9780199779819
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2010 · ISBN 9780199741427
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2010 · ISBN 9781282917682
- Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface · Oxford University Press · 2010 · ISBN 9786612917684
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