Poetry in Painting

Book excerpt: The first book by Helene Cixous on painting and the contemporary arts. This collection gathers most of Helene Cixous' texts devoted to contemporary artists, such as the painter Nancy Spero, the photographer Andres Serrano, the visual artist Roni Horn, the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel and the choreographer Karine Saporta, among others. The artworks belong to different genres and media - photography, painting, installations, film, choreography and fashion design - while the commentaries all deal with some of Helene Cixous' privileged themes: exile, war, violence (against women) and exclusion, as well as love, memory, beauty and tenderness.Neither art criticism nor a collection of critical essays, Helene Cixous responds to these artworks as a poet, reading them as if they were poems. Written between 1985 and 2010, most of these essays are unpublished in English, or published only in rare catalogues or art books.