 Josephine Baker in art and life, the icon and the image.
Author: Jules-Rosette, Bennetta Published: 2007 Josephine Baker (1906 - 1975) was a dancer, singer, actress, author, politician, militant, and philanthropist, whose images and cultural legacy have survived beyond the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Neither merely an exercise in postmodern deconstruction nor a traditional biography, Josephine Baker in Art and Life presents a critical cultural study of the Franco-American performer whose appearances as the savage dancer Fatou shocked the world. Although the study remains firmly anchored in Baker's life and times, presenting and challenging carefully researched biographical facts, it also offer in-depth analysis of the images that she constructed and advanced. The author explores Baker's far-ranging and dynamic career from a sociological and cultural perspective, using the tools of sociosemiotics to excavate the narratives, images, and representations that trace the story of Baker's life. |
