Susan Best is an art historian with expertise in critical theory and modern and contemporary art. Best is a Professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.
Her book, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde focuses on four women artists of the 1960s and 70s: Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. It shows how their work transforms the avant-garde protocols of the period by introducing an affective dimension to late modern art. According to Suzannah Biernoff Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde "should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in psychoanalytic approaches to art." The project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant.
In 2012, her book Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde won the best book prize awarded by the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand.
Best SM, 2016, Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography, Bloosmbury Academic, London.Best SM, 2011, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde, I B Tauris, London.Best, Susan (2011). Robyn Backen, Backspace: The Art of Communication: Works from 1990-2010. Sydney: Boccalatte Publishing. ISBN 9780980631227. Best SM, 2014, 'Anne Ferran: Histories of Women and Other Blind Spots', in Anne Ferran: Shadow Land, Power Publications, Sydney.Best SM, 2014, 'Mineral Nature: Mikala Dwyer Rocks', in Mikala Dwyer: The Garden of Half-Life, University of Sydney, University Art Gallery, Sydney, pp. 12 – 19.Best SM, 2013, 'Lygia Clark, the Paris Years: The Body as Medium and Material', in Posman S; Reverseau A; Ayers D; Bru S; Hjartarson B (ed.), The Aesthetics of Matter. Modernism, the Avant-Garde, and Material Exchange, edn. 1st ed., Walter de Grutyer, Berlin, pp. 292 – 301.Best SM, 2011, 'Rivane Neuenschwander and the Legacy of Tropicalia', in McNamara A (ed.), Sweat: The Subtropical Imaginary, edn. 1, IMA, Brisbane and Urban Modernities Research Group, QUT, Brisbane, pp. 28 – 43Best SM, 2009, 'Relational Art, Identification and the Social Bond', in Gonçalves LR (ed.), The Institutionalization of Contemporary Art: Art criticism, museums, biennials and the art market., Museu de Arte Contemporânea, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, pp. 217 – 225.Best SM, 2004, 'Joan Brassil', in The Grove Library of World Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Best SM, 2004, 'Joan Grounds & Sherre DeLys Tickled Pink Laughter as Intitutional Critique', in Carlos I (ed.), Biennale of Sydney 2004 On Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, pp. 98 – 99.Best SM, 2001, 'You are on Aboriginal Land: Landscape after Land Rights', in Green C (ed.), Postcolonialism + Art Where Now?, Artspace Visual Art Centre, Sydney.Best SM, 2001, 'Elemental Constructions:Women Artists and Sculpture in the Expanded Field', in Getczy A; Genocchio B (ed.), What Is Installation?, Power Publications, Sydney, pp. 185 – 205.
