Sustaining Loss explores the uncanny, traumatic weaving together of the living and the dead in art, and the morbid fascination it holds for modern philosophical aesthetics. Beginning with Kant, the author traces how aesthetic theory has been drawn back repeatedly to the moving power of the undead body of the work of art. He locates the most potent expressions of this philosophical compulsion in Hegel's thesis that art is a thing of the past, and in Freud's view that the work (...) of art is the haunting of the present by the endless suffering of what is dead but still has claims over the living. Sustaining Loss examines not only Kant, Hegel, and Freud, but also the contemporary artists Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov, whose art turns fruitfully against art's own past. (shrink)

_Sustaining Loss_ explores the uncanny, traumatic weaving together of the living and the dead in art, and the morbid fascination it holds for modern philosophical aesthetics. Beginning with Kant, the author traces how aesthetic theory has been drawn back repeatedly to the moving power of the undead body of the work of art. He locates the most potent expressions of this philosophical compulsion in Hegel's thesis that art is a thing of the past, and in Freud's view that the work (...) of art is the haunting of the present by the endless suffering of what is dead but still has claims over the living. The book asserts that modern aesthetics holds the key to unlocking the tortured relation of modernity to the past it is perpetually leaving behind. As the capacity to withstand the inescapable force of a past that is dead for us becomes the supreme test for a fully modern, fully secular philosophy, aesthetics moves to the center of philosophical reflection. But, the author argues, this secular philosophical orientation can be sustained only if aesthetic theory remains oriented by intimate contact with modernist works of art. _Sustaining Loss_ examines not only Kant, Hegel, and Freud, but also the contemporary artists Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov, whose art turns fruitfully against art's own past. To live as a modern, the author asserts, is to live with the dead past that modernist art ceaselessly disgorges. Overall, the book aims to articulate an aesthetic theory suitable to the task of living in a time when, in Flannery O'Connor's words, "The blind don't see and the lame don't walk, and what's dead stays that way.". (shrink)

This essay examines mimetic pictures and the forms of subjectivity encoded in them. Mimetic pictures are representations which are unique in looking like the objects or events they depict. However, the objects or events typically have properties which are incompatible with those of the picture considered as a material artifact. Thus, if a mimetic picture looks like what it depicts, it does not look like what, considered as an artifact, it is. Since seeing a mimetic picture as a picture is (...) seeing what it looks like, it seems to follow that seeing a mimetic picture entails not seeing its material properties. But this is a paradox: it suggests that looking at mimetic pictures means not seeing what is being looked at. My aim is to resolve this paradox. ;This goal is pursued by exploring the forms of subjectivity historically attributed to the spectator of mimetic pictures. Three theorists are examined: Leon Battista Alberti, John Locke, and E. H. Gombrich. While their positions are tied to the forms of pictorial practice central to their respective historical contexts, they share a common attitude toward the paradox of pictoriality: they explain mimetic appearance as an illusion produced in the seeing subject by the picture. This commonality suggests a consistent attitude toward pictorial appearance from the Renaissance to the present; I analyze this attitude, arguing that the concept of illusion, rather than helping us grasp the forms of subjectivity encoded in pictures, obscures it. ;The essay concludes by proposing that cultures of mimesis produce a complex visual activity of recognition and disavowal which I call "fascination". I defend the thesis that mimetic pictures do not induce illusions but are displays in which the social dynamic of illusion is witnessed. This thesis is combined with Lacan's theory of the gaze to redefine mimetic pictures as theatrical entities exhibiting the social interaction of desire and visual appearance. As theatrical, pictures elicit a mode of reflective subjectivity rather than deceiving a pre-reflective spectator. This thesis resolves the paradox of mimetic pictures by analyzing their apparent possession of incompatible properties as a sign that pictures are artifacts in which the social and relational nature of appearance itself can be seen. (shrink)

The first volume in the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and the Arts offers a range of responses by distinguished philosophers and art historians to some crucial issues generated by the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Each of the chapters in this volume is a searching response to theoretical and practical questions in terms accessible to readers of all human science disciplines. The editors, one a philosopher and one an art historian, provide an introductory chapter (...) which outlines the themes of the volume and explicates the terms in which they are discussed. The contributors open new avenues of enquiry involving concepts of 'presence', 'projective properties', visual conventions and syntax, and the appropriateness of figurative language in accounting for visual art. The issues they discuss will challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorising sustains. (shrink)

The concept of trauma has recently expanded its reach to include what otherwise might be understood as intimate experience. This overextension represents a threat to our ability to conceptualize intimate experiences, hence to use concepts to engage in intimate communication. An analysis of Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Auroras of Autumn”, demonstrates how poetry provides a supplemental vehicle for the communication of intimate experiences. Poetry is therefore characterized as an essential element in ethical life.