by Jon Lackman | 4 March 2010 | Books, Theory
We recently discovered the scholarly book review Metapsychology which covers a fair number of art-related books. Recently reviewed:
Art/Porn, A History of Seeing and Touching, by Kelly Dennis. “This is an unusual book, far removed from the writings of conventional art historians whom the author dubs ‘patriarchal’. She is anxious to make clear that hers is not a survey history but rather ‘an attempt to understand a constellation of discourses on aesthetics, representation, femininity, and class, and the ways they impact and are impacted by technologies of vision’. This formulation at once points to Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and feminist theorists as the inspiration for her radical ideas, though she does not use these sources uncritically … The writing is densely packed, but not obscure. The work sparkles with fresh ideas, many of them admittedly speculative; and the overall drift of the argument is readily accessible to non-specialists. Moreover, it is lavishly illustrated and can be recommended to anyone interested in the historical context of the fuzzy boundary between erotic art and pornography.”
Beauty by Dave Beech (Editor). “Beech’s excellent anthology examines what he now considers to be the tense and estranged relationship between beauty and art in contemporary society. As he notes in his introduction, the collection is concerned with the politics of beauty after the development of Ricoeur’s ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ in which the subject of beauty, along with its subjective nature, has become dangerously controversial. The controversy that gives to rise to this collection, then, is that of beauty’s politicization; a controversy embedded in the relationship between an individual’s subjective response to beauty and the idea that their very own subjective response to beauty is socially inscribed by the higher powers of capitalist society … This is well-edited, rich, collection by an artist who is not only aware of the current complexities surrounding the beauty debate, but also the historical context from which they arose … I highly recommend it as an accessible and well-structured survey of the contemporary debate, with numerous thought provoking and controversial articles.”
Lacan at the Scene, by Henry Bond. “Henry Bond’s Lacan at the Scene blazes a welcome trail into the intersection of photo theory and post-Freudian, ostensibly Lacanian, psychoanalysis. The volume handles an engagement with several series of crime scene photographs of murders committed between 1955 and 1970 using the lens of Lacanian diagnostic criteria: perversion, psychosis, and neurosis … Lacan at the Scene comes in the form of five chapters buffeted by a brief introduction, afterword, and a foreword by the series editor Slavoj Žižek … Lacan at the Scene is a fascinating and sometimes gruesome read. Although some of the photographs Bond chose to include retain abject depictions these always remain objects of a most critical and tasteful engagement … [I] highly recommend Lacan at the Scene for psychoanalysts, philosophers, legal theorists, criminologists, photographers, art historians, theoreticians, and any other reader that is looking for a new take on murder, psychoanalysis, and the history of photography.”
