Description
Book SynopsisThe great, influential cultural critic, Elisabeth Bronfen, sets out in this book a conversation between literature, cinema and visual culture. The crossmappings facilitated in and between these essays address the cultural survival of image formulas involving portraiture and the uncanny relation between the body and its visual representability, the gendering of war, death and the fragility of life, as well as sovereignty and political power. Each chapter tracks transformations that occur as aesthetic figurations travel from one historical moment to another, but also from one medium to another. Many prominent artists are discussed during these journeys into the cultural imaginary, include Degas, Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Wagner, Picasso, and Shakespeare, as well as classic Hollywood's film noir and melodrama and the TV series, The Wire and House of Cards.
Trade ReviewBrilliant essays on the female nude, on images not just of chess games but of chess queens in recent film and television ... full of marvelous and disturbing ideas ... Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
This is a very important, relevant book for today’s world. Bronfen is one of the very rare scholars who, in accessible prose, offers in-depth analyses of the interactions between “high” art and “popular” visual culture, focusing on the socio-political relevance of that crossover. Analysing literature, cinema, television series and other works of popular fiction, from present to past and back, Bronfen is a brilliant “image-thinker”, and so makes a strong case for the urgent necessity of the Humanities in today’s world. * Mieke Bal, Independent scholar affiliated with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and video artist *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Crossmappings. Visual Readings as a Critical Intervention in the Cultural Imaginary Part I. Travelling Image Formulas Chapter 1. Facing Defacement. Degas' Portraits of Women Chapter 2. Naked Touch. Disfiguration, Recognition and the Female Nude Chapter 3. Leaving an Imprint. Francesca Woodman's Photographic tableaux vivants Chapter 4. Pop Cinema. Hollywood's Critical Engagement with America's Culture of Consumption Chapter 5. Hitler Goes Pop. Totalitarianism, Avant-Garde Aesthetics and Hollywood Entertainment Chapter 6. Simulations of the Real. Paul McCarthy's Performance Disasters Chapter 7. Wagner's Isolde in Hollywood Chapter 8. Shakespeare's Wire Chapter 9. Queen of Chess. On Serial Reading Part II: Gendering the Uncanny, Imaging Death Chapter 10. The Horror of the Familiar. Freud's Thoughts on Femininity and the Uncanny Chapter 11. Gendering Curiosity. The Double Games of Siri Hustvedt, Paul Auster and Sophie Calle Chapter 12. The Other Self of the Imagination: Cindy Sherman's Hysterical Performance Chapter 13. Eva Hesse's Spectral Bride and her Uncanny Double Chapter 14. Wounds of Wonder. Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Nabuyoshi Araki Chapter 15. The Fragility of the Quotidien. Eija-Liisa Ahtila's Work with Death Chapter 16. Picasso's War Women Chapter 17. Contending with the Father. Louise Bourgeois and her Aesthetics of Reparation Notes Index
