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Vision and Textuality

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Book

Pages: 408

Illustrations: 90 illustrations

Published: July 1995

Editors: Stephen Melville, Bill Readings

Contributors: Stephen Melville, Michael Ann Holly, John Tagg, Irit Rogoff, Martin Jay, Norman Bryson, Louis Marin, Hal Foster, Francoise Lucbert, John Bender, Peter de Bolla, Thomas Crow, Bennet Schaber, Rosalind Krauss, Victor Burgin, Bill Readings, Griselda Pollock

The influence of contemporary literary theory on art history is increasingly evident, but there is little or no agreement about the nature and consequence of this new intersection of the visual and the textual. Vision and Textuality brings together essays by many of the most influential scholars in the field—both young and more established writers from the United States, England, and France—to address the emergent terms and practices of contemporary art history.
With essays by Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, Norman Bryson, Victor Burgin, Martin Jay, Louis Marin, Thomas Crow, Griselda Pollock, and others, the volume is organized into sections devoted to the discipline of art history, the implications of semiotics, the new cultural history of art, and the impact of psychoanalysis. The works discussed in these essays range from Rembrandt’s Danae to Jorge Immendorf’s Café Deutschland, from Vauxhall Gardens to Max Ernst, and from the Imagines of Philostratus to William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams. Each section is preceded by a short introduction that offers further contexts for considering the essays that follow, while the editors’ general introduction presents an overall exploration of the relation between vision and textuality in a variety of both institutional and theoretical contexts. Among other issues, it examines the relevance of aesthetics, the current concern with modernism and postmodernism, and the possible development of new disciplinary formations in the humanities.

Contributors. Mieke Bal, John Bender, Norman Bryson, Victor Burgin, Thomas Crow, Peter de Bolla, Hal Foster, Michael Holly, Martin Jay, Rosalind Krauss, Françoise Lucbert, Louis Martin, Stephen Melville, Griselda Pollock, Bill Readings, Irit Rogoff, Bennet Schaber, John Tagg

Praise

“Melville and Readings have done a superb job, not only in their choice of essays, but in their elaborate and highly ambitious introduction. It is the best assessment that I know of the current state of contemporary art history and criticism, the most subtle analysis of the theoretical alternatives open to contemporary and future work in these disciplines.” - Keith Moxey, Barnard College and Columbia University

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Stephen Melville is Associate Professor of History of Art at Ohio State University.

Bill Readings was Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Montréal at the time of his death in 1994.

Table Of Contents

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List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Notes on Contributors xvi

Part I

1. General Introduction / Stephen Melville and Bill Readings 3

Part II

2. Basic Concepts Of Art History / Stephen Melville 31

3. Beholding Art History: Vision, Place and Power / Griselda Pollock 38

4. Past Looking / Michael Ann Holly 67

5. A Discourse (With Shape of Reason Missing) / John Tagg 90

6. The Aesthetics of Post-History: A German Perspective / Irit Rogoff 115

Part III

7. How Oblivious is Art? Kitsch and the Semiotician / Bill Readings 143

8. Reading the Gaze: The Construction of Gender in 'Rembrandt' / Mieke Bal 147

9. Philostratus and the Imaginary Museum / Norman Bryson 174

10. Topic and Figures of Enunciation: Is it Myself that I Paint / Louis Marlin 195

11. Armour Fou / Hal Foster 215

Part IV

12. The Pen and the Eye: The Politics of the Gazing Body / Francoise Lucbert 251

13. Impersonal Violence: The Penetrating Gaze and the Field of Narration in Caleb Williams / John Bender 256

14. The Visibility of Visuality: Vauxhall Gardens and the Sitting of the Viewer / Peter de Bolla 282

15. B/G / Thomas Crow 296

Part V

16. Vision Procured / Bennet Schaber 317

17. In the Master's Bedroom / Rosalind Krauss 326

18. Photo-unrealism: The Contribution of the Camera to the Crisis of Ocularcentrism / Martin Jay 344

19. Chance Encounters: Flaneur and Detraquee in Breton's Nadja / Victor Burgin 361

Index 373

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1644-2 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1630-5 /

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