1st Edition

Sculpture and Psychoanalysis

By Brandon Taylor Copyright 2006
    253 Pages
    by Routledge

    254 Pages
    by Routledge

    Just what do psychoanalysis and modern sculpture have to do with one another? The present collection of essays, unique in its field, shows how key metaphors of Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis - splitting, projection, sublimation, identification, the schizoid and reparative mechanisms - as well as Lacan's concepts of the stade du mirroir and the objet petit a, can be fruitfully applied to a range of modern three-dimensional art, from Surrealism to the present day. As these essays show, figures such as Barbara Hepworth, Eva Hesse, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Gilbert and George, Rebecca Horn and others have often approached the material of sculpture with something like these mechanisms in mind. The need to unlock the levels of psychoanalytic connection between artist, object and viewer in recent debate has fuelled the diverse proposals of this original and important book.

    Contents: Part I Modern Objects: Sculpture and disenchantment, Martin Golding; 'Psychologie des foules': Surrealism and the impossible object, Simon Baker; Judd's badge, Tim Martin; Part II Meanings of Abstraction: 'Miss Hepworth's stone is a mother', Anne M. Wagner; The dark chaos of subjectivisms: Splitting and the geometry of fear, David Hulks; Part III Installation and Performance: Jean-Jacques Lebel: Anti-sculpture and anti-psychiatry, Alyce Mahon; Pregenitality and The Singing Sculpture: the anal-sadistic universe of Gilbert & George, Grant Pooke; Eva Hesse: a note on milieu, Mignon Nixon; Inside out: Rebecca Horn's extimate monument, Brian Grosskurth; Part IV Matter and Process: The order of material: Plasticities, malaises, survivals, Georges Didi-Huberman; Revulsion / matter's limits, Brandon Taylor; Index.

    Biography

    Brandon Taylor is Professor of History of Art at the University of Southampton, UK

    '... this is an extremely good collection. It will be of interest to scholars of sculpture, Surrealism, psychoanalytic aesthetics, and the wider field of modern and contemporary art.' The Art Book