Photography, Trace, and Trauma

Photography is often associated with the psychic effects of trauma: the automatic nature of the process, wide-open camera lens, and light-sensitive film record chance details unnoticed by the photographer—similar to what happens when a traumatic event bypasses consciousness and lodges deeply in the unconscious mind. Photography, Trace, and Trauma takes a groundbreaking look at photographic art and works in other media that explore this important analogy. Examining photography and film, molds, rubbings, and more, Margaret Iversen considers how these artistic processes can be understood as presenting or simulating a residue, trace, or “index” of a traumatic event. These approaches, which involve close physical contact or the short-circuiting of artistic agency, are favored by artists who wish to convey the disorienting effect and elusive character of trauma. Informing the work of a number of contemporary artists—including Tacita Dean, Jasper Johns, Mary Kelly, Gabriel Orozco, and Gerhard Richter—the concept of the trace is shown to be vital for any account of the aesthetics of trauma; it has left an indelible mark on the history of photography and art as a whole.

Arts & Photography

Iversen, Margaret

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

Writing Art History: Disciplinary Departures

Faced with an increasingly media-saturated, globalized culture, art historians have begun to ask themselves challenging and provocative questions about the nature of their discipline. Why did the history of art come into being? Is it now in danger of slipping into obsolescence? And, if so, should we care?
In Writing Art History, Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville address these questions by exploring some assumptions at the discipline’s foundation. Their project is to excavate the lost continuities between philosophical aesthetics, contemporary theory, and art history through close readings of figures as various as Michael Baxandall, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, and Alois Riegl. Ultimately, the authors propose that we might reframe the questions concerning art history by asking what kind of writing might help the discipline to better imagine its actual practices—and its potential futures.

Melville, Stephen

Faced with an increasingly media-saturated, globalized culture, art historians have begun to ask themselves challenging and provocative questions about the nature of their discipline. Why did the history of art come into being? Is it now in danger of slipping into obsolescence? And, if so, should we care? In Writing Art History, Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville address these questions by exploring some assumptions at the discipline’s foundation. Their project is to excavate the lost continuities between philosophical aesthetics, contemporary theory, and art history through close readings of figures as various as Michael Baxandall, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, and Alois Riegl. Ultimately, the authors propose that we might reframe the questions concerning art history by asking what kind of writing might help the discipline to better imagine its actual practices—and its potential futures.

Alois Riegl (1858-1905) was one of the founders of art history as a discipline. This is the first general introduction to the work of the celebrated Austrian who brought complex philosophical considerations to bear on art and its history. Ranging easily over diverse fields and among a large group of thinkers, Margaret Iversen establishes Riegl's relevance to recent critical thinking while clearly delineating his extraordinary critical powers. Iversen contextualizes Riegl's thought among the wider cultural crosscurrents of his time, pointing for example to his denunciation of the sub-Semperians and his profound influence on Walter Benjamin. She is equally concerned to relate Riegl's work to contemporary theoretical interests, arguing that he pioneered an approach to art history that took into consideration the role of the spectator. She devotes a chapter to Riegl's theory of spectator/depiction relationships, comparing it with more recent writing on the subject by commentators like Fried, Foucault, and others. In a sympathetic reading of Riegl, Iversen interprets his theory of Kunstwollen or artistic volition, as a concept that ran counter to narrowly empiricist and determinist histories of art that were dominant in his time. She provides extended critical commentary on his most important works, Questions of Style, Late Roman Art Industry, and The Dutch Group Portrait, enriched by explorations of the theoretical background of his systematic art history, including the work of Kant, Hegel, Herbart, and Hildebrand. Iversen also details Erwin Panofsky's early response to Riegl, arguing that Panofsky's search for an authoritative viewpoint collapsed Riegl's multiple typology of style into an art history constructed around a single aesthetic norm.

Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory

Mit Pr

Alois Riegl (1858-1905) was one of the founders of art history as a discipline. This is the first general introduction to the work of the celebrated Austrian who brought complex philosophical considerations to bear on art and its history. Ranging easily over diverse fields and among a large group of thinkers, Margaret Iversen establishes Riegl's relevance to recent critical thinking while clearly delineating his extraordinary critical powers. Iversen contextualizes Riegl's thought among the wider cultural crosscurrents of his time, pointing for example to his denunciation of the sub-Semperians and his profound influence on Walter Benjamin. She is equally concerned to relate Riegl's work to contemporary theoretical interests, arguing that he pioneered an approach to art history that took into consideration the role of the spectator. She devotes a chapter to Riegl's theory of spectator/depiction relationships, comparing it with more recent writing on the subject by commentators like Fried, Foucault, and others. In a sympathetic reading of Riegl, Iversen interprets his theory of Kunstwollen or artistic volition, as a concept that ran counter to narrowly empiricist and determinist histories of art that were dominant in his time. She provides extended critical commentary on his most important works, Questions of Style, Late Roman Art Industry, and The Dutch Group Portrait, enriched by explorations of the theoretical background of his systematic art history, including the work of Kant, Hegel, Herbart, and Hildebrand. Iversen also details Erwin Panofsky's early response to Riegl, arguing that Panofsky's search for an authoritative viewpoint collapsed Riegl's multiple typology of style into an art history constructed around a single aesthetic norm.

Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (MIT Press Classics)

Individual Artists

The MIT Press

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud observed that the life-enhancing pleasure principle seems disrupted by something internal to the psyche. He took into account the possibility of a “death instinct” bent on returning the living organism to its origin of undifferentiated matter. In Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Margaret Iversen uses the writing of Freud, Lacan, the Surrealists, and Roland Barthes to elaborate a theory of art beyond the pleasure principle. Lacan was in close contact with the Surrealists and, early in his career, exchanged ideas with Dalí. This book offers a detailed reading of Dalí’s “paranoiac-critical” tour de force, The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus, in which he demonstrates a method of interpretation that involves the projection and analysis of paranoid fantasies. The author later discusses the aesthetic dimension of the disintegrative death drive explored in Georges Bataille’s Eroticism and in Anton Ehrenzweig’s Hidden Order of Art, both of which inspired Robert Smithson. Iversen also takes up a postwar-era narrative that examines Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Beyond Pleasure shows that the aesthetics of Freud’s theory continue to resonate in the contemporary art world.

Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (Refiguring Modernism)

Penn State University Press

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Literature, Politics, and Theory

Literature & Fiction

Hulme, Peter

Barker, Francis

Loxley, Diana

Routledge

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Literature, Politics, and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976-84 (New Accents)

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Routledge& Kegan Paul

Papers from the Essex Conference from 1976 to 1784.

Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976-84 (New Accent Series)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Iversen, Margaret. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Iversen, Margaret

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Iversen, Margaret. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Photography, Trace, and Trauma

Photography, Trace, and Trauma

Writing Art History: Disciplinary Departures

Writing Art History: Disciplinary Departures

Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory

Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (MIT Press Classics)

Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (Refiguring Modernism)

Literature, Politics, and Theory

Literature, Politics, and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976-84 (New Accents)

Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference 1976-84 (New Accent Series)