To Destroy Painting

by Louis Marin, Mette Hjort (Translation)

The work of the eminent French cultural critic Louis Marin (1931-92) is becoming increasingly important to English-speaking scholars concerned with issues of representation. To Destroy Painting, first published in France in 1977, marks a milestone in Marin's thought about the aims of painting in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A meditation on the work of Poussin and Caravaggio and on their milieux, the book explores a number of notions implied by theories of painting and offers insight into the aims and effects of visual representaion.

Genres: Essays, Philosophy, Art

196 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Louis Marin was Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Reviews

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

une étude sémiologique assez dense (ainsi qu'une lecture attentive) de Poussin et du Caravage. s'articule principalement autour de deux œuvres : *Et in Arcadia ego* de Poussin et la *Méduse* du Caravage. Les remarques sur la perspective et le regard dans la section consacrée à Poussin étaient certes intéressantes, mais c'est la brève partie sur les espaces noirs du Caravage qui a, à mes yeux, justifié la lecture de cet ouvrage.

[Ignacio Rial-Schies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title promised a lot, but I somehow did not get really into it until the second half. While proving that it is not possible to talk about painting without a certain frame of reference, which in this case is built mostly out of bits and pieces of structural linguistics, Marin's analysis of Caravaggio and Poussin's work (and some others along the way) makes a clear case for an art history that delves deeper into the ways artistic production and aesthetic perception structured and influenced each other at the time frame those works were created, and also beyond.
I'm currently following a self-drafted reading programme on aesthetics, with a focus on painting, trying to put this book in relation to Deleuze's Logic of Sensation, his course on paiting, and, more recently, Ranciere's work. I'm looking forward to rereading this particular book looking for more connections.