Sculpture and Psychoanalysis

by Brandon Taylor

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.

254 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2006

About the author

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Brandon Taylor is Professor in the History of Art, University of Southampton. His other publications include Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks, Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, and Art Today.