Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image

by Barbara Bolt

Refuting the assumption that art is a representational practice, this book engages with the work of Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, C.S. Pierce and Judith Butler. It argues for a performative relationship between art and artist. Drawing on themes as diverse as the work of Cezanne and Francis Bacon, the transubstantiation of the Catholic sacrament, and Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray", she challenges the metaphor of light as entertainment. She suggests that too much "light" may in fact reveal nothing. Finally, she how does an "embodied" practice fare within the culture of conceptual art?

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 2004