Ernst van Alphen

'Failed Images' attempts to understand the divergence between photography and the reality it portrays, analysing the various ways the photograph transforms that which exists before the camera. Because the photographic medium enables very different practices, which in turn results in many kinds of images, it must also be examined from a perspective outside of the dominant approach to the medium, generally called the 'snapshot.' This book therefore explores the photographic image by focusing on practices which refuse this conventional approach, namely staged, blurred, under- and overexposed, and archival photography.

Photography and Its Counter-practices

Failed Images

Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities

Productive Archiving

Martin Harrison

Rebecca Daniels

Margarita Cappock

Twenty years after the artist's death, this new publication presents a timely and rich overview of the life and work of Francis Bacon. The book includes some 60 paintings as well as photographs, ephemera and archival material largely drawn from the artists studio. An introduction and four essays by international experts look at specific aspects of Bacon's work, from detailed analysis of archival material to a study of the influences of Marcel Duchamp. The paintings divide into a thematic chronology of five decades: the 1940s, which looks at the figure studies closely related to Bacon's famous Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion; the 1950s, where his work is informed by Velázquez and van Gogh, but is also dominated by ambiguous, shadowy figures in sombre tones; the 1960s and 70s, which focus on the portraits and subsequent memorials to Bacon's lover George Dyer, who died in 1971; the 1980s, while calmer and more naturalistic, reveal more haunted works which make reference to classical mythology and epic poetry. Each decade is defined by influences in his life and motifs which form part of an evolving pictorial language.

Five Decades

Francis Bacon

According to most of the critical commentary on Francis Bacon, the paintings by this crucially important artist are about violence, torment, fragmentation and loss. However, Ernst van Alphen argues that it is the violence done to the viewer that needs to be addressed if we are to understand how these works function. In this provocative and highly original interpretation of Bacon's art, the author offers close readings of significant works, discussing them in relationship to theories of schizophrenia, masculinity and contemporary literature, as well as issues of representation and visuality. By looking at the paintings in intricate detail and exploring their connections within cultural theory, van Alphen brings Bacon into the context of the contemporary critical debate. "This examination of critical reactions to Bacon is very welcome"—The Art Newspaper

Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self

een handleiding voor het lezen van poëzie

Op poëtische wijze

In the face of strong moral and aesthetic pressure to deal with the Holocaust in strictly historical and documentary modes, this book discusses why and how reenactment of the Holocaust in art and imaginative literature can be successful in simultaneously presenting, analyzing, and working through this apocalyptic moment in human history. In pursuing his argument, the author explores such diverse materials and themes as: the testimonies of Holocaust survivors; the works of such artists and writers as Charlotte Salomon, Christian Boltanski, and Armando; and the question of what it means to live in a house built by a jew who was later transported to the death camps. He shows that reenactment, as an artistic project, also functions as a critical strategy, one that, unlike historical methods requiring a mediator, speaks directly to us and lures us into the Holocaust. We are then placed in the position of experiencing and being the subjects of that history. We are there, and history is present--but not quite. A confrontation with Nazism or with the Holocaust by means of a re-enactment takes place within the representational realm of art. Our access to this past is no longer mediated by the account of a witness, by a narrator, by the eye of a photographer. We do not respond to a re-presentation of the historical event, but to a presentation or performance of it, and our response is direct or firsthand in a different way. That different way of "keeping in touch is the subject of inquiry that propels this study.

Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory

Caught by History

Dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, Staging the Archive demonstrates the ways in which such “archival artworks” probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do. Through a variety of media, methodologies and perspectives, the artists surveyed here also challenge the principles on which the notions of organization, evidence, and documentation are built. The earliest examples of the modern archival artwork were made in the 1930s, but only since the 1960s have artists really embraced archival principles to inform, structure, and shape their works. This includes practices that consist of archive construction, archaeological investigation, record keeping, and the use of archived materials, but also interrogations of the principles, claims, and effects of the archive. Staging the Archive shows how artists read the concept of the archive against the grain, questioning not only what the archive is and can be but what materials, images, or ideas can be archived. Ernst van Alphen examines these archival artists and artworks in detail, setting them within their social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Exploring the works of Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Fiona Tan, and Sophie Calle, among others, he reveals how modern and contemporary artists have used and contested the notion of the archive to establish new relationships to history, information, and data.

Art and Photography in the Age of New Media

Staging the Archive

Essays over aspecten van het werk van de Nederlandse auteur (1921-1995).

essays over Willem Frederik Hermans en de moderne tijd

De literaire magneet

Literatuurwetenschappelijke opstellen over Koolhaas, Kellendonk, Boutens, Helman, Armando, Brakman, Dermoût, Hermans en Gorter.

Essays over moderne Nederlandse literatuur

De toekomst der herinnering

Alexander Nemerov

Celeste Olalquiaga

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Mieke Bal

Serge Guilbaut

Joanne Morra

Alex Potts

Akira Mizuta Lippit

Marc Gotlieb

Clark Conference

Sina Najafi

Reva Wolf

W. J. Thomas Mitchell

With essays by Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, Marc Gotlieb, Serge Guilbaut, Michael Ann Holly, Akira Mizuta Lippit, W. J. T. Mitchell, Joanne Morra, Sina Najafi, Alexander Nemerov, Celeste Olalquiaga, Alexander Potts, and Reva Wolf The discipline of art history is in a moment of self-consciousness, and art historians are increasingly more self-reflexive about their practices. In this volume, thirteen authors address both the philosophical and practical issues now facing those in the visual arts field by investigating the ever-pressing issue of research. Their essays explore the remarkable nature of art historians' personal, political, aesthetic, creative, and emotive curiosity and the process of doing research in the archive, library, studio, gallery, museum, and beyond. As such, the book considers the pleasures and dangers of researchers' obsessions and encounters with the incoherence, chaos, and wonder that lie at the heart of searching for the not-yet-known. The volume is based on the 2007 Clark Conference of the same name.

Obsession, Archive, Encounter

What is Research in the Visual Arts?

Carel E. Smith

The essays in this volume demonstrate how the performance of sincerity is culturally specific and is enacted in different ways in different media and disciplines, including law and the arts.

The Rhetoric of Sincerity

Drie essays over beeldend kunstenaars, historici en pedagogen die proberen de holocaust vanuit een ander perspectief te benaderen.

herbeleving, historisering en verbeelding van de holocaust

Schaduw en spel

Art has the power to affect our thinking, changing not only the way we view and interact with the world but also how we create it. In Art in Mind, Ernst van Alphen probes this idea of art as a commanding force with the capacity to shape our intellect and intervene in our lives. Rather than interpreting art as merely a reflection of our social experience or a product of history, van Alphen here argues that art is a historical agent, or a cultural creator, that propels thought and experience forward. Examining a broad range of works, van Alphen—a renowned art historian and cultural theorist—demonstrates how art serves a socially constructive function by actually experimenting with the parameters of thought. Employing work from artists as diverse as Picasso, Watteau, Francis Bacon, Marlene Dumas, and Matthew Barney, he shows how art confronts its viewers with the "pain points" of cultural experience-genocide, sexuality, diaspora, and transcultural identity-and thereby transforms the ways in which human existence is conceived. Van Alphen analyzes how art visually "thinks" about these difficult cultural issues, tapping into an understudied interpretation of art as the realm where ideas and values are actively created, given form, and mobilized. In this way, van Alphen's book is a work of art in itself as it educates us in a new mode of thought that will forge equally new approaches and responses to the world.

Ernst van Alphen

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