Dear All
Murat Aydemir (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis - ASCA), the author
of 'Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning' (2007), will give
a seminar at UCL on 'Portraiture: Faces and Stains'.
Venue: UCL Roberts Building Room 309
Time: 11 February Wednesday, 2pm
Portraiture: Faces and Stains
Francis Bacon’s Portrait of George Dyer in a Mirror (1967-8) refuses
to offer the recognizable face of George Dyer that the title of the
painting promises. Hence, the work is not so much a portrait as it is
‘about’ portraiture, suggesting a reappraisal of the genre that
commences with the disarticulation of the connections between
portrait, mirror, and face. That reappraisal inevitably encounters as
its main resistance the formless white stains of paint on the
painting’s surface. Bacon’s painterly juxtaposition of formless stains and
elusive faces invites a reconsideration of portraiture as an art
historical genre and a sociocultural function that circumscribes the
intelligibility of the human. In my presentation, I pursue that
reconsideration through a set of heuristic dialogues between Bacon’s
Portrait and what I regard as other defacing ‘portraits,’ taken from
literature (Proust), theory (Lacan), and pornography.
For further details of Aydemir's work, please see
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.aydemir/
For UCL Mellon Programme's events page:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mellon-program/seminars/2008-2009/index.shtml
All welcome
Best wishes
Cuneyt
_______________
Dr Cuneyt Cakirlar
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
UCL Mellon Programme
University College London
Gower Street London WC1E 6BT
+44 (0) 20 7679 7458
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mellon-program/fellows/cuneyt/
|