Lindsay Caldicott, with a Capital X

re-published in a modified version as The Psychoanalytic Approach to Artistic and Literary Expression in Toward the Postmodern, ed. R. Harvey and M. Roberts (Amherst, NY, Humanity Books, 1993, pp. 2-11). Opposing itself to various other psychoanalytic approaches to art and literature (approaches that Lyotard criticises along the way), the paper argues that because artistic and literary works are laden with figure, which operates according to a different logic than that of language, artistic expression must be understood as having properties different from those of spoken or written commentary. Expression is thus set off from meaning, and is shown to reveal a very specific kind of truth: the trace of the primary process, free for the moment from the ordering functions of the secondary process. Its formative operations not only leave their mark on the space in which artistic works appear, but produce new, plastic, figures. Lyotard argues that the artistic impulse is the desire to see these unconscious operations, "the desire to see the desire." Attention to this function of truth and to the role of artistic space in giving the artwork its "play" brings attention back to Freud's analysis of expression in tragedy and its link to the results of his own self-analysis -and thus to the very constitution of psychoanalysis itself.

The Art Book, 2006

Surfaces

Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.

PhD Thesis, 2015

Late Twentieth Century accounts of art history reveal crises across different artistic disciplines. More recently, the deepest recession since the Great Depression has destabilised the globe. These combined instances of turbulence and conflict shape the context of this research. Using different concepts of instability this study attempts to locate specific images, in art and in a wider cultural sphere, which demonstrate a strong connection to the concerns and processes of my own art practice. In order to do this I explore recurring examples of collapse through assorted definitions of its ‘image’. A description of collapse involving the English comedian Tommy Cooper, together with its transposition into a stilled photographic image, forms the fundamental basis of this study. I utilise this image of Cooper’s collapse to articulate a form of instability, both in terms of its physical appearance and the less apparent meanings made visible as a consequence. Examined in relation to uncertainty through illustrations of symbolic and ‘real’ death the signatures of collapse are then further explored in a variety of image studies throughout this thesis. These examples are then used to ascertain how meanings are constructed, transmitted and repeated through the image. Combining phenomenal accounts with firsthand interview material, a detailed case study of the artist Mike Nelson is used to advance this enquiry and to situate a comparative assessment of my own practice. These findings help to support a transferable system of image reproduction across different representational categories as the formula for a fragmented compositional strategy in my work. The results uphold the theory of a shift from art-history into image-history, whereby artworks in different mediums take on some form of equivalence. This then is the definition of my working processes, realised through the reproduction of different ‘image forms’ manifest as interspersed arrangements of (art) objects and other image components.

1985

The works reproduced on pages 183 and 232 are printed upside down. honored and pleased to have received the gift of the Riklis Collection of McCrory rm the basis of the exhibition documented in this catalog. The 249 works thus >ry Corporation Collection, formed over the past fifteen years by Meshulam Riklis and his curator Celia Ascher, and concentrated on geometric abstract art. To have developed such an important, focused collection within a corporate context was itself an extraordinary achievement, evidencing a vision and level of commitment most unusual in collections of this kind. To have further decided to share with the world, in the form of this gift, the outstanding part of the collection is truly an act of patronage of the most enlightened and public-spirited kind. In addition to this gift, the McCrory Corporation has provided the Museum with an endowment for a gallery within the installation of the Painting and Sculpture Collection, which we gratefully name in honor of Mr. Riklis. On behalf of the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, I thank Mr. Riklis most sincerely for his remarkable generosity. With the addition of the Riklis Collection of McCrory Corporation, the Museum has now certainly the largest and most complete representation of Constructivist and geometric abstract art in this country. We are delighted to be able to preserve and foster within the context of our own collection the particular modern tradition that Mr. Riklis and Mrs. Ascher made the focus of theirs. Meshulam Riklis has taken a keen personal interest in the development of this project from its very beginning; we thank him for his enthusiasm and his attention to detail as well as for his generosity. We also most warmly thank Celia Ascher: for her development of this marvelous collection and for her dedicated professionalism throughout the sometimes complex process of arranging the gift. We are very grateful for the most helpful involvement of Mona Ackerman, Mr. Riklis' daughter and a good friend to this museum. Finally, we offer our warm appreciation and admiration to John Elderfield, Director of the Department of Drawings, who supervised the curatorial aspects of the gift and of this exhibition and catalog, and to Magdalena Dabrowski, Assistant Curator in the same department, who collaborated on the exhibition and is the author of the texts of the catalog. Their own acknowledgments appear at the end of Mr. Elderfield's introduction. Richard E. Oldenburg Director, The Museum of Modern Art I am greatly pleased that the McCrory Corporation was in a position to donate to The Museum of Modern Art a collection that I believe to be of significant aesthetic and educational value. The Museum is the world's leading repository of twentieth-century art and as such is the most appropriate home for a collection of this importance. M. Riklis Much has been written about the joys of acquiring and shaping an art collection: the intellectual stimulus of the search, the excitement and exultation of discovery. Over the years, the pursuit can become almost all-absorbing. However, there comes for many collectors that bittersweet moment when logic and practical considerations call for giving up one's acquisitions for public delectation. Though there is a pang of loss, there is also the exhilaration of attaining a goal. This gift of works from the McCrory Corporation's Collection is largely Constructivist in derivation. It includes not only the pioneeers of this movement, but also a large number of contemporary painters and sculptors whose endeavors reflect Constructivist concepts. The works as brought together represent a carefully developed philosophy which I applied to the art of collecting. It says that collecting should follow a defined path of exploration and scholarship, rather than the willynilly road of the eclectic contemporary. Art collecting should expand aesthetic awareness through precision, ultimately making more profound the experience of the collector and the viewer. No one owns art. It owns us. I speak for Mr. Riklis, the McCrory Corporation, and myself in expressing our delight in seeing the collection in such an auspicious and nurturing setting as The Museum of Modern Art. My formative years in art historical scholarship were influenced greatly by Alfred Barr, the Museum's unparalleled founding director, and this crucial relationship helped sway our choice of a home for the collection. I would personally like to express my most sincere thanks to Mr. M. Riklis for his undaunted backing of my decisions, for his invaluable words of encouragement, and for his generous willingness to share both his time and his thoughts with me.

2016

Život umjetnosti : časopis o modernoj i suvremenoj umjetnosti i arhitekturi, 2003

Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts (2017) no. 122, pp. 285-294., 2017

2016