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Mimesis, Materiality and The Shadow of Death
Author(s) -
Jacobi Carol
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00347
Subject(s) - materiality (auditing) , painting , shadow (psychology) , transparency (behavior) , aesthetics , style (visual arts) , subject matter , persona , art , subject (documents) , visual arts , sociology , psychology , computer science , law , psychoanalysis , political science , humanities , pedagogy , curriculum , library science
This essay questions the apparent stylistic transparency of the ‘licked’ Victorian painting and proposes a cascade of connections between material, formal and iconographical concerns. It also offers a model of a relationship between the corporeal persona of the artist and the physical art. This shows that the physical properties of the work correspond, on several levels, to a physical self–image of the artist. The first section looks at the way style problematizes issues of mortality raised by the subject matter of the work and links this to so–far unrecognized expressions of doubt and frailty set out in private journals and letters. The second section will show how these ‘flesh and blood’ concerns inform medico–moral discussions of technique, and, lastly, it will reveal how the integrity of the paint surface itself comes to represent the integrity of the artist’s body.