Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies - Softcover

Wollen, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 086091755X ISBN 13: 9780860917557

Publisher: Verso, 1985

Synopsis

The films of Hitchcock, Welles and Godard; the aesthetics of photography and the technology of cinema; art and revolution in Russia and in Mexico; the avant-gardes in film and in painting—these are among the many topics of Peter Wollen’s essays. Interwoven with fictional treatments of such themes as memory, dream, sexuality and writing, they compose a remarkable, perhaps unique, volume.

These “readings and writings” are informed by Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the history of art itself. Their concern is with signification: with the ways in which meanings are produced in dominant art forms and with the counter-strategies by which these meanings may be questioned or dislodged, in the practice of politically and aesthetically radical alternatives. A concluding retrospect reviews the political, intellectual and aesthetic avant-garde currents of the fifteen years over which these texts were written, outlining some perspectives for oppositional art today.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Wollen was Chair of the Department of Film, Television and New Media at the University of California, Los Angeles. His other books include Paris/Hollywood: Writings on Film and Paris/Manhattan: Writings on Art.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 086091755X
• ISBN 13: 9780860917557
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228