Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture

Doy , Gen

ISBN 10: 1850434131 / ISBN 13: 9781850434139

Published by I.B. Tauris, 2004

About this Item

1850434131. 2005, bright clean copy, no markings, Professional booksellers since 1981.

Seller Inventory # 152624

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture
• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1850434131
• ISBN 13: 9781850434139
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art & Design

About this title

Synopsis

Ideas of selfhood, from Descartes to postmodern notions of the fragmented and de-centred self, have been crucial to the visual arts. Gen Doy explores this relationship, primarily in relation to contemporary art but also going back to the early modern period and Holbein's Ambassadors. She argues that the importance of subjectivity for art goes far beyond self-portraits, exploring the self and identity--both the artist's and the viewer's--and seeks a way of thinking the self that goes beyond both Cartesian and postmodern approaches to subjecthood. She looks too at work and consumption; self-presentation; photography and the theatre of the self; the marginalized--beggars and asylum seekers--and ""the real me."" A wide range of artists, including Claude Cahun, Tracey Emin, Jeff Wall, Barbara Kruger, Eugene Palmer and Karen Knorr are discussed, as well as historical material from earlier periods.

About the Author

Gen Doy is Professor of the History and Theory of Visual Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester and the author of Black Visual Culture: Modernity and Postmodernity and Drapery: Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture (both I.B.Tauris)