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Art Contemporary (1945-)

The Assassination of Experience by Painting, Monory

by (author) Jean-François Lyotard

edited by Herman Parret

afterword by Sarah Wilson

Publisher
Leuven University Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2014
Category
Contemporary (1945-)
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9789058678812
    Publish Date
    Jan 2014
    List Price
    $93.95

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Description

Lyotard met Jacques Monory in 1972, and the text on him published at that time was the first that Lyotard dedicated to contemporary art since Discourse, Figure. Lyotard's interest in the plastic arts thus fits fully within the setting of his political preoccupations. The artist-protagonist stages the recurring motifs that fascinate Lyotard: the scene of the crime, the revolver, the woman, the victim, glaciers, deserts, stars. The atmosphere of the essays on Monory is "Californian." Monory's imaginary repertoire goes well beyond the masters of modernity and is in line rather with a "modern contemporary surrealism."

Both Lyotard and Monory live the "dilemma of Americanization," the America represented by cinema, fashion, novels, music. It is in this atmosphere that Lyotard and Monory will finally evoke their supreme experience of difference: desire and fear, exultation and a profound malaise. The plastic universe of Monory and the aesthetic meditations of Lyotard are in perfect symbiosis. Sarah Wilson's epilogue thoroughly outlines both the history of a friendship and, at the same time, the intellectual and artistic climate of the 1970s.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

Herman Parret is Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Language at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven.