The Enigmatic Body
Essays on the Arts

A translation of essays by French critic and theorist Jean-Louis Schefer.

Jean-Louis Schefer (Author), Paul Smith (Edited by)

9780521378253, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 November 1995

212 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.1 cm, 0.35 kg

The Enigmatic Body presents the work of an important French theorist. The selection represents the whole of Jean-Louis Schefer's career, from the 1960s, when he was influenced by structuralism, to his more lyrical and autobiographical essays of the 1990s, which meditate on the role of the spectator in relation to art practice. Schefer considers the very nature of art, film and writing through his close examination of artists as diverse as Uccello, Poussin and Cy Twombly, and writers such as Paul Valéry and Roland Barthes. These provocative essays all register the writer's direct confrontation with these various media in a way that stands as a corrective to the formal traditions of interpretation and criticism. Autobiographical, yet theoretically informed and historically detailed, Schefer's work offers some of the most original interpretations of art available.

Introduction Paul Smith
Foreword Jean-Louis Schefer
1. Split Colour/Blur
2. On the object of figuration
3. Thanatography/skiagraphy
4. The plague
5. Light and its prey
6. Someone writing
7. Roland Barthes
8. Cinema
9. On La Jetée
10. Cy Twombly: uncertainty principle
11. What are red things?
Notes
Selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC], Literary theory [DSA], Film theory & criticism [APFA], Theory of art [ABA]