Arts of Impoverishment by Leo Bersani
Taking three artists - Beckett, Rothko and Resnais, the book demonstrates that these artists train us in new modes of mobility, which differ from the moves of an appropriating consciousness.
In Arts of Impoverishment, Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit demonstrate how three artists—Beckett the writer, Rothko the painter, and Resnais the filmmaker—dare to fail, dare to turn away from ‘living’ and its consolations to confront the unliving, the uncreated, the unnamableThese artists do not just depict the void but void their very works of form and meaning, deconstructing their own media: Resnais by stalling movement, Rothko by blocking vision, and Beckett by obstructing any reading that attempts to save language from silence… Each of these artists, in different ways, bores holes into his own creation, unforming forms, unwording words, unmoving movies. Their works therefore resist what Bersani, in the title of his previous book, describes as ‘the culture of redemption’: a culture in which art is called upon to cure life’s ills, absolve its sins, correct its errors, and sublimate its passions… [Arts of Impoverishment] is one of the boldest critical statements of recent years. The book proposes no less than a redefinition of the work of art, at a time when critics, fearing charges of elitism, have become reluctant to distinguish works of art from any other form of cultural activity. The role of art, the authors argue, is not to comfort or redeem us or improve our politics, but to overwhelm us: to transport us to the limits of perception where being is created and dissolved… There is something so intoxicating about Bersani and Dutoit’s aesthetic of austerity that dearth begins to seem more sumptuous than plenty. The quest for impoverishment is perhaps the most heroic way to fail to fail. -- Maud Ellmann * Essays in Criticism *
This brilliant and thought-provoking interdisciplinary work by literary critic Leo Bersani and film scholar Ulysse Dutoit examines the frontiers between the work of art, whether literary, pictorial, or cinematographic, and the rest of the real world. * French Review *
Bersani and Dutoit are taking The Culture of Redemption into the territory of a positive aesthetics. This new book is an extremely important event, one that will be followed fervently be the admirers of their work. -- Rosalind Krauss
This brilliant and thought-provoking interdisciplinary work by literary critic Leo Bersani and film scholar Ulysse Dutoit examines the frontiers between the work of art, whether literary, pictorial, or cinematographic, and the rest of the real world. * French Review *
Bersani and Dutoit are taking The Culture of Redemption into the territory of a positive aesthetics. This new book is an extremely important event, one that will be followed fervently be the admirers of their work. -- Rosalind Krauss
Leo Bersani is the Class of 1950 Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780674048768 |
| ISBN 10 | 0674048768 |
| Title | Arts of Impoverishment |
| Author | Leo Bersani |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
| Year published | 1993-12-01 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |