Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
The Emblematic Divide: Contemplating Reality, the Imaginary and Perception in Photographic Practices
In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Seminar XI, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1977) recounts the ancient Greek parable of the contest between the Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two artists competing to paint the most convincing trompe l'oeil painting. In the first instance, Zeuxis painted...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Michaelis School of Fine Art
2024
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Seminar XI, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1977) recounts the ancient Greek parable of the contest between the Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two artists competing to paint the most convincing trompe l'oeil painting. In the first instance, Zeuxis painted grapes so perfectly that birds flew down from the sky to peck on them. Satisfied with his undertaking, he then turns to Parrhasios and asks him to lift the veil to see the painting behind it – failing to realise that the veil itself is the lifelike painting. Naturally, Parrhasios won the competition. This is not due to any superior technical mastery, but because his painting reveals an interesting conception relating to the very nature of human perception. That is to say, perception is never ‘neutral', we never simply see reality ‘as it is' – there is always an underlying psychic economy of (unconscious) hopes, fears, and desires which structures our very perception of reality itself. |
|---|