Cracked traces -- Re-reading the History of Western Art

Author: Geng Youzhuang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: No matter how brief, the painter, in depicting the very moment of this action, sees nothing. What they depict is merely the memory of what they had seen before. Thus, a self-portrait is essentially a ruin, a fragment of the painter's memory traces. Therefore, "ruins are not accidental; they are like a monument that was perfectly intact yesterday, yet was unexpectedly damaged. From the beginning, there were ruins. The image seen is already a ruin." The experience of ruins challenges concepts of totality, unity, identity, self-evidence, appropriateness, certainty, and adequacy, shattering all forms of origin, authenticity, ontology, and transcendence. Thus, we can only seek the traces of fragmentation in the ruins. — Geng Youzhuang
This book is a work that reinterprets the history of Western art through modern critical theory and interdisciplinary methods. It covers various important periods in the development of Western art, as well as numerous artists and artworks, yet it does not intend to outline a complete history of art. On the contrary, the discussions in this book demonstrate that, from any perspective, such an art history seems no longer to exist. As meaning itself continuously dissolves and reconfigures, the artist, the artwork, and the era they inhabit can only manifest as fragmented traces. However, precisely in this scattered pursuit, perhaps the meaning of art history itself can be reconstructed.