Seams Art as a Philosophical Context

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe brings to Melville's work the insight not only of an art critic and theorist, but of a practicing artist as well. Navigating through the complexity of contemporary thought and philosophy, Gilbert-Rolfe unravels the Gordian knot of the diverse discourses that circumscribe Melville's views, revealing the practicality and clarity of Melville's speculative narratives. Stephen Melville is one of the most thoughtful critics to emerge in recent years. He has applied the tools developed by Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan to the problems of contemporary art. With his roots in Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, he reopens questions of art's reception, interpretation, and commentary. Not only does he articulate the limitations of these categories, and how they are set into motion-stasis and balance are not the goal. He demonstrates how the territory of each of these discourses is maintained by their relationship to one another. Melville's texts not only represent the complexity of his subjec

Introduction by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe; introduction1 Stephen Melville and Art’s Philosophical Attitude Toward History; Part 1 Essays by Stephen Melville; Chapter 1 Robert Smithson; Chapter 2 Description; Chapter 3 Aesthetic Detachment; Chapter 4 Positionality, Objectivity, Judgment; Chapter 5 Psychoanalysis and the Place of Jouissance; Chapter 6 Division of the Gaze, or, Remarks on the Color and Tenor of Contemporary “Theory”; Chapter 7 Color has not Yet been Named; Chapter 8 Notes on the Reemergence of Allegory, the Forgetting of Modernism, the Necessity of Rhetoric, and the Conditions of Publicity in Art and Criticism; Chapter 9 Compelling Acts, Haunting Convictions; Chapter 10 Painting Put Asunder; Chapter 11 Postscript;