Lacan Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts

168 Pages·8.497 MB·English

by  Steven Z. Levine

Lacan Reframed
Contemporary Thinkers Reframed Series
Deleuze ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 547 0
Damian Sutton & David Martin-Jones
Derrida ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 546 3
K.Malcolm Richards
Lacan ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 548 7
Steven Z.Levine
Baudrillard ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 678 1
Kim Toffoletti
Heidegger ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 679 8
Barbara Bolt
Kristeva ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 660 6
Estelle Barrett
Lyotard ReframedISBN: 978 1 84511 680 4
Graham Ralph-Jones

Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co.Ltd
6 Salem Road,London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue,New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave
Macmillan,a division of St.Martin’s Press,175 Fifth Avenue,
New York NY 10010
Copyright © Steven Z.Levine,2008
The right of Steven Z.Levine to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.Except for brief quotations in a review,this
book,or any part thereof,may not be reproduced,stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or
by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or
otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 84511 548 7
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British
Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Egyptienne F by Dexter Haven Associates Ltd,London
Page design by Chris Bromley
Printed and bound in the UK by T.J.International,Padstow.Cornwall.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of illustrations ix
Foreword:Why Lacan? xi
Chapter 1.The Da Vinci Codeaccording to Freud 1
Chapter 2.The Da Vinci Codeaccording to Lacan 15
Chapter 3.The Thing from another world 31
Chapter 4.The lost object 57
Chapter 5.What is a picture? 67
Chapter 6.Representative of representation 91
Chapter 7.Am I a woman or a man? 111
Afterword:Enjoy! 131
Selected bibliography 135
Suggested reading 137
Index 141

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Susan Lawson for inviting me to write this book
and for improving it with her keen editorial eye.I also want to
thank my students and colleagues in the department of History
of Art and the Center for Visual Culture at Bryn Mawr College for
tolerating my translation of their scholarship and conversation
into the Lacanian terms of the Imaginary,the Symbolic and the
Real. Notable among them are David Cast, Christiane Hertel,
Homay King, K. Malcolm Richards, Lisa Saltzman and Isabelle
Wallace,as well as recent undergraduate and graduate seminar
students on self-portraiture and psychoanalysis.The art historians
Benjamin Binstock, Bradford Collins, Keith Moxey and Jack
Spector gave me the opportunity to present or publish some of my
thoughts on art and Lacan,as did the psychoanalysts Heather
Craige and David Scharff, and members of the Philadelphia
Psychoanalytic Center.Patricia Gherovici and Jean-Michel Rabaté
introduced me to Philadelphia’s vibrant Lacanian community.And
in the background of many of my sentences lies the phenomenology
of Michael Fried.
My wife Susan Levine,practitioner of psychoanalysis,and my
daughter Madeleine Levine,researcher in social psychology,were
indispensable in the completion of this project.My parents Natalie
and Reevan Levine opened the space of possibility,and it is in their
name and with love that I dedicate this book.

List of illustrations
Figure 1. Marcel Duchamp,L.H.O.O.Q.,1919 (1930 replica),
private collection.Photo credit: Cameraphoto Arte,Venice/Art
Resource, NY. © 2007 Artists Rights Society, NY/ADAGP, Paris/
Succession Marcel Duchamp. 2
Figure 2.Leonardo da Vinci,The Madonna and Child with Saint
Anne,1508–10,Louvre Museum,Paris.Photo credit: Scala/Art
Resource,NY. 6
Figure 3.Leonardo da Vinci,The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
and Saint John the Baptist,1499–1500,National Gallery,London.
Photo credit: Art Resource,NY. 25
Figure 4. Hans Holbein the Younger,The Ambassadors,1533,
National Gallery, London. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art
Resource,NY. 50
Figure 5.Jacopo Zucchi,Psyche Surprising Cupid,1589,Borghese
Gallery,Rome.Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource,NY. 59
Figure 6.Gustave Courbet,The Origin of the World,1866,Orsay
Museum,Paris.Photo credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource,NY. 60
Figure 7. Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931,
Museum of Modern Art,New York.Digital Image © The Museum of
Modern Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource,NY.© 2007 Salvador
Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society,
NY. 77
Figure 8. Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Prado Museum,
Madrid.Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource,NY. 93
Figure 9.René Magritte,La Condition humaine,1933,Gift of the
Collectors Committee,Image © 2007 Board of Trustees,National
Gallery of Art,Washington.© 2007 C.Herskovici,Brussels/Artists
Rights Society,NY. 106
Figure 10.Gian Lorenzo Bernini,The Ecstacy of Saint Teresa,
1647–52,Cornaro Chapel,Santa Maria della Vittoria,Rome.Photo
credit: Nimatallah/Art Resource,NY. 116
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