Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Belisle, Brooke. | Casey, Edward S
Date
2017-05-01
Keywords
Art history -- Art criticism -- Aesthetics | Affect, Boredom, Boring Art, Francis Bacon, Gilles Deleuze, Sensation
Department
Department of Art History and Criticism
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76704
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
In his book, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Gilles Deleuze betrays a preference for largely dramatic and "sensational" (even if not "sensationalistic") artworks that privilege the “scream†over the yawn, and ignores the type of understated works that Jacques Rancière would characterize as “pensive†images, or even the intentionally “boring†works of postmodern art. This paper critically examines Deleuzian concepts on the reception of art—i.e. sensation, affection, and affect—and explores their applicability to subtle and seemingly neutral/boring/deadpan works. Philosophers including Barthes and Rancière addressed the challenge of engaging with images in postmodernity by asking what happens when we encounter a yawn rather than a scream, or, in the case of Barthes, what happens when a scream makes us yawn? With the existence of already shocking photographs in mass culture, and with the end of the “shock of the new,†Barthes sought aesthetic redemption in the punctum rather than the studium. Heidegger, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, looks at boredom itself as a "fundamental attunement" that needed to be absorbed and engaged with directly, rather than escaped from. Using Deleuze's example of "Pierre and Paul" in his lectures on Spinoza's concept of "affectio" (affection) and "affectus" (affect), this paper seeks to draw out some of the conceptual limitations in Deleuzian notions of sensation, affection, and affect in dealing with understated or purposely boring works, and proposes an understanding of these concepts in a less fixed and instantiated manner, and more as slower unravellings that grow, fade, or linger. | 27 pages
Recommended Citation
Macagba, Jonathan Reyes, "Boring Sensations: Deleuze on Meat and Vegetables" (2017). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2586.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2586