Poetry in painting. Writings in contemporary arts and aesthetics

The first book by Hélène Cixous on painting and the contemporary arts. This collection gathers most of Hélène Cixous' texts devoted to contemporary artists, such as the painter Nancy Spero, the photographer Andres Serrano, the visual artist Roni Horn, the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel and the choreographer Karine Saporta, among others. The artworks belong to different genres and media - photography, painting, installations, film, choreography and fashion design - while the commentaries all deal with some of Hélène Cixous' privileged themes: exile, war, violence (against women) and exclusion, as well as love, memory, beauty and tenderness.Neither art criticism nor a collection of critical essays, Hélène Cixous responds to these artworks as a poet, reading them as if they were poems. Written between 1985 and 2010, most of these essays are unpublished in English, or published only in rare catalogues or art books.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements   vi

Sources   vii

Illustrations   ix

Series Editor’s Preface   x

Hélène Cixous, in Art as in Dreams, Joana Masó and Marta Segarra   1

1. Paintings   7

2. Spero’s  Dissidances   21

3. Ernest’s  Imagic   31

4. See the Neverbeforeseen   37

5. Portraits of Portraits: The Very Day/Light of Roni Horn    75

6. K – A Notebook    79

7. Shit, No Present: Faecetious Serrano   85

8. Inheriting/Inventing with Jeffrey Gibson   109

9. Filming the Becoming Invisible   113

10. Sonia Rykiel in Translation   119

11. The Train Stop, or Anna’s Resurrections   124

Index   133