All Too Human: Recontextualizing Deleuze and Levinas on Art

Tina Chanter
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Tina Chanter: Kingston University, United Kingdom

European Journal of Language and Literature Studies, 2019, vol. 5, issue 2, 55-69

Abstract: Although they elaborate it differently, both Levinas and Deleuze appeal to the notion of rhythm as decisive for understanding art. Drawing on their analyses I discuss the work of several artists featured in a current exhibit showing at the Tate Britain, All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life. In addition to Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, I discuss the work of Paula Rego and Lynette Lydiam-Boakye. Vlad Ionescu suggests that a productive approach to writing about art after Deleuze and Guattari would be to inquire into ‘how constellations of sensation modify our perceptions of the world’ (2017, p. 22). I take up Ionescu’s suggestion, but also recontexutalize it in order to offer a politicized account of how the exhibit is framed. At the same time I draw on feminist and race theory to discuss the work of Rego and Lydiam-Boakye, thus also recontextualizing Levinas’s and Deleuze’s analyses of art. The questions this paper addresses include: What makes these paintings work, and how do they function? How do their aspects and rubrics operate? What creates their rhythms? How do they operate as an assemblage?

Keywords: Art; Philosophy; Rhythm; Francis Bacon; Lucian Freud; Paula Rego; Lynette Lydiam-Boakye; Levinas; Deleuze; feminist - race theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eur:ejlsjr:75

DOI: 10.26417/yf3jwd56

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