Late Barthes : Image degree zero
- Submitting institution
-
University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 55458125
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- John Hansard Gallery
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- April
- Year of first exhibition
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The body of work (an exhibition, 4 chapters, 4 articles, and editorship of a journal special issue) represents an extended enquiry spanning five years (from 2015). It centres upon a research investigation of Roland Barthes’ drawings and critical examination of his late writings, as well as wider theoretical development of drawing and the ‘image’. It involved several visits to the Bibliothèque nationale de France to research, select and negotiate the loan of the drawings. It also involved developing the broader curatorial vision with the John Hansard Gallery (UK), including commissioning a new work by British artist Victor Burgin.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This body of work is situated with respect to the relatively recent English translations of Roland Barthes’ late writings and a subsequent revival of ‘Barthes Studies’. It explores Barthes’ (2005) term of the ‘Neutral’, which is applied in consideration of zero degree seeing/drawing, the image, and visual art practice. The arch of the research begins with an exhibition of Barthes’ drawings, never previously seen outside of France. Fifteen works (representative of over 300 drawings held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France) were exhibited in counterpoint to a newly commissioned work by the artist Victor Burgin. A dedicated commentary on Barthes’ practice of painting vis-à-vis the Neutral is provided
in the published research notes on the exhibition. Subsequent to which, a series of critical writings explore the import of the Neutral in relation to art practices more broadly. These include a mapping of Barthes’ account of the committed writer across to the visual arts (to consider a form of ‘neutral seeing’); a comparison with Bataille’s ‘informe’; an exploration of drawing, leading to the notion of the drawerly (as equivalent to Barthes’ writerly); and a re-examination of the image as ‘Image’ akin to how we refer to the Text as a critical concept. The research is further underpinned by the editorship of a special issue on Barthes ‘late works’ for Theory, Culture & Society. Overall, the research demonstrates how (1) the Neutral is pivotal in understanding an ethics of Barthes’ late works; and how (2) as a critical term, it can contribute to debates in art practice. Barthes has long been of interest to those in the visual arts, but often over-determined by his writings on photography. The Neutral renews Barthes’ relevance in terms of the more fundamental practices of mark-marking, the image and seeing.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -