This Great Allegory - by Gerhard Richter (Paperback)

About the Book

"An exploration of the idea of the world in art (both an image of the world that has perished, and another opened up by the artwork) as revealed through a number of seminal philosophical thinkers as well as through assorted modes of aesthetic production, including painting, film, photography, poetry and music"--

Book Synopsis

An engagement with the relation between the world in which an artwork is created--a world that perishes or decays over time--and the new world that the artwork opens up.

Gerhard Richter explores the relation between two worlds: the world in which an artwork is created, that is, a world that over time perishes or decays beyond interpretive understanding, and the new world that the artwork opens up. The multiple relations between these worlds are examined in a number of central thinkers and in various modes of aesthetic production, including poetry, painting, music, film, literature, and photography. It is precisely in and through the work of art, Richter shows, that central elements of the thinking of world as world are negotiated in the most essential and moving ways.

Exploring the relationship between these worlds through art and European philosophy, Richter offers bold new interpretations of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida. The book also provides stimulating new insights into the works of heterogeneous artists such as Paul Celan, Friedrich Hölderlin, Werner Herzog, Arnold Schönberg, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Andrew Moore, Botho Strauß, Didier Eribon, and even prehistoric cave painters. In each case, Richter's readings are guided by a consideration of the conceptual constraints and singular interpretive demands imposed by the specific genre and medium.

Review Quotes

"This Great Allegory generously invites us to become part of the interpretive project it develops and provides a host of examples as to how we might do so. Academia is rarely compared to a work of art and today betrays far too many symptoms of decay, but the argumentative richness of this book gives this reader hope that our discourses still have the potential to open up new intellectual horizons."
--Monatshefte

About the Author

Gerhard Richter is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. Among his most recent books are Uncontainable Legacies: Theses on Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Inheritance and Thinking with Adorno: The Uncoercive Gaze.