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This talk addresses the aesthetic and political strategies mapped out
by Georges Bataille in his journal Documents (1929-30). Although
Documents is routinely compared to André Breton’s
surrealist journals, Monahan proposes a broader reading in the context
of contemporary visual culture. By looking at the ways in which Documents
attempted to recast and redefine the “strangeness” exemplified
in popular tabloid journals, her research seeks to expand our understanding
of Bataille’s professed project of producing a revolutionary
consciousness grounded in a visceral materiality rather than an abstract
psychology.
Laurie Monahan is an assistant professor in the
Department of the History of Art and
Architecture, UCSB. She specializes in 20th century European painting
and visual culture,
with an emphasis on Surrealism and related movements of the 1920s and
1930s. She has
also worked extensively on early Pop art and the cultural relations
between Europe and the United States in the post-World War
II period.
This event is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary
Humanities Center.
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