Transformative Objects and the Aesthetics of Play

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A01=Lynn M. Somers
Aesthetic Psychology
Aesthetics of Play
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Architectural Spaces
Author_Lynn M. Somers
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=ABA
Category=ACX
Category=AFKB
Category=AGA
Category=AGB
Category=AGZ
Category=JM
COP=United Kingdom
D. W. Winnicott
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_non-fiction
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Intricate Sculptural Objects
Language_English
Louise Bourgeois
Modernism
Object Relationships
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Postmodernism
Price_€100 and above
PS=Forthcoming
Sculptures
softlaunch
Transformative Sculptural Objects
Transitional Objects

Product details

  • ISBN 9781350378865
  • Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
  • Publication Date: 23 Jan 2025
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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This book considers the sculpture of Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) in light of psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s (1896-1971) radical ideas regarding transitional objects, potential space, and play, offering a model for exploring the complex and psychologically evocative work Bourgeois produced from 1947 to 2000.
Critical concepts from British object relational theories – destruction, reparation, integration, relationality and play – drawn from the writings of Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Marion Milner, and Christopher Bollas, among others, bear upon the decades-long study of psychoanalysis Bourgeois brought to her sculptural production that was symbolic, metaphorical, and most importantly, useful.

The book demonstrates how Bourgeois’s transformative sculptural objects and environments are invested in object relations, both psychical and tangible, and explores Bourgeois’s contention that the observer physically engage with the intricate sculptural objects and architectural spaces she produced. Each chapter focuses on a key body of work – Femme Maison, Personages, Lairs, Janus, and Cells – examining how these imaginative and playful objects are staged as embodied encounters in space and time to invoke the mutuality, reciprocity, and ambivalence of our object relationships.

Weaving a tapestry of aesthetic, cultural, and psychological encounters, Transformative Objects and the Aesthetics of Play addresses critical relationships among Bourgeois’s work and that of other artists from Pieter Brueghel to Eva Hesse. It brings together practical, archival, and theoretical material, offering close examinations of historically situated objects and analyses of their complex affects and spatiality. Gathering critical perspectives from psychoanalysis, cultural analysis, feminist, queer, literary and affect studies, the book extends its specific art historical scope to investigate the crucial roles that art and cultural experience assume in everyday life.

Lynn M. Somers is an Independent Scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor of art history at Drew University, USA.