Book Description
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About the Author
Andrew Benjamin is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is the editor of the Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature series, The Problems of Modernity (1989), Post-Structuralist Classics (1988) and Judging Lyotard (1992); the coeditor of Abjection, Melancholia and Love (1989); and the author of Translation and the Nature of Philosophy (1989), all published by Routledge.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences

between modes of being, that art, mimesis, and the avant-garde come to be presented.

Fundamental parts of this book include the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their themes: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon's use of mirrors, R. B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers

architecture, literature, and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. Benjamin develops the theory of the avant-garde as a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, thus bringing the worlds of

contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together.