Main entry:

Bal, Mieke, 1946-

Title & Author:

Double exposures : the subject of cultural analysis / Mieke Bal ; with Das Gesicht an der Wand, Edwin Janssen.

Publication:

New York : Routledge, 1996.

Description:

xiv, 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-329) and index.
Das Gesicht an der Wand / Edwin Janssen -- 1. Telling, Showing, Showing Off: in which the threshold between two worlds is more telling than the division between the two sides of New York's Central Park, and words expose images exposing words -- 2. The Value Factory: in which issues of ownership and preservation reveal a first-person narrator, and literary theory is brought in to learn the foreign language spoken in museums; and in which the distinction between types of museums turns out to be more than just labeling -- 3. The Talking Museum: in which one image reads another by hanging next to it, and in which parrots can speak without imitating; but this requires that discourse be liberated from the stronghold of linguistic supremacy -- 4. Museumtalk: in which conversations lead to monologues and authority makes sense, so that museology becomes a measure for cultural analysis.
5. First Person, Second Person, Same Person: in which the best scholarship gets entangled in a narrative of display in its very attempts to avoid such discourses, but where unknotting those knots turns out to be worthwhile -- 6. A Postcard from the Edge: in which postcards, undeliverable for lack of a recent address, can still be returned to sender -- 7. The Story of W: in which lessons about reading metaphor against simplification are practiced to save Lucretia's (after)life, and the struggle to find words to fit images provides a model of integrative display -- 8. His Master's Eye: in which it turns out not all modern men heed Shakespeare's will, to the detriment of their own enjoyment; but some do, and thus teach cultural analysis about its subject -- 9. Head Hunting: in which "Judith" demonstrates that epistemology is not the prerogative of philosophers, and images will point out, for the last time, what can be shown, and what cannot.

Summary:

A feminist literary theorist, specialist in Rembrandt, and a scholar with a knack for reading Old Testament stories, Mieke Bal weaves a tapestry of signs and meanings that enrich our senses. Her subject is the act of showing, the gesture of exposing to view. In a museum, for example, the object is on display, made visually available. "That's how it is," the display proclaims. But who says so? Bal's subjects are displays from the American Museum of Natural History, paintings by such figures as Courbet, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Rembrandt, as well as works by twentieth-century artists, and such literary texts as Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece."

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0415917034 (hc ; acid-free paper)
9780415917032 (hc ; acid-free paper)
0415917042 (pbk. ; acid-free paper)
9780415917049 (pbk. ; acid-free paper)

Subject:

Culture.
Communication and culture.
Museum exhibits.
Museums Social aspects.
Museums Exhibitions.
Communication et culture.
Musées Expositions.
Musées Aspect social.
Objets exposés.
culture note.
culture (concept)
Ausstellung
Kultur
Musea.
Presentatie.
Verteltheorie.
Museum exhibits Exhibitions.

Form/genre:

Ausstellung Kultur.
Ausstellungskatalog.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 307590
Call No.: BIB 253061
Status: Available