The Body as Medium and Metaphor

Book excerpt: Reconsidering the relationship between autobiography and self-portraiture, The Body as Medium and Metaphor explores the intertextuality of self-representation in twentieth-century French art. Situating the body as the nexus of intersections between the written word and the visual image, this book rethinks the problematic status of the self. Starting at the twentieth-century's departure from figurative and mimetic representation, this study discusses the work of seminal artists and writers - including Marcel Duchamp, Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon, Bernard Noël, Gisèle Prassinos, Louise Bourgeois and Orlan - to articulate the twentieth century's radical revisions of subjectivity that originated from and returned to representations of the word, the image, and the body. This volume will be of interest to students of both French Literature and Art History, particularly those who are interested in the interdisciplinary exchanges between visual arts and literature.