The suspension of mastery and the desire for imaginary : applying Jacques Lacan's theory of the imaginary to the beholder/image dialectic as realised in selected paintings by Lucy Cobern and Gerhard Richter

摘要

This dissertation seeks to explore the nature of the self/other, subject/object dialectic that can be found in Jacques Lacan's theory of the Minor Stage and his notion of Imaginary mastery, and how this relationship can be re-read in terms of a beholder/image relationship. What I seek to demonstrate in exploring the relationship between the beholder and the image is the staging of two opposing emotions, aggression and desire and the consequential tussle for mastery that arises from the self/other, and hence the beholder/image, dichotomy. I seek to explore the reasons why such a beholder/image relationship becomes ambivalent, due to veiled, obscured and fragmented images. r discuss vei led, obscured, and fragmented images selected works by the German artist Gerhard Richter, with reference to some of my own practical work (both of which have been reproduced for illustration purposes after the bibliography). The possibility 0 r impossibility 0 fb eing able to totally grasp such veiled and obscured images, and the resultant tussle for mastery the beholder may experience, can be related to the self/other emotions of aggression and desire, which I discuss in reference to Richter's and my own paintings. The dichotomy of surface and depth along with the painting as object versus the painting as a representation is discussed in relation to the ambivalence of the self/other relationship.