Helen Molesworth Lecture 10/7

Helen Molesworth is, as best as I can determine, an art critic. During her lecture, she read a "work in progress" essay she was writing and talked mainly about art affect and abjection. She specifically compared Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party with Robert Gober's work. Despite the obvious contrasts in the works, such as the femininity of The Dinner Party versus the harsh masculinity of almost all of Gober's work, the two share similar affective quality. She also pointed out something about Gober's work that had never occured to me: much of his work is centered around stray apprendages and impaled religious figures, but the brutality of these images goes unnoticed. It is as if he's found a way to soften their inherent meaning to the point that it is almost undetectable.

One last note: She said something else that I had never thought about, and that goes well with this class.

"Criticism is to imagine something better, as in a utopia. But this utopia [doesn't exist] without the potential in the artwork."