Politics, feminist geopolitics and aesthetics

Abstract

In The Sight of Death art historian T. J. Clark (2006) gives an account of daily visits to the Getty Institute in Los Angeles to observe two paintings by Nicolas Poussin: Landscape with a Calm and Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake. Clark’s book – ostensibly stimulated by the fortune of both paintings hanging in the same gallery – is organised as a set of diary entries and its purpose is at once prosaic and experimental. At first glance the book is an act of aesthetic description but lurking beneath is a deeper current of philosophical and political commentary. It charts a journey ‘outwards’, to the gallery and to describe the paintings’ juxtaposed existence, where the nature of the artworks themselves and their changing qualities in the shifting light conditions are all meticulously documented. But the book also a journey ‘inwards’, where Clark is drawing on the paintings to reflect on his own status and purpose, threading together artistic observations with wider political and psychological analysis.