Real AllegoriesOlivier Richon's work addresses the desire for the exotic, the pleasures of imitation, the function of the object in the still life, and quotation and appropriation of art history. Anti-naturalistic, they explore the dream-like nature of representation as a frozen tableau, which may be deciphered slowly, yet which resists interpretation. This book collects 20 years of Richon's work. The title Real Allegories is taken from the notorious painting by Gustave Courbet, which shows a painter in the act of depiction, surrounded by his cultural contemporaries. In the context of Richon's work, the title refers to the tension between the realism of the photograph and the constructed meaning. |
Common terms and phrases
absence Academy aesthetic allegory Alphonse Toussenel Arcades Project art history artist banal Barthes calls Baudelaire Berma bunch of carrots captured chain commodity Craig Owens creature Darian Leader dead animals diegesis disappearance edge Editions emblem eyes Ferenczi fetish film filmic Flaubert frontal view gaze geese genitals Godard Harmondsworth History of Photography icon idea Imitatio Sapiens inconspicuous spot interpretation Jacques Jacques Lacan Jacques Rancière Jean Baudrillard Joseph Wright knife L'Esprit des Bêtes Lacan literary literary realism lost Lower Impulses marble Mass and London memorial metonymy move narrative noun Olivier Richon out-of-place animals oysters painting Paris parody Penguin Books penis perhaps photographic image picture portrait portraiture pose produced Psychoanalysis question Rancière reading realism reality representation Richon's Roland Barthes sense sexual symbolism Sigmund Freud signification signs Slavoj Zizek Sontag Susan Sontag synecdoche tableau Theory of Symbolism There's things third meaning timeless translated velvet Walter Benjamin words Wright of Derby