Lorentz Dietrichson Lecture 2019: Margaret Iversen

We are happy to announce that Margaret Iversen will give the 2019 Lorentz Dietricshon Lecture on the topic "Psychoanalysis and Art: A New Theory of Objects."

Although Freud was dubious about avant-garde art, his writing gave significance to the found object or bit of detritus. In effect, he invented a new theory of objects which was developed by the Surrealist poet André Breton and by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Other psychoanalysts, including Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner, took Freud’s understanding of the object in quite different directions. This lecture provides an overview of three main theories - the found object, the part-object, and the transitional object - and relates them to three corresponding moments in the history of modern and contemporary art.

Margaret Iversen is Professor Emerita at the University of Essex and Honorary Researh Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She is currently working on a number of projects at the intersection of psychoanalysis and contemporary art, including pieces on the "diaristic mode."

Professor Iversen's books include Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (1993), and Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes, (2007). She co-edited, with Diarmuid Costello, a special issue of Art History, "Photography after Conceptual Art" (2010), and another for Critical Inquiry called "Agency and Automatism: Photography and Art since the Sixties" (2012), both with the support of an AHRC Major Research Grant for a project on Aesthetics after Photography. She also edited the MIT/Whitechapel "Documents of Contemporary Art" volume on Chance (2010). Writing Art History (2010) was written in collaboration with Stephen Melville. Her latest book is Photography, Trace and Trauma (2017).

Place: Forstanderskapssalen, Sentralen.

This is a public lecture. No registration needed. Welcome!