Bureau/Division/Agency
Library
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Document Type
Text
Exact Creation Date
2023
Language
English
Location
Cumberland County
Abstract
An investigation of the art of Tara Donovan, Liza Lou, Dave Cole, and Wolfgang Laib precipitated an articulation of a unique concept, the domestic sublime. The use of non-traditional art materials employed by each artist is one of the unifying characteristics that makes their work illustrations of the domestic sublime. Each artist presents work that is familiar yet uncomfortable, comforting yet disturbing, and lastly, finite yet immeasurable. The combination of repetitive labor, vast quantities of physical materials, and forms that present the unknown reveal characteristics of the domestic sublime.
Tracing the concept of the sublime from its origins to today allows for its evolution from a transcendental experience to a tangible, material manifestation in contemporary discourse. Key figures in this argument include Immanuel Kant, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Domesticity commonly refers to any labor, activity or material related to, in or around the home and has numerous social, historical, and philosophical contexts. Situated in notion of modernity, the domestic’s foundation is comprised of layers of discourse that include the politics of labor, economic implications, boundaries, technology, and identity. Contributing philosophers to the domestic include Gaston Bachelard, Witold Rybczynski, Simone de Beauvoir, Kathleen M. Kirby, Henri Lefebvre, and Martin Heidegger.
Characteristics from both the domestic and the sublime meld to a framework that supports the paradoxes and complexities inherent in both notions, while simultaneously revealing the overlapping notions that inextricably create the domestic sublime. The artwork that illustrates the notion of the domestic sublime combines domestic materials, labor, and space with the uncanny relationships inherent in the sublime such attraction and repulsion, interior and exterior, and comfort and terror.
Disciplines
Aesthetics | Art Practice | Philosophy
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Blair, Sara Christensen, "The Domestic Sublime" (2023). Academic Research and Dissertations. 51.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/51
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