Caravaggio's Secrets (October Books)
Caravaggio's Secretsbegins with the painter's supposedly homoerotic work and moves from there into a discussion his art in a psychoanalytic context. One of the coauthors is a professor of French, the other, a teacher of film, and they join many other non-art historians who have offered critical commentary on Caravaggio's work. "Castration/decapitation has left David in a state of between-ness," they write ofDavid with the Head of Goliath(1609-10), "not only between gendered identities but also between existential violence and what Caravaggio appears to conceive of as the aesthetic consequence of that violence.... In Goliath's head, David-Caravaggio has painted his own castration."This book is probably not for general readers, but those whose interest in Caravaggio is not fully sated by some of the other, more general books on the market will likely find their fill here.--Peggy Moorman--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.