Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2015
Abstract
The chapter deals with a figure that represents a crucial part of the space we live in, as well as a peculiar motif in literature and fine arts - the ornamental pattern of wallpapers. Taking my cue from recent theories of the ornament, the novel Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, and Ingmar Bergman's film Through a Glass Darkly, but mainly from the works of two contemporary visual artists, Michal Pěchouček and Jan Šerých, I argue that the imaginary, or rather phantasmatic dimension of these surfaces arises from - and is an output of - a surviving form of the Rococo ornamental pattern.
At the same the chapter outlines a way in which the ornament might contribute to a non-chronological, rather "transfigural" aesthetic reflection of art history.