Jeff Wall, After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue, 1999-2000
Ludden Lecture 2011: Kaja Silverman
"Behold the Invisible"
Lecture Description:
From Destroyed Room (1979) through more recent works like Overpass (2001) and Dawn (2001), "visibility" and "invisibility" have been the dominant concerns of Jeff Wall's art. In his earliest Cibachromes, "invisibility" means "ideological mystification," and Wall seeks to undo this mystification by making things visible. However, his relationship to visibility and invisibility soon began to change, and from the 1990's on, the people, places and things in his photographs are more likely to turn away from us than toward us. In her talk, Professor Silverman will discuss the aesthetic, philosophical and political implications of this shift, and provide a details reading of Wall's 2001 work, After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Preface.
