"The concept of the "work of art" is paradoxically both widely used and often unexamined. This book re-evaluates the scope of "work," "art," and "the aesthetic" from the viewpoint of deconstructionist philosophy and suggests that Derrida's analyses resolve some central questions in the discourses of contemporary visual arts"--.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Dissemination of Art
  • On the Contents of the Book
  • Notes
• Chapter 1: The Muteness and Blindness of Images: Deconstruction and the Work of Art
  • Art and Textuality: The Traces of Writing and Différance in Derrida
  • Nancy and the Fragments of Art
  • The Fictioned Truth of Art: Lacoue-Labarthe and the Mimetic Traces
  • The Withdrawing Portrait
  • Notes
• Chapter 2: Beyond Presence: Form and Figure
  • The Historical Concepts of Form and Matter
  • Formalism and Deconstruction: The Modernist Form of Art
  • From the Presence of Forms to Form as Becoming of Difference
  • Beyond Form: Derrida’s Trace
  • Truth in Painting: Model without a Form
  • Form and the Formless
  • Notes
• Chapter 3: The Frames of the Work of Art
  • The Work of Art: Limiting the Unlimited
  • Art and the Traces of Writing
  • The Universal and the Multiple
  • Hors-d’œuvre: “A Place Outside of the Work”
  • The Parergon and the Passe-Partout
  • The Groundless Ground and the Automatism of the Author: Antonin Artaud
  • Désœuvrement: The Work beyond the Work
  • Notes
• Chapter 4: The Trait and Difference: Art between Form and Gesture
  • The Traits of Drawing: The Invisible Condition of the Visible
  • The Traces of Photography
  • The Deconstruction of Painting
  • Art and Truth
  • Notes
• Chapter 5: Words and Art: Exemplarity of the Work
  • +R (Into the Bargain)
  • Cartouches
  • Restitutions
  • The Untranslatables: The Signature and the Title
  • Notes
• Chapter 6: Mimesis as Difference
  • The Concept of Mimesis: From Classical Theories to Poststructuralism
  • Mimesis as Difference
  • Reflections of Another: The Ambiguity of Mimesis
  • Notes
• Chapter 7: The Deconstruction of the Image
  • Self-(in)sufficiency: Image and Autonomy
  • Between the Frame and the Lost Coherence: The Groundless Image
  • The Heterogeneity of the Image
  • The Image and the Object
  • Notes
• Conclusion: The Complicated Liaison of Art and Philosophy
  • Notes
• Bibliography
  • Unprinted sources
• Index
• About the Author