Bakhtin and the Visual Arts

Bakhtin and the Visual Arts assesses the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas as they relate to painting and sculpture. First published in the 1960s, Bakhtin’s writings introduced the concepts of carnival and dialogue or dialogism, which have had significant impact in such diverse fields as literature and literary theory, philosophy, theology, biology and psychology. In his four early aesthetic essays, written between 1919 and 1926, and before he began to focus on linguistic and literary categories, Bakhtin worked on a larger philosophy of creativity, which was never completed. Deborah Haynes’s in-depth study of his aesthetics, especially his theory of creativity, analyses its applicability to contemporary art theory and criticism. The author argues that Bakhtin, with such categories as answerability, outsideness and unfinalizability, offers a conceptual basis for interpreting the moral dimensions of creative activity.

• First book-length study of Bakhtin in relation to visual arts and aesthetics • First book to focus on the early aesthetic essays • Not only demonstrates direct application of Bakhtin’s ideas for interpreting works of art, but also addresses broader questions regarding the moral and religious dimensions of creativity • Diverse examples of works of art drawn from Russian, European and US art history.

Contents

Part I. Context: 1. Introduction; 2. Bakhtin’s historical and intellectual milieu; Part II. Bakhtin’s Theory of Creativity: 3. Answerability; 4. Outsideness; 5. un/finalizability; Part III. The Usefuleness of Bakhtin’s Aesthetics: 6. Interpreting works of art; 7. Bakhtin and postmodern art theory.