Of the controversies raised by the release of photographs showing prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a discussion has emerged within the scholarly community about the aesthetics of the pictures themselves. Susan Sontag and others have noted the resemblance between the Abu Ghraib pictures and photographs of lynchings in the U.S.; several commentators have noted the influence of amateur pornography. To art history professor Eisenman, the Abu Ghraib photos unconsciously mimic the classical pathos formula, in which the suffering of anonymous supplicants at the hands of torturers is eroticized so as to reiterate the superiority of the conqueror. Ubiquitous in classical art, the pathos formula's imagery of eroticized, rationalized torture was displaced in the eighteenth century by art that showed suffering as degrading. Manifest in the photography of Abu Ghraib, the pathos formula not only implies a reinvigoration of Pre-Enlightenment sensibilities but also explains why public outcry about Abu Ghraib torture has been relatively limited. Scholarly, succinct, and flush with photos, Eisenman's analysis is art history at its most compelling.
Brendan DriscollCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Writing about events that never, ever should have happened is no small challenge, even for the citizens of a us culture that now flirts with ‘representing the unrepresentable’ and disputes any evidential role for photography. Nonetheless, Stephen Eisenman has taken up this daunting challenge with an unflinching analysis that will long endure—as will our stark memories of the horrors unleashed by the administration of George W. Bush.”--David Craven, author of Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910 – 1990
(David Craven 20070415)
“In The Abu Ghraib Effect Stephen F. Eisenman claims a deeper historical root for displays of pride and complicity in torture and murder. He traces what he calls the ''pathos formula'', manifest in images of the beautiful death and the sublimation of suffering in the subordinate. . . . Eisenman gallops through the phenomenology of Western Art, the socio-geographic history of Europe and perception of Muslim cultures.”—Time Out London
(Sally O'Reilly
Time Out London 20070303)
"Scholarly, succinct, and flush with photos, Eisenman''s analysis is art history at its most compelling."--Booklist
(Brendan Driscoll
Booklist 20070401)
"As a professor of art history he cleverly argues that the disturbing images that came out of this prison are part of a well-established artistic tradition."—Glasgow Herald
(
Glasgow Herald 20071217)
"The Abu Ghraib Effect asks how pictures of such surpassing horror can vanish in plain sight, and concludes that their disappearance is largely a matter of the very centrality of such images to Western art. . . . This argument convinces, up to a point, and Eisenman is surely right to adduce an affinity between the torture photographs and a venerable motif of Western art . . . his contention that the pathos formula perhaps constitutes the only real unity of that ostensibly humanist and progressive tradition is audacious and illuminating."—Art Review
(Brian Dillon
Art Review )
"There is much in this book to commend. It provides, for instance, a model of engaged, critical scholarship, one that makes art history relevant to today''s political concerns. Eisenman''s political commitments, moreover, are evident without ever feeling preachy or overly didactic. Dedicated to holding art history accountable for its racist representations, he debunks, in easy flowing prose, the myth that high culture somehow exists outside the desublimatory impulses that guide much of popular culture—video games, movies, pornography, etc. And in demonstrating that art''s history is not as humanist or angelic as it is often presented, he effectively shows how throughout history artists and art historians have been more than willing to service the powerful. Yet the book is not all pessimism and finger-pointing. It appears that Eisenman''s true concern is to construct a history that counters the celebration of violence as conquest and that refuses to make suffering beautiful. This counterhistory, I think rightly, is presented as the antidote to the Abu Ghraib effect. Thus, artists such as William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Leon Golub (Käthe Kollwitz might also have been mentioned) model instances of resistance and play significant roles as examples of artists whose political commitments guide their production, situating their work for Eisenman outside of the pathos formula."--CAA Reviews
(Terri Weissman
CAA Reviews )
"Illuminating and timely. . . . Eisenman''s concepts and questions constitute a challenging discourse on politics and art."
(Dacid Ebony
Art in America )
