Indelible marks: Beth Harland’s absorption

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article traces Beth Harland's approach to painting practice in light of her engagement with Michael Fried's interpretation of eighteenth and nineteenth century painting and her fascination with Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. The contrast between reflection on phenomena of inner life and a painting’s audience address is explored through a reading of passages from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, Proust's Contre Sainte-Beuve and Fried's writing about theatricality and absorption. Harland’s practical and theoretical explorations of the situation and possibilities of contemporary painting, illuminated by her engagement with notions of theatricality and absorption, are then outlined. After considering Hans Belting’s views on seriality and processes of re-working, the article concludes by suggesting that Harland sought and achieved a buoyant working relationship between formational contraries, avoiding both hypostatisation and easy compromise.