Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery: Questioning Art beyond His Reach

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Plethora of Issues
	Interweaving Dualities
	Image and Writ
	Artworks and Things
	The Artist within Her or His Time
	The Question of Beauty
Chapter 1 Transcending Profane Vision: The Art of Giorgio Morandi
	The Humble Thing in Focus
	Vision, Memory, and Perceptual Nonresolution
	Responding to Adversity
	Forms Eroded by Light
Chapter 2: At Vision’s Crossroads: Body, Animality, and Cosmos in the Art of Kiki Smith
	Modalities of Inter-Being
	Incarnation
	Play, Beauty
	Flesh, Continuity, and Event
Chapter 3 Image and Writ in Cy Twombly’s Visual Poetics
	Quasi-Writing, Inscription, Erasure
	Myrtle, Rose, Sparrow . . . / Laurel, Snake, Grasshopper . . .
	Addressing War
	The Elements
Chapter 4 Resonances of Silence and the Dimension of Color: The Art of Joan Mitchell
	Color, Whiteness, and Light
	Mortal Flesh
	Carnal Essences
Chapter 5 Plant Drawing, Abstraction, and the Philosophy of Nature: The Art of Ellsworth Kelly
	Practices of Plant Drawing
	Edge, Line, and Space
	Excursus: Plant Drawing in the Context of Botanical Art
	Plant-Being, Plant Drawing, and the Philosophy of Nature
Chapter 6 Strong Beauty and Structures of Exclusion
	On Strong Beauty
	Nature and Art
	Strong Beauty in Art
	The Resilience of Strong Beauty
Conclusion More Ethereal Bodies
	Transmuting Materiality into Light
	Traces at the Verge
	Transparencies of Line
	Prospect
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Topics
Index of Persons