Mimetic Desire in the Art Market: Mona Lisa
What art feuds reveal about human desire The art world has a fetish for conspiracy. Take a casual sweep of the news over a given year and you will turn up any number of stories about stolen masterpieces, disputed provenances, and multi-million-dollar black-market auctions. Art itches for intrigue and the latest installment involve the Mona […]
Founding Murder
Every “culture” is founded on certain rituals, institutions, prohibitions, taboos—things that, according to Girard, are all predicated on a founding murder. Cultural rituals, institutions, prohibitions, and taboos are all thing devised to manage the spread of violence and, in essence, to re-enact the founding murder that was the foundation of culture through rituals rather than […]