French Literature Reviews - 2026

Vangelis Athanassopoulos, Image et culture
Art and Visual Culture

An interdisciplinary work positioned at the crossroads of Aesthetics, Art History, and Cultural Studies. It examines the processes, mechanisms, and apparatuses underlying the acculturation of art, exploring both the complex and shifting ties that bind art to the broader social sphere, and its gradual transformation into a modular component of the culture industry.

The question of research-creation occupies a central place in this context, alongside the issue of temporality. Temporality serves as a recurring thread running through all chapters, varying in scope and depth—whether addressing historical time and memory or contemporary time, the temporality of the image or that of myth.

Hence the adoption of an archaeological perspective, in the Foucauldian sense, which leverages the transdisciplinarity of visual studies (the shift from art to the image) and cultural anthropology (the shift from aesthetics to culture), while striving to reintroduce a critical spirit that currently seems lacking or remains marginal in contemporary theoretical discourse on art.

Contents

Introduction, p. 9

I. Toward an Archaeology of the Visual

Image and Identity, p. 17
The Times of the Image, p. 37
Chronotopology of a Myth, p. 51

II. Toward a Political Economy of the Contemporary

Notes on Kitsch, p. 67
Creation and Knowledge, p. 89
Art, Research, and Mediation, p. 107

Bibliography, p. 117

This volume intersects several fields within the humanities, notably aesthetics, cultural studies, and art history. Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and cultural anthropology, the text engages with theoretical frameworks derived from contemporary critical thought, particularly drawing upon a Foucauldian archaeological perspective. Readers interested in the intersections between aesthetics, cultural critique, and the political economy of art may find this volume a relevant addition to current discussions in visual studies.