Publication
Title
De lege stad in de literatuur en fotografie : van romantische utopie naar kritische heteretopie
Author
Abstract
Usually, the metropolis is associated with kaleidoscopic density. Both the modern novel and street photography celebrate the urban bustle. This essay, however, focuses on the motif of the deserted city that also has been important in various artistic disciplines. In photography, the motif originated from technical limitations but quickly turned into a token of aesthetic sophistication. Often, these pictures played with or were based on aroused associations that were also part of literary urban images. By means of the motif of the empty city, three kinds of critical positions vis-à-vis modernity were developed. First, a romantic hostility to the city, which is interiorised in the city itself. Second, a proto-modernist attitude accepting urbanization and adapting the romantic sublime to modernity. Third, by referring to dreams and hallucinations, the empty city produces a heterotopic alternative to the rationalized spaces of the everyday.
Language
Dutch
Source (journal)
Spiegel der letteren. - Antwerpen, 1956, currens
Publication
Antwerpen : 2006
ISSN
0038-7479 [print]
1783-1776 [online]
DOI
10.2143/SDL.48.2.2019426
Volume/pages
47 :2 (2006) , p. 173-188
ISI
000244769000006
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
UAntwerpen
Publication type
Subject
Art 
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 28.02.2011
Last edited 04.03.2024
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