Transitions and abstractions

periodical culture and Beckett's revisions of the visual

pp. 123-166

in: Tim Lawrence, Samuel Beckett's critical aesthetics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

This chapter considers twentieth-century reflections on the visual and figural, including Wassily Kandinsky's writing on art, while it offers a long-overdue analysis of Beckett's work for the art critic Georges Duthuit on the review Transition (1948–50). Lawrence takes the opportunity to consider Surrealism's post-war aftereffects through the lens of Beckett's dialogues with Duthuit and the connections opened by Beckett's translations of others alongside his own writing. Drawing on these discourses, the theme of the dissolving figure manifested in Watt and Beckett's novellas, such as Premier amour (1946), is considered in relation to interests in visualising the limits of representation.