Critical Theory’s Secret 2010 Plexiglas and Metal, 48.3 × 58.4 × 58.4 cm © Michael Aurbach Photographer: Bill Lafevor

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Academic Vanitas: Michael Aurbach and Critical Theory LEA Magazine Article


Critical Theory’s Secret 2010 Plexiglas and Metal, 48.3 × 58.4 × 58.4 cm © Michael Aurbach Photographer: Bill Lafevor

LEA Volume 17 Issue 1
Senior Editor for this issue: Lanfranco Aceti

Reference: Dorothy Joiner, “Academic Vanitas: Michael Aurbach and Critical Theory,” ed. Lanfranco Aceti, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (Mish Mash) 17, no. 1 (2011): 8-13.

Academic Vanitas: Michael Aurbach and Critical Theory
by Dorothy Joiner
Article DOI: 10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_8

In a satiric series of sculptures, Michael Aurbach uses laughter to lampoon the excesses of the contemporary scholarship known as critical theory. Spun from psychology, linguistic hermeneutics, and philosophy, critical theory, in Aurbach’s view, tends to deemphasize art objects, substituting fatuous speculations for straightforward analysis. The Critical Theorist (2003) is a fantastical contraption on a metal table, each element of which is a visual joke. Reliquary for a Critical Theorist (2005) parodies the tradition of containers for relics. Two Plexiglas “books,” C’est Nothing and Deux Nothing (2009), continue the notion of vacuity. And Critical Theory’s Secret (2010) imitates a safe. It’s empty, however, mocking the notion of an underlying meaning.

Full article is available for download as a pdf at the bottom of the page.