There and Not Here: Chronicles of Art and Loss - Reading by Timothy Mathews

This event will launch the "FRICTION: French Research in Culture Theory and Imagination" seminar series, which sets out to explore the latest research in French Studies, promoting the rub between disciplines and practices that are enriching the field.

About this event

"Why read? To engage. Why write? To engage. Why both at once? To understand myself, my imagination, my imagination of others, myself in relation to others. Maybe the loss of sharing, and sharing that loss, can fashion a community without imposing it. Maybe."

by Timothy Mathews

Join Professor Timothy Mathews as he reads from There and Not Here: Chronicles of Art and Loss, a collection of poetic essays written in response to works of art. These range from film, novels and installations, and include Pedro Almodóvar, William Kentridge, and Barbara Hepworth, as well as William Shakespeare and Diego Velásquez. The book explores the strength of feeling, especially grief, as a path to communication, to an understanding of what unites and divides, and ultimately offers its own path to a constellation of engagements with life.

Speaker - Professor Timothy Mathews

Timothy Mathews is Emeritus Professor of French and Comparative Criticism, University College London. He is fascinated by what engaging with art can tell us about engaging with people, and explores this in a variety of idioms. He has written on many modern and contemporary artists and writers, and before There and Not Here his most recent book was Alberto Giacometti: the Art of Relation (2014). His co-edited books include Tradition, Translation, Trauma, with Jan Parker (2011), Poetic Biopolitics, with Peg Rawes and Stephen Loo (2015), and The Modernist Bestiary, with Sarah Kay (2020). His most recent translation is of a novel by Guillaume Apollinaire, Seated Woman (2022). He is Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, a member of the Academy of Europe, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.