FOSTER, Hal. An Art of Missing Parts

An Art of Missing Parts
Author(s): Hal Foster

Source: October, Vol. 92 (Spring, 2000), pp. 128-156
Published by: MIT Press
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An Artof MissingParts*
HAL FOSTER
TwoExhibits
ExhibitA is a black-and-whitephotograph.Burned at the edges, it is difficult
to date, and its space is ambiguous-a spare studio, perhaps a hotel dive. A
pensiveman standsto the right,cut by the frame(we see onlya profileof a head,
a hand witha cigarette,a bit of a shoe); a wickerchairis turnedto the corner;and
a male leg extendsfromthe leftwall. Trousered,shod, and cut below the knee, it
is inexplicable.
The man peers at the leg. Does he investigatea crime or revisita deed of his
own, ponder a work of art or hallucinate a body part? Is he the witnessof the
event?Its perpetrator?Its victim?Or is he somehowall three?Clearlythe man is a
voyeur;but, ifthe leg is somehowhis,is he not an exhibitionistas well?To gaze so
seems a littlesadistic;yet,if thishumiliatedleg is somehow his, is he not a little
masochistictoo? This ambivalenceof activeand passiverolesis performedin visual
terms:both an active seeing and a passivebeing-seenare in play here, and they
meet in a reflexiveseeing oneself.1
The man is Robert Gober in 1991, and thisis the uncannythingabout his
art: beforeit or (more exactly)withinit, one has the strangesense of seeing one-
self,of revisitingthe crimethatis oneself.
Exhibit B is drawn froman interviewin 1990/93. Asked about his way of
working,Gober replies:"It'smore a nursingof an image thathauntsme and letting
it sitand breed in mymind,and then,ifit'sresonant,I'll tryto figureout formally,
could thisbe an interestingsculptureto look at?" Questioned about his settingof
* This is a revisedversion of an essay that firstappeared in the catalog RobertGober,edited by

RussellFerguson(Los Angeles:The Museumof Contemporary Art,1997). I thankthe severalaudiences
of the lectureformof thistextforcriticalsuggestions.
1. Freuddiscussestheseinstinctual doubles and psychicreversalsin "Instinctsand TheirVicissitudes"
(1915).
OCTOBER 92, Spring2000,pp. 129-56. ? 2000 Hal Foster
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MichaelBiondo.RobertGober. 1991.
130 OCTOBER
scenes, he adds: "This seemed a wide open area to me-to do natural history
dioramasabout contemporaryhuman beings."2
These statementsare as paradoxical as the photograph.Each object, Gober
tellsus, begins as an image,perhapsa memoryor a fantasy. Yet farfrompast,it is
alive, an infantto be nursed (an odd metaphor for an image). However,Gober
implies,it is not yetexternal:the image existswithinits host too. Nor is it quite
new: it haunts this host as well. Both inside and outside, intimateand alien (a
Lacanian critic might call it "extimate"), the image is figuredas a brood that
breeds on its own (this is odder still). Perhapsit threatensits host; in any case he
wantsto objectifyit, to get it into form-but onlyif it is "resonant"forothers too
(the share of the beholder,psychologicalas wellas visual,is large in thiswork).
To this end Gober sets his objects in "dioramas." Developed in the nine-
teenthcentury,the diorama was a scenographicre-creationof an historicalevent
or a naturalhabitat;partpainting,parttheater,it broughtbattlescenes to civilians
or exotic wildsto industrialmetropoles.Closer to peep showsthan to pictures,the
dioramawas loved bythe massesbut scornedbythe cultivatedas a vulgardevice of
illusion.3Often the tableaux included actual things,but in the serviceof illusion,
an illusionmore real than a framedimage: a hyperrealism thatborderson the hal-
lucinatedor the fantasmatic.Gober conjures these effectsas well: to make us eye-
witnessesto an event (re)constructedafterthe fact,to place us in an ambiguous
space (again, as in a dream,we seem to be withinthe representationtoo) thatis
also an ambiguous time: "Most of my sculptureshave been memories remade,
recombined, and filteredthrough my current experiences."4 Here, then, the
scene of the diorama has changed: neitherpublic historynor grand nature,the
backdropof thesememoriesis at once privateand unnatural,homeyand unheimlich.
PrimalFantasies
What do the dioramas stage?Whetheralone or in an ensemble,the objects
oftenlook forlorn:a miniaturehouse or churchsplit,burned,or flooded;a wedding
gown strippedbare of its bride; a cast male leg planted withcandles or plugged
2. RobertGober, "InterviewwithRichard Flood," in Lewis Biggs,ed., RobertGober

(Liverpool and
London: Serpentine and Tate Galleries, 1993), pp. 8-14, reprintedand extended in Richard Flood,
ed., Robert + Drawing(Minneapolis:WalkerArtCenter,1999), pp. 122, 125. This
Gober:Sculpture catalog
includes a thoughtfulsurveybyFlood as well,"The Law of Indirections."I date
categoriesofworkhere
to theirfirstappearance.
3. See Dolf Sternberger,PanoramaoftheNineteenth trans.JoachimNeugroschel(New York:
Century,
Urizen Books, 1977 [1936]), as well as Stephan Oetermann, ThePanorama:
Historyofa Mass Medium
(NewYork:Zone Books,1997). It hardlyneeds to be added thatthereis no formmorealien to modernist
artthan the diorama.
4. Karel Schampers,"RobertGober,"in Robert Gober(Rotterdam:Museum Boymans-van Beuningen,
1990), p. 33.
An ArtofMissingParts 131
withdrains;a castmale butttattooedwithmusic;and so on. Some suggesta fixated

image of an awfulaccident or a traumaticfantasy;and Gober has alluded to a
childhood story,told by his mother (a formernurse), of a leg amputated at a
hospital.Yet it is as an enigma thatthe storystruckhim,and it is as a riddle that
the dioramasresonate.In a sense thisis the workof hiswork:tosustainenigma.5
Sometimesthe dioramasintimatescenes in whichthe subjectis somehowat
stake,put into play.Of course, to posit an originaryscene in order to ground a
self,to founda style,is a familiartrope in modernistart: manymovementsbegan
witha baptismal event or a foundationalstory(often consecratedwitha name
plus a manifesto:Futurismis onlyone extremeinstance).Artinvolvedin primal
fantasies,however,is different fromartstakedin originmyths.For primalfantasies
are riddlesratherthan proclamationsof origin:theyconfound ratherthan found
identity.So it is with the Gober scenes as well.
5. The question here becomes: how to sustainenigma in interpretation?Enigma is bound up with

interestthatis also erotic,"epistephilic."It is
desire,and thisvolatilecompound invitesan interpretive
a Freudian commonplace that our primaryinvestigationsare drivenby sexual curiosity,and Gober
Robert
Gober.
Leg With
Candle.1991.
132 OCTOBER
Freud distinguishedthree primal fantasiesin our psychiclives: the primal

scene proper (wherethe childwitnessesparentalsex, or imaginesso), the threatof
castration,and the fantasyof seduction.Firstcalled scenes,theywere latertermed
fantasieswhen Freud saw that theyneed not be historicallyactual in order to be
psychically effective-indeed,thatthe analysandmayconstructthem,in whole or
part, after the fact(oftenwiththe proddingof the analyst).Even when contrived,
however,these fantasiesappeared consistent,so much so thatFreud deemed them
phylogenetic-inheritedschemasthatwe all mightelaborateon. Yet todayit is not
necessaryto see themas geneticin orderto understandthemas originary, for,again,
it is throughsuch fantasiesthatthe child is said to tease out the riddlesof origins:
in the primalscene the originof the individual(Where do I come from?),in the
fantasyof castrationthe originof sexual difference(Which sex am I?), in the fan-
tasyof seductionthe originof sexuality(Whatis thisstrangestirringwithinme?).6
As is well known,Freud firstreferredeach case of hysteriato an actual event:
foreveryhystericalwoman in the presenthe presumeda perverseseducer in the
past. Although Freud abandoned this seduction theory as early as 1897, he
retained the essential idea of a trauma that initiatesone into sexuality,indeed
into subjectivity. "Presexuallysexual" (such is how Freud struggledto articulate
the paradox), the firstevent comes from outsidein a way that the child cannot
comprehend,let alone master.It becomes traumaticonlyifit is revivedbya second
event that the now-maturesubject associates with the first,which is recoded
retroactively,charged as sexual afterthe fact. This is whythe memoryis the
traumaticagent,and whytraumaseems to come frominsideas well.7Such confusion
evokes thisfundamentalriddlingin our lives.The question is how to interprethis riddlingin a way

thatdoes not eradicateit. One waythatGober sustainsenigmain theworkis throughitsveryfabrication:
his objects oftenlook like readymades,but theyneverare. Thus the readymadeis at once invokedand
suspended,and one effectis thatauthorialoriginis not flatlydisavowedso much as slightly disturbed-
just enough to be renderedenigmatic.I discussanothereffectat the end of thisessay.
6. Freud added another primal fantasy,an intrauterineone, which mightserve psychicallyas a
salve to the other,traumaticfantasies,especiallyof castration,to which it only seems anterior.See,
among other texts,"The Sexual Enlightenmentof Children" (1907), "On the Sexual Theories of
Children" (1908), "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memoryof His Childhood" (1910), and "The
Historyof
an InfantileNeurosis" (1914/18). For the relation of primal fantasiesto Surrealistaesthetics,which
Gober elaborates,see my Compulsive Beauty(Cambridge: MIT Press,1993). Of course, then and now,
the notion of primal fantasy,let alone the hypothesisof seduction,is verycontroversial.For a recent
interventionin the debate see MikkelBorch-Jacobsen, "Neurotica:Freud and the Seduction Theory,"
October76(Spring 1996).
7. "The whole of the trauma comes bothfromwithinand without,"
Jean Laplanche and Jean-
BertrandPontalis writein relation to seduction in particular."Fromwithout,since
sexualityreaches
the subjectfromthe other;fromwithin,sinceitspringsfromthisinternalized this 'reminiscence
exteriority,
sufferedbyhysterics'(according to the Freudianformula)."See "Fantasyand the
Originsof Sexuality"
(1964), in VictorBurgin,JamesDonald, and Cora Kaplan, eds., Formations ofFantasy(London: Metheun,
1986), pp. 5-34, here p. 10. This remainsthe mostusefulexplicationof the notion ofprimalfantasy.
of inside and outside is the paradoxical structureof trauma;it maybe thiscompli-

cation thatis traumatic,especiallywhenit triggersa confusionof privateand public.
In any case Gober (re)stages this complicationin his dioramas,withscenes that
seem both internaland external,privateand public,past and present,fantasmatic
and real-as though (in a naturalhistorymuseum designed by David Lynch) we
suddenlyhappened upon the mostsecreteventsof our own lives.
The primal fantasiesare only scenarios, of course, and theynever appear
pure in life,let alone in art. However,theymay help to illuminatethisworkof
"memoriesremade,recombined"-in particularwhyitssubjectpositionsand spatial
constructions are so ambiguous.8The scenesof mostdaydreamsare relatively stable
because the egos of most daydreamersare relativelycentered,and thisis true of
mostpictorialspaces as well: the ego of the artistgroundsthemforthe viewer,or,
rather,the primordialconventionsthatset up such spaces forthe masteryof the
ego (e.g., the framingof a pictorialfield) so grounds them.9This is not the case
with the scenes of the primal fantasies,for the subject is implicated in these
spaces: put intoplaybythem,he or she is also at playwithin them,prone to identify
withdifferent elementsofthem.This is so because the fantasyis "not the object of
desire,but itssetting,"itsmise-en-scene,in a sense its diorama;lo
and thisimplication
of the subject in the space maydistortit. Such distortionis also evidentin some
Surrealistart, and more effectively than any other artisttodayGober elaborates
Surrealism'saestheticof convulsiveidentityand uncannyspace.
In "Manifestoof Surrealism" (1924), Andre Breton evoked this Surrealist
aestheticwitha precociouslyGoberesque image: "a man cut in twobya window."11
If extrapolatedinto an aestheticmodel, thisimage suggestsneithera descriptive
mirrornor a narrativestage,the twodominantparadigmsofWesternpicture-making
fromthe Renaissance to modernism,but rathera fantasmaticscene where the
subjectis splitboth positionally,at once inside and outside,and psychically,
"cutin
two."Two aspects of thismodel are relevantto myreadingof Gober. First,in this
wayof workingthe artistdoes not inventformsso much as (s) he retracestableaux
in which the subject is not fixedin relation to identity,difference,and sexuality
8. This maybe the place to defendagainstthe charge thatthisartor myanalysisis illustrationalof

these ideas of the unconscious,desire, and fantasy.If it were so (or, perhaps I should say,when it is
so), the enigmatic is diminished,if not eradicated. In any case, work,artisticor critical,is theoreti-
cal in its own terms-that is, it disturbsor otherwisedevelops receivedtheory-or it is not theoretical
at all.
9. On these conventionssee MeyerSchapiro,"On Some Problemsin the Semioticsof Visual Art:
Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs"(1969), in Theory and Philosophy Art,and Society
ofArt:Style, (New York:
George Braziller,1994).
10. Laplanche and Pontalis,p. 26.
11. Andre Breton,Manifestoes trans.Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor:
ofSurrealism,
University of Michigan,1972), p. 21.
GoberUntitledBreast. 1990.
(again, these are preciselythe termsin question in primal fantasies).12Second,

the locationof thesescenes is not certain,as is evidentin the paradoxicallanguage
used to describe them. "It's more a nursingof an image that haunts me," says
Gober. "Who am I?" asks Bretonat the beginningof his greatnovel Nadja (1928).
"If thisonce I wereto relyon a proverb,thenperhapseverything wouldamountto
knowing whom I 'haunt' ... Perhapsmy life is nothing but an image of thiskind;
perhaps I am doomed to retracemysteps under the illusionthatI am exploring,
doomed to tryand learn whatI should simplyrecognize,learninga mere fraction
of whatI have forgotten."13
EnigmaticSignifiers
In a series of recent texts,the French psychoanalystJean Laplanche has
rethought all the primal fantasiesas seductions-not as literal assaults but as
12. Bretonwritesof his image,"decided,"he tellsus, by"previouspredispositions": "Here again it is

not a matterof drawing,butsimply oftracing"(p. 21; his italics).If thisis a thirdmodel ofpicture-making,
it mightbe asked, how could it be relevantto the objects of Gober? It is so preciselybecause, as quasi-
fantasmaticscenarios,his dioramasare more pictorialthan sculptural(or anythingelse). We are now
witnessto a pervasive--sometimesprovocative,sometimesproblematic-(re) pictorializingnot onlyof
the sculpturalbut of the theatrical(in the sense of Michael Fried), a (re)pictorializingin whichthe
space of installation,forexample, is treatedas fictive,semivirtual, or again quasi-fantasmatic, a space
of psychologicalprojectionat odds withthe space of bodilyreflexivity as conceived by installation
artistsin the 1960sand '70s.
13. AndreBreton,Nadja, trans.RichardHoward (NewYork:GrovePress,1960), pp. 11-12.
MarcelDuchamp.Priere
du Toucher(PleaseTouch).
1947. (Photo:Man Ray).
"enigmaticsignifiers"receivedfromthe other (parent,sibling,caretaker),which

the infantfindsseductivepreciselybecause theyare enigmatic.These signifiers,
which need not be verbal at all, concern the subject profoundly(again, they
involvethe fundamentalquestions of our existence), yet theycome fromelse-
where,froman other.14So, too, the Gober objects seem to arrivefroman other
place, one more unconscious than not. They possess an alterity, and thisalterity
a
produces passivity in the viewer,
for,again, the objectsappear ifsuddenly;one
as
feelsalmosthelplessbeforethem,one suffers them.15
The quintessentialenigmaticsigniferis the maternalbreast,whichthe infant
sees as an entityin its own right.Gober presentsthe breast (1990) in this way
too-as a partobject on its own,a fragmentin relief.It recallsPleaseTouch(1947)
byMarcel Duchamp, but thatbreastis morefrontal,more aggressive:an object for
a post-Oedipalsubject,it challengesone to touch, to break this taboo of art, to
14. See Jean Laplanche, New FoundationsforPsychoanalysis, trans. David Macey (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell,1989). Laplanche has long questioned the Lacanian insistenceon the unconsciousstructured
as a language;hissignifiers
can be "verbal,nonverbal,and even behavioral,"as long as theyare "pregnant
withunconscioussexual significations" (p. 126). And theymaybe enigmaticforthe othertoo: "As I see
it, enigma is defined by the fact that it is an enigma even for the one who sends the enigma"
(Laplanche, Seduction, Drives,trans.MartinStanton [London: Instituteof Contemporary
Translation,
Arts,1992], p. 57). For a verysuggestiveaccount of Caravaggio in termsof the enigmaticsignifier
(which appeared afterthe firstversion of the present essay), see Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit,
Caravaggio's Secrets
(Cambridge:MIT/OctoberBooks,1998).
15. This affectmaybe related not only to what Freud called the helplessness(Hilflosigkeit) of the
infantin the traumaticevent,but also to whatthe Surrealistscalled the availability(disponibilite)
of the
artistbeforethe uncanny,and perhapseven to whatKeats called the negativecapabilityof the poet in
Untitled.1990.
confuseaestheticappreciationand sexual desire,to trace the sense of the beauti-

ful to "the secondarysexual characteristics"
of the body (as Freud once defined
thisbodypart).The Gober breastis different: neithergood nor bad object (in the
termsof Melanie Klein), neither nurturingnor sexual breast (in the termsof
Freud), it is exactlyenigmatic.
Laplanche ventriloquizesthe infantbefore this enigma in thisway:"What
does the breastwant fromme, apart fromwantingto suckle me, and, come to
that,whydoes it wantto suckleme?"16Here the desire of the otherpromptsthe
inspiration.Lacan capturesthisstatebetweenanxietyand ecstasywiththeambiguousphraseensouffrance,

whichsuggestsboth suspensionand sufferance-a conditionalso evokedbysuch precedentsof Gober
asJasperJohnsand AndyWarhol.
16. Laplanche,NewFoundations, p. 126.This ventriloquism
actsout,comically,
a problemfundamental
to psychoanalysis-thatthe subject is already assumed in the theorizationof its emergence. For a
desire of the subjectpreciselyas an enigma,and thisenigma recalls the riddle of

seduction:Whatdoes thisotherwant?Whatis thisstrangeforcethatit stirsinside
me? What is a sexual object?What is a sexual object forme? And who-or what-
am I? For Freud the sexual driveis "propped"on the self-preservative instinct:the
infantat the breastsucksmilkout of need, whichcan be satisfied,but it also expe-
riencespleasure-a desireforthe punctualreturnof thispleasure-which cannot
be satisfied.The milkis the object of need; the breastis the object of desire,the
firstsuch object for everyone.But even (or especially)when the constitutionof
the subject is at issue, Freud tends to presuppose-to project-a heterosexual
male. Withhis ambiguousbreastGober seems to querythispresupposition,to ask
when it can no longer be held. In so doing he impliesthatthe riddle of sexuality
cannot be separated fromthe riddle of sexual difference:across the spectra of
masculine and feminine,heterosexual and homosexual, these two enigmas are
bound together.
If the Gober breast poses the riddle of the sexual object, his bisex(ct)ed
chest (1990) embodies the riddle of the sexual subject:Which gender am I, or,
more precisely,whatsexuality?At firstglance thishermaphroditetorso seems not
so muchenigmaticas repulsive-in itsveryrefusalofenigma,perhaps,in itsmaking-
literalof bisexualityas double-sex.Nonetheless,the ambiguityof gender persists:
the femalebreast(it is the same one) is a littlepenile,the male breasta littlesupple,
hair straysinto the female side, the male side is fleshytoo, and so on. In a sense
this truncatedtorso is enigmaticbecause it is both literaland ambiguous: here
sexual differenceis presentedas both physically absolute and psychically undecid-
able. It is irreduciblyboth, and it is traumaticallyenigmatic because it is irre-
duciblyboth.17
The hermaphrodite,then,is not replete:its doubleness revealsa division,its
excess a loss, and here Gober allows fora special insightinto psychoanalysis and
aestheticsalike. For if the breastis our firstsexual object, it is also our firstlost
object. Again, according to the psychoanalytic formula,though the need of milk
critique of Freud along these lines see MikkelBorch-Jacobsen,TheFreudianSubject,trans.Catherine

Porter(Stanford,Calif.:StanfordUniversity Press,1988).
17. Justas the Bretonianimage of "a man cut in two by a window"looks ahead to the paintingsof
Ren6 Magritte,thisobject looks back to them,as do severalslidesin a workthathas long servedGober
as an image-repertoire, Slidesofa ChangingPainting(1982-83), in whicha singlepaintingwas recorded
throughmanypermutations.Like some Magrittes,it mightbe argued thatthisobject is not enigmatic
enough, thatit is so literalas to be sadistic.I would claim as much about Man ComingOut of Woman
(1993-94), in whicha male leg withshoe and sock emergesfromthe vagina of a spread-eagledwoman
truncatedin a corner,a workthatcould be deemed heterophobic.Its counterpartis a piece in which
the leg of a child emergesfromthe anus of a man, in a scenario thatrecallswhat Freud termed"the
cloaca theory"of birthheld by childrenwho imagine thatmen can have babies too. This is a
fantasy
thatseems to interestGober; see note 42.
138 OCTOBER
can be satisfied,the desire forthe breastcannot be, and in thisdesire the breast
appears lost to the infant.It can hallucinatethe breast (in desire beginsfantasy
and vice versa) or finda substitute(what is the thumb,or the pacifier,but the
breastin disguise,in displacement?).On the one hand, then,as Freud remarked,
"the findingof an object is in facta refindingof it";18on the other hand, this
refindingis forevera seeking:theobjectcannotbe regainedbecause itis fantasmatic,
and desirecannot be satisfiedbecause it is definedin lack. This is the paradoxical
formulaof the foundobject in Surrealismas well,its ruse ifyou like:a lostobject,
it is never recoveredbut foreversought;
alwaysa substitute,it drives on its own
search. Thus the Surrealist object is
impossiblein a waythatmost Surrealists
neverunderstood,for theycontinued to
insist on its discovery-on an object
adequate to desire.
The epitomeof thismisrecognition
occurs in the flea-market episode of
L'Amourfou (1937) when Bretonrecounts
the making of The Invisible Object (or
Feminine Personage, 1934-35) by Alberto
Giacometti,a sculptureborn of a roman-
tic crisis.Breton tells us that Giacometti
had trouble with the head, the hands,
and, implicitly,the breasts, which he
resolvedonlyupon discoveryof a particu-
lar mask at the flea market.For Breton
this is a textbook case of an object
Alberto The InvisibleObject.
Giacometti. found-almost called into being-by an
1934-35.
unconscious desire. But The Invisible
Objectmay evoke the opposite, the impossibility of the lost object regained,of the
void filled:withits cupped hands and blank stare thisfemininepersonage shapes
"the invisibleobject" in itsveryabsence.'19One achievementof Gober is thatwithin
a Surrealistline of work he reveals thisimpossibility of its object, thisparadox of
its aesthetic.He questions the Surrealisttrustin desire-as-excess withthe psycho-
analytic truthof desire-in-loss.
18. Sigmund Freud, "Three Essayson the Theory of Sexuality"(1905), in On Sexuality, ed. Angela
Richards(London: PenguinBooks, 1977), p. 145.
19. See Compulsive Beauty,chapter2. Yetanothertitleforthe sculptureis Hands HoldingtheVoid.Of
course one younginitiateof Surrealism, Jacques Lacan, did understandthe paradoxicalformulaof its
object,and his account of the objetpetita informsmine here.
SometimesGober registersthisdesire-in-loss less in objectsthanin settings,as

in his "traumaticplaypens" (1986; the termis his). These crazycribs recall the
celebratedpassage in BeyondthePleasurePrinciple(1920) whereFreud discussesthe
fort/dagame of hisyounggrandson.According to Freud, thelittleboywasdevastated
by the periodic disappearances of his mother,which he soughtto masteractively
ratherthan to sufferpassively.To thisend he representedher movementswitha
stringattachedto a spool: intohiscribhe would throwthe spool, makeitdisappear
(fort!gone!), onlyto recoveritwiththe string,to make it reappear,each timewith
PitchedCrib.1987.
delight(da! there!).This game suggeststhatthe psychicbasis of all representation

residesin loss,whichanyrepresentation worksto compensatea little.However,the
traumaticplaypensof Gober presenta less redemptiveview of symbol-making.
Pitched,slanted,tilted,or otherwisedistorted(thus are theytitled),these cribs
are cages markedwithaggression-whetherof the child or the other (as intuited
by the child) it is difficultto say.The nastiestplaypen is the most normal,as if
everystandardpen were potentiallya Skinnerbox. (This is also true of his beds
[1986], each made up withsimple sheets and blanket: the nastiestis the most
uniform,as if everygeneric bed were potentiallya straitjacket.)Rather than a
happyaccessionof the infantto representation, then,Gober evokesa socialization
that is blocked or broken. Perhaps the child of these deranged cribs and pens
refusesthe enigmaticsignifer,rejects the name of the father-only,these cages
seem to suggest,to earn a name nonetheless,thatof psychotic.
From the breast through the torso to the pens, then, Gober asks these
TwoUrinals.1986.
CornerBed.1986-87.
Distorted
Playpen.
1986.
questions:What is a sexual object?What is a sexual subject?Whatis desire?What

is loss? (And forwhom?Alwaysforwhom-even when this whois the question.)
Moreover,how do we distinguishbetween subject and object, desire and loss?
Even as Gober revealsthe foundobjectto be a lostobject,he reworksthe Surrealist
aestheticof desire (oftentiltedto the heterosexual) into a contemporaryart of
melancholyand mourning (here tinged gay), in which subject and object may
appear confused.Accordingto Freud,thisis the problemforthe subjectstruckby
loss: as the melancholicrefusesto surrenderthe lost object, he makes it internal,
and reproachesit in the guise of a self-reproach,whilethe mournerlearnsto relin-
quish the lost object, to disinvestin this one thingin order to reinvestin other
things,to returnto life. Gober captures this vascillationof the forlornsubject
betweenreproachand reverence.On the one hand, the legs plantedwithcandles
or pluggedwithdrainsmayevoke a bodyconsumed or wasted-the bodyburned
at both ends, drained, spent in all senses of the word. On the other hand, they
may evoke a body radiant or cleansed-the body transformedfroman abject
thing,too close to the subject,into an honored symbol,distancedenough forthe
subjectto go on withlife.20Gober putsotherassociationsintoplaytoo-conflicted
connections, perhaps keyed to the Catholicismof his youth,between fireand
water,altar and slaughterbench,remembranceand oblivion-in a waythatpoints
to an enigma less of originsthan of ends, of departuresand deaths.Whatdo you
do withdesire afterloss?You burn fora while,carrya torchfora time,eventually
20. All the truncatedlegs cannot help but conveyloss. For me the legs withdrainsevoke a loss in
of thisdistinction
the self,whilethe legs withcandles evoke a loss of an other,but, again,the difficulty
is also at issue. In part, along withsuch artistsas Felix Gonzalez-Torresand ZoE Leonard, Gober
answeredthe call for an art of mourningthat mightcomplementan activismof militancymade by
Douglas Crimpin his "Mourningand Militancy," October51(Winter1989).
lighta candle to the memoryof the loved one. What do you do witha body after
death?You washit in order to purifyit ofyou and to freeyou of it.
In termsof precedents one thinksfirstof Duchamp, but Gober queers his
reception in significantways.21Unlike many contemporaries,Gober does not
focus on the model of the readymade,whichcan query the relationbetween art
workand commodity.In fact,he almostopposes thismodel, not onlybecause he
fabricateshis objects, but because Duchamp intended "complete anaesthesia,"
while Gober explores traumatic affect.22Instead, Gober adapts another
Duchampian model, the cast bodypart,whichcan querythe relationbetweenart
workand sexual drive.23Like Duchamp, he sees cognitionas sensual (in the noto-
rious phrase of his predecessor:"to grasp thingswiththe mind the waythe penis
is grasped by the vagina"), but this cognitionis differentfor Gober because the
desires are different.Hence, instead of the "female fig leafs" and "wedges of
chastity"of Duchamp, Gober offerscastsof musicalmale buttsand colossal butter
sticks. And instead of such misogynisticfetishes of Giacometti as his spiked
DisagreeableObject(1931), Gober offerssuch homoeroticrelicsas his candle seeded
withhuman hair.Nevertheless,the affinity withDuchamp and Giacomettiis clear,
and it restsin a shared fascinationwithenigma and desire-with the enigma of
desire,the desirein enigma.24Seductionis also centralin Duchamp and Giacometti,
21. In his interviewFlood reduces such elaborations to "criticalgamesmanship"(p. 128), and so

diminishesthissignificanceof Gober,who indeed demurs:"Butitwasalwaysmyartisticnatureand talent
to workwithdiverse images whose meanings interweave,and that'swhat I keep doing." Apart from
Duchamp and Giacometti,one thinksalso of Magritte,especiallyhis simulacralscenes of fantasy,as
well as ofJohnsand Warhol.
22. Marcel Duchamp, "Aproposof 'Readymades'"(1961), in TheEssentialWritings ofMarcelDuchamp,
ed. Michel Sanouilletand ElmerPeterson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p. 141.
23. For a verysuggestivetypologyof modernsculpturein whichthe models of readymadeand part-
object are opposed, see RosalindKrauss,"Bachelors,"October52(Spring 1990).
24. Long ago Michel Leiris capturedthe Surrealistaspect of Giacomettiin a waythatresonateswith
"the memoriesremade"of Gober today:
"There are moments that can be called crises,the only ones that count in a life. These are
momentswhenabruptlythe outsideseems to respondto a call we send itfromwithin,whenthe exterior
worldopens itselfand a sudden communionformsbetweenit and our heart.Frommyown experience
I have several memories like this,and theyall relate to events that seem trifling,withoutsymbolic
value, and one mightsaygratuitous....Poetrycan emerge onlyfromsuch 'crises,'and the onlyworth-
whileworksof artare those thatprovidetheirequivalents.
"I love Giacometti'ssculpturebecause everythinghe makes is like the petrificationof one of
these crises, the intensityof a chance event swiftly caught and immediatelyfrozen,the stone stele
tellingitstale. And there'snothingdeathlikeabout thissculpture;on the contrary, like the real fetishes
we idolize (real fetishes,meaning those that resemble us and are objectivizedformsof our desire)
everything here is prodigiously
alive-graciouslylivingand strongly
shaded withhumor,nicelyexpressing
thataffective ambivalence,thattendersphinxwe nourish,more or less secretly, at our core" (Documents,
vol. 1, no. 4 [1929], pp. 209-10).
UntitledCandle. 1991.
Gober.
Duchamp.Coin de Chastete.1954.
Suspended Ball. 1939-31.

Giacometti.
ThreeUrinals.
Gober.
1988.
but it is seduction as heterosexualquest: the bachelors neverattain the bride in

TheBrideStripped BarebyHer Bachelors, Even (1915-23); the banana nevertouches
the peach in Suspended Ball (1930-31). There the operativeanalogyis coitus,but it
is coitus not only interruptedbut deferred:for Duchamp and Giacomettidelay
and suspension(privilegedtermsrespectively foreach) are fundamentalto desire,
and this puts them awryof the dominant Bretonian line of Surrealism.In his
bachelor machines,whichinclude unconnectedsinks(1983), urinals (1984), and
drains (1989), Gober queers thisformulaof blocked desire,revisesit in termsof
melancholyand mourning,loss and survival-thatis, in termsof the age of AIDS.
"For me,"he remarkedin 1991,"death has temporarily overtakenlifein NewYork
City."25
HumanDioramas
Gober does not focuson the Duchampianreadymade,but thereare apparent
exceptions,such as the sinks,urinals,and drains,all of whichrecall the paradig-
matic readymadeFountain(1917). Yet here, too, Gober twistsDuchamp, literally
25. Gober quoted in Parkett,

27 (March 1991).
144 OCTOBER
so in a worklike ThreeUrinals(1988). For Fountainwas a foundurinalrotatedninety

degrees and positionedas arton a pedestal,while ThreeUrinalsis a simulationfab-
ricatedout of wire,plaster,and enamel paintand returnedto the officialplace for
urinalson the wall (theyare also hung low). In effectDuchamp broughtthe bath-
room to the museum,witha provocation (beyond scandal) thatwas both episte-
mological (What counts as art?) and institutional(Who determinesit?), while
Gober bringsthe museum to the bathroom (if one urinal signalsa public toilet,
threeconfirmit),withthisadditionalprovocation:suddenlythese different spaces
seem strangelycongruant,forboth mix the public and the privatein uneasyways.
Althoughmore prosaicthan the riddlesof the primalfantasies,the mysteries
of the bathroomare also neversolved.Boysforeverwonderwhatis inside the girls'
room (theyimaginea garden of earthlydelightsand horrors),and theyneverget
overthe unease of the boys'room as well.To pissis a semiprivateact, butoftenmen
do it in a semipublicspace where,straightor gay,theyhave to wonder about the
men next to them (even if theyare only imaginary).Bigger?Freud got it wrong:
penis envy-thatis,penisanxiety-is strictly a male thing.Better?Vaguelydisgusted?
Very interested?The Gober urinals call these secretceremoniesto mind,at least
to some viewers(the share of the beholder in thisworkis not onlylarge but spe-
cific).Theyput sexual differenceon displayin a waythatagain twistsDuchamp.26
AfterThreeUrinalstherefolloweda series of installations,mostwithdifferent
Duchampian spins.The first,at the Paula Cooper Galleryin 1989, resonatedwith
TheBrideStripped Bare.In one room Gober hung wallpaper depicting dicks and
cunts, assholes and belly buttons,sketched in white line on black ground and
punctuatedwithchest-highdrains-as if to suggestthat sexual differenceis the
ambientpattern,both obvious and overlooked,of our everydaylivesof eating and
evacuating.In another room he hung wallpaperwithschematicdrawingsof two
men in lightblue on pale yellow,the one (froma Bloomingdale's beefcake ad)
whiteand asleep, the other (froma 1920s Texas cartoon) black and lynched-as if
to suggestthatracial antagonismis anotheroccluded structureof our dailygrinds.
Like TheBrideStripped Bare,then,the installationwas splitinto two registers,and
each room was splitin turn:in the centerof the firstwas a bag of doughnutson a
pedestal; in the centerof the second stood a weddinggown attendedby bags of
26. The Gober sinks evoke other mysteries,those of the washroom,a place associated with an
underground,a basementor a cellar,whichis a recurrentlocation in Gober. Like the bathroom,the
washroomis a place of initiation,but here the fatheris the spiritthatpresidesoveritssecretceremonies.
In a commentaryon his firstsink,Gober remarked,"The basementis basicallywheremyfatherlived,
and I think,in a non-darkway,you learn as a youngboyunconsciouslyabout being a person and a man
fromyourfather"("InterviewwithRichardFlood," p. 130). However,the veryinsistenceon the "non"
here suggeststhatthisinitiationmightalso have a darkside, thatthisspace mightbe one of reclusion,
if not of repression,that menaces the familialhouse, and, as we know,the divided house is another
obsessiveimage in Gober.
"Fine Fare Cat Litter"set along the wall (all, as usual, fabricatedby Gober and
assistants).Thus fromspace to space, and fromimages to objects, Gober put a
series of oppositions in play: male and female, bachelors and bride, white and
black, immaculategown and stale food, purityand pollution,dream and reality,
and, above all, sexual differenceand racial difference.
However,ratherthan map these oppositionsonto one another,Gober inter-
twinedthe termsin an ensemble that evoked the intricaciesof fear,desire,and
pain at workdeep in our politicalimaginary.In a sense thiswas to elaborateFreud
as well as Duchamp, for here Gober intimatedthat our traumasof identityand
differenceare social and historicaltoo.27It was also to refunctionthe diorama as a
re-creationof an actual event,forhere Gober intimatedthatour racistpastpersists,
nightmarishly, in the present.In our politicalimaginary, simpleoppositionsof sex
(male and female) and color (whiteand black) reconfirmone another in a way
that makes complex differencesacross sexual and racial positions difficultto
think,let alone to negotiate. The Cooper installation prompted the viewer to
tease out old American knots of misogynyand miscegenationin the formof a
broken allegory:What is the relationshipbetween the two men? Does the black
man haunt the whiteman? Does the whiteman dream the black man? If so, does
the whiteman conjure the black man in hatred,guilt,or desire? Is the woman
implied by the weddinggown the object of theirstruggle?If so, is she the pretext
of theirviolence,or the relayof theirlonging,or both?28Whatis the role of hetero-
sexual fantasyin racial politics?Of racial fantasyin heterosexualpolitics?And how
do homosexuality or homosociality come into play? Finally, how does one
disarticulateall these terms-clarifythem in order to question them?The instal-
lation posed these traumaticquestions, only to remain mute. But the wallpaper
remindedus thattheyremainthestuff ofeveryday realitiesand everynight
dreams.29
The installation also evoked another work by Duchamp, Etant donnes
(1946-66). In thisdiorama at the PhiladelphiaMuseum the viewerspies,through
27. In a celebratedpassage in BlackSkin,White Masks(New York:GrovePress,1967 [1952]), Frantz

Fanon stages the moment of his racial markingas a social primal scene. For related encountersin
modernistart,see my"'Primitive'Scenes," Critical Inquiry(Autumn1993).
28. I presume her to be white-but then whyshould I? For that matter,whydo I presume the
absent bride to be female? (In some of his collaged pages fromTheNewYorkTimes,Gober has slipped
his own body into the bridal wear advertisedthere.) Thus do these images catch us up in ideological
assumptions,a catchingup fromwhichGober is not free.When he used the wallpaperof the twomen
in a collaboration with Sherrie Levine at the Hirshhorn Museum in 1990, "museum employees of
African-American descentfound the imageryoffensiveand racist."In a subsequentconversationat the
museum,Gober reported,"One man describedit to me quite vividlyas, 'We got the nigger,nowwe can
go to sleep'" (RobertGober,"HangingMan, Sleeping Man,"Parkett 27, pp. 90, 91).
29. In thislightthe bestglosson the installationmaybe the extraordinary meditationon racial and
sexual traumain WilliamFaulkner'sAbsalom!Absalom!(1936). In a similarspiritFlood mentionsKate
Chopin's "Disir6e's Baby" (1897) andJean Rhys'sWideSargassoSea (1966).
Lf
.
..
tti
1v
........
..
.............
::::::::::::::::::::::
? '-i:~:::
.. . .
..:
I,!
........
Installation
Gober. NewYork.1989.
at Paula CooperGallery,
a peephole in a door and a hole in a wall,a femalemannequinspread-eagledin a

wooded landscape, witha gas lamp in one hand (the Duchamp version of the
Gober candles?) and a waterfallbehind her (the Duchamp versionof the Gober
drains?in retroactivereadingsinfluencecan flowbackward,too). A more literal
diorama than the Gober installations,Etantdonnesis also a more directre-creation
of a primalscene, which,in anotheruneasymixingof the public and the private,
is reframedalmost as a peep show. But what traumaticorigin does one revisit
here? The diorama brings into convergence two old obsessions of Duchamp,
perspectivalvisionand sexual violation (both are essayedin TheBrideStrippedBare
as well). Indeed, prominenttheoristshave read Etantdonnesas a making-physical
ofperspective, one thatconnectsourviewingpoint,throughthe holes,to thevanish-
ing point,which coincides here withthe vulvaof the mannequin. "Con celuiqui
voit,"Jean-Francois Lyotardremarkedconciselyof thisperspectivalstructure:"He
In thisaccount,then,Duchamp is takento demonstratethat
who sees is a cunt."0so
thatour gaze is markedby
perspectivalvisionis not innocent,let alone scientific,
30. Jean-FrancoisLyotard,Les Transformateurs

Duchamp(Paris: Galilee, 1977), pp. 137-38.
Duchamp.EtantDonnis (Interior).
1946-66.
148 OCTOBER
sexualdifference, by"thiscentrallackexpressedin thephenomenonofcastration," as

Lacan commentedin a seminarcontemporaneous withthefinishing ofEtantdonnis.31
Gober assumes this Duchampian-Lacanian demonstration of the sexual
inflectionof the visualfieldpreciselyas a donn---asa givento elaborate in other
ways.32In a 1991 installationat theJeu de Paume he seemed to playon Etantdonnes
31. Lacan, TheFourFundamental Concepts trans.Alan Sheridan (New York:W. W.

ofPsychoanalysis,
Norton, 1981 [seminargiven in February1964]), p. 77. In TheOpticalUnconscious (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1993), Rosalind Krauss complements this Lacanian account of perspective,of differencein
vision,witha Sartreanreadingthatcomplicatesthe positionof the vieweron thisside of the diorama,
in the public space of the museum:not onlyis our gaze inflectedbysexual difference, but as viewersin
a publicspace we are underthe gaze of others,caughtin the act of the PeepingTom (which,retrospec-
tivelyat least,is the positionof us all in the primalscene). Yet,even as thereis shame in thislooking,
thereis pleasuretoo-the pleasurenot onlyof the voyeurbutof the reciprocalfigure,the exhibitionist.
That is, mightwe not also identify withthe exhibitionisticpositionof the mannequin,even as we gaze
at her voyeuristically?As I suggestedat the outset,thisreciprocalityis also put intoplaybyGober.
32. It should be noted thatthisdemonstrationcame to Gober throughthe feministpostmodernist
artof SherrieLevine,BarbaraKruger,CindySherman,and others.
Gober. JeudePaume,
Installation,
Paris.1991.
again. There Gober positioned three worksin relation to a late-autumnalland-

scape of bare treespatternedin color on the walls:a cast male butttattooedwith
bars of music and mounted, butt outward,against one wall; and two legs that
extended fromother walls, face down, on the floor.One leg wore dark pants,
dress shoes, and socks,and was planted withthree candles throughholes cut in
the trousers;the otherworewhitebriefs,tennisshoes, and socks,and wasplugged
withseveraldrains colored like flesh.For Gober the threeworks"present[ed] a
trinityof possibilities-frompleasure to disasterto resuscitation,"33
and at firstit
seemed clear whichwas which:pleasurewas promisedbythe musicalbutt,disaster
bythe drained legs,resuscitationbythe candles thatwaitto be lit. But an insistent
ambivalencewithineach workdisturbedthisredemptivenarrative.For the musical
buttmayevoke pain as much as pleasure (to the extremepoint of the grotesque
tattooingofJews,homosexuals, and others in the Nazi death camps), and the
source of the image is also ambiguous(it derivesfromthe depictionof Hell in The
Gardenof Earthly Delights[1500] byHieronymusBosch).34Conversely, the drained
legs maysuggest seduction as much as and
violation, the candles maysummon up
33. Gober in "InterviewwithRichardFlood,"p. 125.

34. In a diorama of 1994-95 Gober did evokegas chambersand massgraves:it consistedof a pile of
truncatedlegs (withsocksand sandals) behindbars,thecentralones bentin a belatedpromiseofescape.
Untitled.1991.
150 OCTOBER
deathas muchas resuscitation.35 It is thisambivalenceofnear-opposites thatsustains

the enigmaof the objects,whichconducesto a complexity at once aesthetic,sexual,
and moral,and whichthe closure of a redemptivenarrativewould diminish.This
ambivalencemaybe most pointed in another object from1991, the candle with
hair at its base, whichsuggestsboth a memorialcandle and an erectpenis. 6 Like
some other Gober objects, this mixing of mortalityand sexuality projects a
Catholicsense of the complementarity of the sacredand the profane,the spiritual
and the base; but thiscomplementarity is turnedcritically, "perverted,"forhere
the second termcontrolsthe first.
But what of the landscape in theJeu de Paume installation?Here again a
comparisonwithEtantdonnesis instructive. In his dioramiclandscape withspread-
eagled mannequin Duchamp suggests a relation not only between perspective
35. For me the legs plantedwithcandles recall the hauntingdream,told byFreud and repeatedby
Lacan, of the fatherwho fallsasleep whilehis dead son lies in the nextroom. In the dream the father
imagines,in a self-reproach,thatthe room is on fireand thathe has failedonce again to save his son,
who appears to admonish him: "Father,can't you see I'm burning?"In thiscase "Father"mightalso
read as "Brother"or "Lover."
36. Ibid., p. 133.
4,iZ4
"~~~~~- 1Y-: :i-~ j-I ~ i':
..,<g;?
WMM' 7:
fortheArts,NewYork.
view,Dia Center
Installation
1992-93. (Photo:BillJacobson.)
and castration but between pictorial landscape and sexual violation-perhaps

througha will to possession that the firstsublimatesand the second performs.
The Jeu de Paume installationalso presenteda perspectivallandscape, as drawn
on the wallsby the repeated avenues of bare trees.Yet in thiscase the body parts
were male, and theywere moved awayfromthe vanishingpoint of the perspective
towardthe seams between the patternsof trees.These seams opened and closed
in a waythatintimateda different kind of intercoursewiththe naturalworld,one
of connection and communion rather than of castration and domination. In
effectthisrendered the landscape a homoeroticpastoral.Yet at the same time its
season was near winter,and thisdyingturneda potentiallysuprahistoricalpastoral
into a historicallyspecificelegy,a lamentfor the lost men of the AIDS epidemic.
Again,in 1991 "death ha[d] temporallyovertakenlife...."
In a 1992-93 installation at Dia Center for the Arts, Gober once more
recalled Etantdonnis,but this field of effectswas now his own as well. Again we
confronteda wooded landscape in the formof repeatedwallpaper,but the season
had changed to springand natureappeared replenished.This seemed confirmed
by the fact that the sinksthat punctuatedthe forestedwallswere plumbed, that
water flowed. Moreover,the body, the corpusdelicti,was missing.In a sense we
stood in its stead, and this rendered our position ambiguous and the space
strange.For withina room we beheld a landscape, but thislandscape had holes,
squares cut like windowsin the walls, and, more enigmatically,these windows,
beyond which appeared the bright light of apparent sky,were barred. Bound
stacksof TheNew YorkTimeswere placed along the wallsand by the columns,and
boxes of "EnforcerRat Bait" under some sinks.Both outside and inside,then,we
were also somehow below,in a spatial experience that was equal parts Rene
Magrittepainting,Franz Kafkanovel,and everydayapartment-building basement.
Once again,oppositionslikepurityand pollution(the runningwater,theratpoison)
werein play,as wereallusionsto sexual and racial difference(some of the collaged
newspapers showed reports of abuse and discrimination next to wedding
announcements). The scenic ambiguityof the diorama was also used to under-
score the old divide in American ideology between transcendentalistmythsof
individualand nature (the wallpapermightbe called EverEmersonor Thoroughly
Thoreau) and contemporaryrealitiesof mass anonymity and urban confinement.
Much was made of the fact that water flowed for the firsttime in these
dioramas.As the drysinks,urinals,and drainscame to read as "surrogateportraits
of gaymen in the 1980s,"Gober began to questionhisAIDS iconographyofbroken
plumbingand drained bodies: "I feltthe need to turnthataround and to not have
a gayartistrepresentedas a nonfunctioning utilitarianobject,but one functioning
almostin excess."37For some criticsthischange expresseda desirenot
beautifully,
37. Flood, "The Law of Indirections,"p. 12; Gober in "InterviewwithRichardFlood," p. 128.
Dia Center
Detailsfrominstallation,
fortheArts,NewYork.1992-93.
only for health but for another model of

desire,one based on flowand excess rather
than loss and lack.38Developed by Deleuze
and Guattari, in part through a different
reading of the bachelor machines of
Duchamp, thisvoluntaristicmodel of desire
expresslyopposes the psychoanalytic model
elaborated by Freud, Lacan, and Laplanche
that I have employed here.39 One cannot
have it both ways, one has to choose
between these models. But if Gober began
to shifthere, it was less a shiftfroman aes-
theticof missingpartsto one of dis/connec-
tiveflowsthan a shiftfroma realismof psy-
chic loss to a symbolismof redemptivefaith.
And this turnwas only begun: for though
the water ran, we were still underground,
and thoughspringhad come, the space was
stillbarred (not onlyat the windowsbut at a
locked exitdoor witha red lightabove). Wherenaturewas once desiccated,it was
now deluged, so thatif thiswere the springafterthe winterof theJeu de Paume
installation,it remained the April of a contemporaryWaste Land: "breeding/
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memoryand desire,stirring/ Dull rootswith
springrain.... "
Riddling,Redeeming,WorkingOver
In a 1995 installationin Basel, Gober explored thisnew idiom of waterand
flow,but its intimationof connectionand renewalstillvied withan evocationof
divisionand decay:therewere doors and wallsthatweredoubled (the splithouse
again), and dead leaves and crumpledcans thatappeared in drains.However,in a
1997 installationat the Los AngelesMuseum of ContemporaryArt,a redemptive
iconographyprevailed.Here one descended intoa largespace dominatedbya six-
footstatueof theVirginMaryseton a storm-drain grate(the elementswerecrafted
as always).Behind the Virginwas an enclosed wooden stairwaydown whichwater
38. See Helen Molesworth,"Stopsand Starts,"elsewherein thisissue.

39. There is nothing ambiguous in this regard about the Deleuze and Guattari manifestoAnti-
Oedipus(1972). My investmentin the psychoanalyticmodel of desire mightbe, at least in part, an
investmentin the pathosof loss,and (as mycolleague MichaelWood has revealedto me) thisinvestment
mightbe at workin much melancholiaas well. In other words,melancholicattachmentmightbe to
the pathosof loss more than to the object lost;it is thispathos thatis so hard to giveup.
cascaded to a stormdrain below (at a

rate of 180 gallons a minute),and she
was flankedby two old-fashionedsuit-
cases open on the floor.Through each
suitcase one could peer down into a
tidal pool bathed in pristine light
where a man waded with an infantin
his arms (as usual one could see little
more than legs). These pools mixed
new lifeand old, the naturalworldand
the human,in an almostbaptismalway.
The Virgin stood above a pool too, a
wishingwell strewnwithhuge pennies,
which Gober dated to the year of his
birth (1954). Like her suitcases (her
altarwings?),she seemed an emblemof
passage, the centralconduit in thissys-
tem of flows,the main mediumof faith
at these differentstations of life-life
everlasting(the stairwayto heaven), human in itsgenerations(fatherand child in
the water),and primalmarine (the tidalpools).
Gober rejectedthe Catholicismof his youth,as it had rejectedhim as a gay
man. Yet, again, it often returnsin his objects-perversely,critically,as in the
hairycandle withits privilegingof the profaneover the sacred,the base over the
spiritual.In the Los Angeles installation,however,the conventionalhierarchyof
these opposed termsreturned;more,the second termworkedto redeem the first
in a way that threatened to undo the enigmatic complementarityof the two
captured in prior work. This is not to say that no ambiguityor ambivalence
remained. The water was figuredas both destructiveand restorative,and the
Virginwas hardlyheavenly:presentedin wornconcrete,a gardenornamenteroded
by worldlyweather,she was also run throughthe middle withan industrialpipe
(in bronze), as ifshe were onlya materialculvertin a materialworld.But did this
pipe pointto a hole wherethe Saviorshould be, and did the open suitcasesunder-
line that all was lost?40Or was it a conduit throughwhich the destructivewater
passed to the restorativepools?
"The streamof lifegoes throughtheVirgin,"Gober remarkedof the installa-
tion, without apparent irony.41Here, then, we were far from the virginsof
40. This is how DavidJoselitread it: "Gober suggeststhatboth bodies and thingshave been let go,
allowed to slip intooblivion"("Poeticsof the Drain,"ArtinAmerica
85, no. 12 [December 1997], p. 66).
Duchamp and his dioramasof desire.Ratherthan presideovera theaterof desire-
in-loss(or even desire-as-flow),thisVirginseemed to figurea wishforfulfillment,
indeed a wish-fulfillment for a fallenworld restoredto maternalplenitude."My
motherhad a sophisticatedreading of the show,"Gober also commented,with
apparentapproval."She thoughtthewholepiece was about me makinga sculpture
of myown birth";and he added thatforhim to be insidea church(it was a kindof
chapel thathe fashionedhere) was to be "insidea miraculoushumanbody."42 This
remarkpointsto anotherprimalfantasy, one, which,in opposition
an intrauterine
to the the others,is a fantasyof repletionthatreadilycrossesoverintoa fantasyof
redemption.43With its rushingwater,tidal pools, wishingwell, and enfolding
mother,thisdioramadid seem to stagea dreamof redemption,ofself-redemption,
in whichtheviewerwasinvitedto participate(to project)as well-and theenthusias-
tic receptionof the showsuggeststhatfewcould resist.Some of the reliefon offer
Gober.
Installationviews,MOCA at theGeffenContemporary,
Los Angeles.1997. (Photos:RussellKaye.)
here was due to the easing of the AIDS epidemic (at least forthe privileged)on
account of the partialsuccess of recenttreatments.But some of the reliefwas also
in keepingwiththe currentreactionagainstthe difficulties of traumaticloss,critical
and
negativity, abject states in art and theory, a reaction expressedin the renewed
interestin Beautyand Spirituality. In any case the reliefwas psychic,a solace that
heretoforeGober had refused,preciselybecause it involvesa sublimation that
heretoforehe had resisted,indeed exposed-a sublimationof the enigmasof sex-
ualityinto "the mystery of faith."44
The problem here was not that there was a redemptivenarrative,or any
narrativeat all. A riddleis a storytoo, preciselyso, but it is one missingin meaning,
whereas the storyof the Los Angeles Virginwas allegoricallyneat and formally
closed, and thusredemptivein a profoundstructuralsense as well.For Laplanche,
the most affectiveenigmatic signifiersare "designified,"somehow broken in
signification.45 This is trueof the mosteffective Gober dioramas,too. "Something's
literallymissing in the story,"Gober once remarked of the Cooper installation,"if
you look at it as a story--andyou kind of have to. You have to supplythat:what
was the crime,what reallyhappened, what's the relationshipbetween these two
men."46Again,thisis the workof his bestwork,to sustainenigma,and it is usually
done in two complementaryways.The firstis to evoke a narrativeriddle,a story
witha hole in it. The second is to trace thishole somehow,to figurethe missing
part-not to fillin thishole or to make thispart complete.The missingpart,the
lost object, is not only a desired thing;sometimesit seems rejected,spited,even
accursed: the missingpartas la partmaudite.It is thisqualitythatoftenrendershis
objects paradoxical and his viewersambivalent,for again it is as if we suddenly
beheld the thingthatwe have soughtforeverand dreaded to find.It is thisanxious
fixationin us thatGober re-createsin some earlydioramas.
An insistenceon the missingand the mauditewas presentin much dissident
art and philosophyof the twentiethcenturythatchallenged the officialideals of
42. Ibid., pp. 141, 142. "She didn't thinkthe Virgin Mary was specificallythe Virgin Mary. She
thoughtshe was perhaps a stand-informotherhood.And then she had a hole in her stomachwhere
the baby would have been. The coins had mybirthdate. There was the man withthe baby who was
maybegivingbirth.Those wereher reasons."
43. See note 6. Contrastthisfantasywithone active in a workmade in 1991 at the heightof the
AIDS epidemic: a collaged newspaperwitha one-paragraphreportfrom1960 about a six-year-old boy
named Robert Gober who had drowned in a pool in Wallingford,Connecticut (the artist'sage and
home at the time).
44. Gober in "InterviewwithRichardFlood,"p. 142. "It is an enormousreliefto the individualpsyche,"
Freud wrotein his critiqueof religion,"ifthe conflictsof itschildhood ...-conflicts whichithas never
whollyovercome-are removedfromit and broughtto a solution" (Sigmund Freud, TheFutureofan
Illusion[1927], trans.JamesStrachey[NewYork:Norton,1961], p. 30).
45. Laplanche, NewFoundations, p. 45. For Laplanche the crucialaspect of the enigmaticsignifieris
not itsmeaningbut itsaddress-its "powerto signifyto."
46. Gober,"InterviewwithRichardFlood," p. 9.
156 OCTOBER
aesthetic completion, symbolic totality,dialectical assimilation, and the like.

Subterranean in modernism, which favored Hegelian systemsover the nasty
remaindersthat theycannot absorb, this insistencerose to the surfaceagain in
vanguardcultureof the last decade. Whetherconceivedin termsof the heteroge-
neous (as in Georges Bataille), the traumaticreal (as in Lacan), the abject (as in
Julia Kristeva),or the inhuman (as in Lyotard),thismotivedrove manydifferent
practicesin the 1990s,whichfaced new totalities(like cybervirtuality and global
capitalism) to resent,perhaps to resist.47
This motive did not became normative,
but it did approach the routine.Moreover,it became restrictedbyits own anxious
fixations.No wonder,then,thatGober wantedto escape thisparanoid fascination
with enigmatic signifiers,this melancholic cult of traumaticloss. So did many
otherartistsand critics-thus again the currentappeal to Beautyand Spirituality.48
But between riddlingand redeeming,besides an art of missingpartsand an aes-
theticof wish-fulfillment,thereare otherways;indeed thereis a thirdwayintimat-
ed by Gober. Neitherfixationon traumanor faiththatmagicallyundoes loss, but
the fabricationof scenes fora workingover of both loss and trauma-a working
over,not a workingthroughin the sense of a havingdone, of a narrativeclosure
or a redemptivemeaning.Gober has revealedthathis workis not as laborious or
painstakingas it oftenappears.49Nonetheless,it does suggestsome ratio between
physicallabor and psychiclabor,betweenthe workingup of the fictiveobjects and
spaces and the workingover of traumaticcauses and effects.Even if it is not
laborious in one sense, thisworkcan be pains-takingin thisother sense too, in a
waythatneitherfixeson traumanor leaps towardredemption.
47. See myReturnoftheReal,chapter5 (Cambridge:MIT Press,1996).

48. In Caravaggio's Bersaniand Dutoitargue thatthe enigmaticsigniferlocksthe primalcouple
Secrets,
of parent and infantin a relation of paranoid fascinationthat is then
replicated in other relations
throughoutlife. And theyexplore the particularways that Caravaggio plays pictoriallywith such
fascination(not throughbeautyand spirituality, obviously)-on occasion to offerpotentialformsof
release fromit.

FOSTER, Hal. An Art of Missing Parts

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An Art of Missing Parts

Author(s): Hal Foster

* This is a revisedversion of an essay that firstappeared in the catalog RobertGober,edited by

OCTOBER 92, Spring2000,pp. 129-56. ? 2000 Hal Foster

2. RobertGober, "InterviewwithRichard Flood," in Lewis Biggs,ed., RobertGober

withdrains;a castmale butttattooedwithmusic;and so on. Some suggesta fixated

5. The question here becomes: how to sustainenigma in interpretation?Enigma is bound up with

Freud distinguishedthree primal fantasiesin our psychiclives: the primal

evokes thisfundamentalriddlingin our lives.The question is how to interprethis riddlingin a way

of inside and outside is the paradoxical structureof trauma;it maybe thiscompli-

8. This maybe the place to defendagainstthe charge thatthisartor myanalysisis illustrationalof

(again, these are preciselythe termsin question in primal fantasies).12Second,

12. Bretonwritesof his image,"decided,"he tellsus, by"previouspredispositions": "Here again it is

"enigmaticsignifiers"receivedfromthe other (parent,sibling,caretaker),which

confuseaestheticappreciationand sexual desire,to trace the sense of the beauti-

inspiration.Lacan capturesthisstatebetweenanxietyand ecstasywiththeambiguousphraseensouffrance,

desire of the subjectpreciselyas an enigma,and thisenigma recalls the riddle of

critique of Freud along these lines see MikkelBorch-Jacobsen,TheFreudianSubject,trans.Catherine

SometimesGober registersthisdesire-in-loss less in objectsthanin settings,as

delight(da! there!).This game suggeststhatthe psychicbasis of all representation

questions:What is a sexual object?What is a sexual subject?Whatis desire?What

21. In his interviewFlood reduces such elaborations to "criticalgamesmanship"(p. 128), and so

Suspended Ball. 1939-31.

but it is seduction as heterosexualquest: the bachelors neverattain the bride in

25. Gober quoted in Parkett,

so in a worklike ThreeUrinals(1988). For Fountainwas a foundurinalrotatedninety

27. In a celebratedpassage in BlackSkin,White Masks(New York:GrovePress,1967 [1952]), Frantz

a peephole in a door and a hole in a wall,a femalemannequinspread-eagledin a

30. Jean-FrancoisLyotard,Les Transformateurs

sexualdifference, by"thiscentrallackexpressedin thephenomenonofcastration," as

31. Lacan, TheFourFundamental Concepts trans.Alan Sheridan (New York:W. W.

again. There Gober positioned three worksin relation to a late-autumnalland-

33. Gober in "InterviewwithRichardFlood,"p. 125.

deathas muchas resuscitation.35 It is thisambivalenceofnear-opposites thatsustains

and castration but between pictorial landscape and sexual violation-perhaps

37. Flood, "The Law of Indirections,"p. 12; Gober in "InterviewwithRichardFlood," p. 128.

only for health but for another model of

38. See Helen Molesworth,"Stopsand Starts,"elsewherein thisissue.

cascaded to a stormdrain below (at a

aesthetic completion, symbolic totality,dialectical assimilation, and the like.

47. See myReturnoftheReal,chapter5 (Cambridge:MIT Press,1996).

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