TY - BOOK ID - 77921092 TI - How far can we go ? : pain, excess and the obscene AU - Mazzocut-Mis, Maddalena AU - Coggan, John PY - 2012 SN - 1443836834 9781443836838 1443836435 9781443836432 PB - Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, DB - UniCat KW - Aesthetics, Modern KW - Art KW - Art, Occidental KW - Art, Visual KW - Art, Western (Western countries) KW - Arts, Fine KW - Arts, Visual KW - Fine arts KW - Iconography KW - Occidental art KW - Visual arts KW - Western art (Western countries) KW - Arts KW - Aesthetics KW - Philosophy KW - History KW - Horror in art. KW - Themes, motives. KW - Art, Primitive UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77921092 AB - The public does not desire horror, yet enjoys it in art and suffers it in life. When we deal with the monstrous marriage of the abject and the sublime, the consequent thrill of enjoyment is never appeased, always problematic, often unresolved and finally borders on physiological if not pathological narcissism. The public is well acquainted with this 'rhetoric of effects'; rhetoric of extreme effects, which transforms the spectator into voyeur or victim, into an apathetic torturer, whenever cruelty is shown without respite. A look of horror greets the enjoyment of extremes and enjoyment to the extreme as well; the Eighteenth Century teaches us that lesson. The century of good taste elaborates a sense of the limits, since representing horror means choosing not so much to domesticate it as to render it more enjoyable. It is a game of limits that are not limits anymore, as we can allude to an infinity that often shows the features of the sublime. ER -