The Gift of Therapy

The Gift of Therapy

Along with Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and other French Post-Structuralists, the philosopher and social theorist Jean Baudrillard, particularly through his 1981 Simulacra and Simulation, was a significant influence on segments of the art world in the 1980s and 1990s. Victor Burgin may be seen as examples of artists using photography who absorbed, or reacted to, the tenets of Baudrillards theories in their work. To some degree, apparently, Baudrillard also considered himself a photographer. An example of his work, an interior still life, is on the cover of Irvin Yaloms The Gift of Therapy. While the image has a rich sense of color and a sophisticated formal complexity, it does not go terribly far beyond showing us an interesting way to compose triangles within a rectangle. As often seems to be the case when those who write about art try their hand at making art, the results are curiously regressive. It is, perhaps, to Baudrillard's credit that he had the wisdom not to quit his day job.