Facing Down Medusa (An aetiology of the gaze)

Bibliographic Data

ID9307896
AuthorsRainer Mack (University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume25
Issue5
Pages571-604
Publication date2002-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArt History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-6790 • E-ISSN: 1467-8365
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1467-8365.00346
OpenAlexW2135430454
LanguageEN
Citations received15

Archaic and classical Greek images of the face of Medusa ( gorgoneia ) are typically understood as apotropaia , quasi–magical terror masks that instantiated the power of the monster’s petrifying gaze. This interpretation articulates the fiction of the image (its pictorialization of the threat posed by Medusa), but fails to account for its material condition as an object of visual consumption. The latter, constituted through practices of image–making and image–viewing, reverses Medusa’s mythological power by turning the objectifying gaze back upon the monster. A close reading of the Perseus legend indicates that this reversal articulated an aetiological discourse in which the hero retrieved the power of the gaze from Medusa by transforming it into the power of representation. By staging the key aetiological moment of the hero’s triumph, the gorgoneion interpellated its makers and viewers as ‘Perseus’ and worked thereby to reproduce the dominant masculine subject position he represented

Aesthetics · Art · Face (sociological concept · Gaze · HERO · Interpretation (philosophy · Legend · Linguistics · Literature · Monster · Mythology · Object (grammar · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics · Subject (documents · Visual arts · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

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