The Rhetoric of the Frame

by Paul Duro

The Rhetoric of the Frame addresses the question of the frame in the visual arts and how it influences the way we perceive artworks. Challenging Emmanual Kant's characterization of the frame as merely an external supplement, the fourteen essays in this anthology consider the frame to be an indispensable if volatile complement to the artwork. Inspired by Jacques Derrida's ideas of parergonality, these essays problematize "inside/outside" polarity, articulating difference without reifying the unstable relationship between the artwork and the frame. Ranging from a study of the English country-house portrait to a reading of the AIDS quilt, and from a feminist perspective on pornography and performance art to sixteenth-century map making, these essays collectively consider the frame in its material, conceptual, ideological, gendered, and poststructural aspects.