ABSTRACT

In his seminars on Ethics and The Four Fundamental Concepts of PsychoanalysisLacan (1977a, 1992) considers the issue of anamorphosis and its relation to art. The emergence into focus of a distorted image is important because it demonstrates that there are two moments of viewing, not one as it might seem in everyday life. It shows up a gap between those two moments. In Holbein's The Ambassadors we see a blur or a skull depending on our point of view. When we see a blur we want to see the painting as a treasure-house of worldly objects. But once we have seen the skull, a gap opens up between it and the blur, which makes the picture incomplete. An object is missing insofar as the Other is now incomplete. This is not simply a moment of deprivation; it is the moment which reveals the structure of the illusion of the image and the subject's wishes in respect to it.