ABSTRACT
Donald Barthelme’s work proceeds by a ‘disenchantment of symbols’ towards a parodic process of interpretative exhaustion, which then seems surprisingly inexhaustible. What fascinates us in Barthelme’s surrealistic images is the fact that they contain a strong oneiric element. Barthelme’s fictions, like Paul Delvaux’s paintings, are maddening eye-traps: they cannot stand to be read or looked at, but seem to stare at us. Barthelme, like Escher, paralyses our intelligence and lures us into entering his surrealistic world which has indeed very little to do with our own. Escher’s lithograph entitled Print Gallery offers an even more eye-catching challenge: a young man is looking at a painting, in an art gallery, but the painting nightmarishly expands to encompass the gallery and the young man himself. In flagrant violation of the Copyright act. Technology implies human intervention at many levels. The classical statue, apparently a collage of two pictures, contrasts an image of intense drama with one of complete indifference.
