Tag: emptiness

from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

How could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain [ … ] Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. [ … ] Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a center of complete emptiness. 

Vincent Van Gogh , The House in Arles , oil on canvas, 1889 

Nan Goldin, My Defeated Bed , London, 2002 – 5. Lise Sarfati , Sloane # 21 , Oakland, CA, 2007.

Tracey Emin, My Bed 

Sophie Calle, from “Doubles-jeux, Livre V, L’Hôtel”

Josh Greene, Sophie Calle’s Bed