Transatlantic Displacements of the “Venus-in-Furs” Motif (Johns/Rauschenberg, Thek/Sontag)

In his study of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novella, Venus in Furs (1870), Gilles Deleuze proposes that the text is under “the sign of Titian, of the enigmatic relation of flesh, fur and mirror.” In the discussion that follows, I take my cue from the relationality of the three elements - flesh, fur, mirror - and re-unite them under the name of the “Venus-in-Furs” motif with the purpose of exploring the motif’s displacement, transfer, and metamorphosis along transatlantic routes. The compound noun in my title “Venus-in-furs” will refer not only to the three items (flesh, fur, mirror) clustered together in relation, but to the capacity of the cluster to put to work and set in motion certain concepts by now embedded in a shared critical-theoretical sensibility: first and foremost the image (both in the sense of technological reproduction, the copy, and in the psychoanalytic sense of imago); secondly, related to the first, the fictional direction of the ‘I’ (mirage); branching from these two, the anticipated reciprocity of the gaze. I will argue that the mysterious relation of these concepts effects the impression of a cultural inclusion/incision. My main point will be to suggest that the theoretical anchorage of the Venus-in-furs motif enables to trace its transformation, especially along the transatlantic route, in the problematic of the surface. Two case studies of exemplary collaborations in American art and thought, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and Paul Thek and Susan Sontag, will help show that the problematic of a surface inclusion/incision harnesses the discourse on the appearance of the artist/thinking I beyond egoic solipsism.