Aesthetics of Ordinary Space: A Structural Decoding of Objects and Space in Carole Maso’s The Art Lover

One needs as much space as air to live. With this maxim, Maso has successfully established a post-modern rite of remembrance. This paper, through a structural decoding of Carole Maso’s The Art Lover, opts to tackle the phenomenon of ordinary space and objects in tandem with their psychical contiguities that arise from a constant exposure to human experience. Additionally, the research borrows the semiotic-structural model of Michael Riffaterre to explore a deep-seated motivation or to use his term, a matrix, that produces a syndrome of displaced referents and at the same time brings the narrative to a deliberate compression in a finite textual space. The study is revealing in that it addresses the interplay of variants in the text to lay bare a paradoxical ambiguity which finds expression in the ordinary aesthetics, things and their posture of identity.

Keywords:

Carole Maso , ordinary aesthetics , matrix , Riffaterre , The Art Lover , space