Lili Dujourie and Mieke Bal

Lili Dujourie has added nuances to my thoughts about the historical Baroque. In this sense, the position of her art in the history of Western culture is also 'meta-': an analytical, critical commentary on what precedes it. Nor do I, through my particular interest, in any way wish to suggest that Dujourie's relations to the history of Western culture and its art are limited to the Baroque.

Similar cases can be made for her work as a retroactive commentary on other moments of that history, such as, most obviously, abstract expressionism and conceptual art. Instead, my interest makes a strong case for the critical power of art in genera. The relations I highlight therefore exemplify both the difficulty of categorizing Dujourie's art and the powerful interactivity that perhaps characterizes it most closely.