Freud's "Uncanny" and Rachel Whiteread

I reread Freud's "Uncanny" today for an essay I am writing on Rachel Whiteread's sculpture called Torso and was reminded how much I love this piece of writing. The sculpture consists of a plaster cast of a hot water bottle. Freud's text is often used to describe Whiteread's work and although it may be a bit of a cliche by now, I think it is still such an appropriate and helpful lens through which to read her work for a number of reasons. Firstly, it evokes the concept of the familiar/unfamiliar; it is both a body and an object. It is both present and absent. It also refers to the double or doppelgänger as Torso is, in a sense, a copy of the original object although inverted.

(Whiteread's casts House and Ghost perhaps fit even more perfectly with Freud's "Uncanny" because of the text's German translation as "unheimlich" (unhomely) and of the sculptures's respective references to the domestic space.)

On a separate note, I thoroughly enjoyed reading his summary of Hoffman's "Sandman", one of my favourite stories. Read the story here: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html

More on Whiteread at later date.

Image source: http://media.mutualart.com/Images/2009_07/25/0221/597937/418b11f6-e2dc-4fcd-9b0e-dbecbdff41cd_g.Jpeg