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There have been various accounts as to the nature of primary satisfaction that the fragmented object can provide for us. We can look to Peter Fuller's psychodynamic interpretation of the Venus de Milo as one notable example. The statue, he tells us, transcends its mutilation by offering us a site for our maternal projections - its random breakages touching upon primary repression. His view is that the Venus is more seductive than her intact counterparts since, with pitted surface and absent arms, we meet the body at once ideal and broken, signifying the mother who has survived our infantile attacks. That is to say, Fuller sees the Venus' damage as paradoxically enhancing on the basis that it is a statue which can offer us a representation of the ‘whole object’ in Kleinian terms. He maintains that, in embracing its mutilation by aestheticizing its flaws, we meet again our earliest bid for reparation.1
It is from this perspective that I will consider the work of Cornelia Parker, a contemporary British artist, who purposefully challenges the boundaries of the object. I will focus on two of her most striking installations: Thirty Pieces of Silver (see Figure 1) and Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (see Figure 3) and interpret the impetus for each work. This discussion will be set within the context of other art works which feature artistic preoccupation with destructive/reparative processes. Here I refer to Rachel Whiteread's famous House (see Figure 5), that concrete interior which met its public demolition against a background of considerable controversy, and to the images of damage in death that Damien Hirst so blatantly exploits through his formaldehyde edifices. This exploration will be framed by Kleinian principles and look towards assessing these artists' intentions as to their transformative ambition.
It is recognized that Melanie Klein's theory of child development differs from Freud's in her focus on the infant's pre-oedipal struggle for autonomy. This is a ta