R U B É N   G A L L O

In two recent articles - "Death in America" (October 75) and "Obscene, Object, Traumatic" (October 78) - you examine the prevalence of shock and trauma in works by twentieth-century artists like Andy Warhol, Mike Kelley, and Robert Gober. This is a theme which you also develop in your most recent book, The Return of the Real (1996). Could you discuss the genealogy of these two forms of psychic violence in art?