Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of Perspective (review (original) (raw)
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The aim of this paper is to examine and define a new aesthetical paradigm, claimed by the speculative painting, following two different but connected artistic discourses: Las Meninas by Velazquez, and its 58 replicas of Pablo Picasso, the self-portrait being possible only as representation of the fictional author and its authorial Ego. The working hypothesis is that, by resort to this premise, the authorial representation of the painter performed through a self-portrait or the perennial relation between interior and exterior dimensions were created each time differently, using the insertion of a mirror representing a particular manner to give form to auto-reflexivity. Taking into account the elements and the conclusions of the current analysis, the present contribution aims to synthesize general characteristics of the mirror motive and the negative painting as meta-referential discourse. Las Meninas, both in Picasso’s and Velázquez’s representations, include exophoric and endophoric elements. I shall argue that this two types of elements generate two registers of visibilities, remarked as “visible” and “invisible” levels, in Foucault’s terms, the problem of Self’s representation being, in fact, originally constructed as the genuine difference between seen and unseen forms of pure representation. Inspired by Velázquez, Las Meninas, performed by Piccasso, created a new artistic discourse, in which the problem of the pure representation is abolished, the construct being replaced by the couple “self-reflective”-“self-reflexive” representations. “Portraying the Unrepresentable” is nothing else than creating an aesthetical dimension where visible and invisible contents can coexist and generate a fluent and consistent materiality for the pure representation’s Subject, testing on what conditions the terms of the critique change if “visible” is understood as “presence”, while any “invisible” – or at least speculated element as “invisible”- is recognized as “absence”.
Assimina Kaniari and Marina Wallace (eds.), Acts of seeing artists, scientists and the history of the visual. A volume dedicated to Martin Kemp (London Zidane Press, 2009)., 2009
Paper presented to Martin Kemp's Festschrift, Acts of Seeing. ‘Symbolic yet not arbitrary perspective as art historical form after Panofsky’, in Assimina Kaniari and Marina Wallace (eds.), Acts of seeing artists, scientists and the history of the visual. A volume dedicated to Martin Kemp (London Zidane Press, 2009), pp. 45-60.
Discourse analysis before strange mirrors: visuality and (inter)discursivity in painting, 2013
2013
This paper has the aim of understanding the discursive dimension of the paintings through Discourse Analysis based on Michel Foucault'sarchaeological approach. The image of the mirror in several canonical paintings was selected, intending to observe its discursive operation as an element of the visual artistic utterance. Basically, this text has three parts: firstly, it determines the place occupied by the aesthetic discourse in Michel Pêcheux's and Michel Foucault's works; secondly, it focuses on the analysis of three European paintings, namely The Maids of Honour by Velásquez; A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet; and Dangerous Liaisons by Magritte; thirdly, it discusses the intersection between the visuality and interdiscursivity from a) the contributions of M. Foucault's works on aesthetic discourse and b) the image of the mirror found in those paintings.
The Image, the Body and the History of Representation
My heart since childhood has been brought up in the veneration of images, and a harmful fear has entered me which I would gladly rid myself of, and cannot … If I had not heard the spirit of God crying out against the idols, and not read his word, I would have thought thus: "I do not love images," "I do not fear images." But now I know how I stand in this matter in relation to God and the images, and how firmly and deeply images are seated in my heart. This paper is part of an ongoing recurrent interest I have with the phenomenon of presence and the ascription of agency to images and visual representations. Writing in the early Reformation, Andreas Karlstadt's admissions present a powerful instance of the pull of the idol, the representation endowed with agency and hence an object of worship. However, I am not going to offer a straightforward historical account of idolatry and iconoclasm in the Reformation. Rather, I wish to consider the methodological implications of the various attempts to provide an explanatory framework for this. I shall be ranging over a wider variety of materials and ideas, but I wish to start with the work of Hans Belting, who has constructed one of the most ambitious recent attempts to theorise the meaning of the image in a way that goes beyond the simple opposition of idol / artwork. In his book Bildanthropologie ('Anthropology of the Image'), with the subtitle Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft ('Essays towards a Science of the Image') Belting attempted to formulate a universal, trans--cultural, theory of the image. 1 It covered a large number of 1 Hans Belting, Bildanthropologie. Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft ('Anthropology of the Image. Essays on a Science of the Image') (Munich, 2001). Delivered at: The Secret Lives of Artworks. University of Leiden, 25 June 2010.
Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction * Edited by CATHARINE ABELL and KATERINA BANTINAKI
Analysis, 2012
Edited by CATHARINE ABELL and KATERINA BANTINAKI Oxford University Press, 2010. xii þ 242 pp. £40 cloth In their introduction, the editors of this book, Catharine Abell and Katerina Bantinaki, give an excellent account of the present state of play in the philosophy of pictures. Depiction, the mode of representation distinctive of pictures, has seen a growth in philosophical interest over the past few years, and Abell and Bantinaki think the field holds even more potential: 'While the philosophy of language has long been considered a philosophical discipline in its own right, the philosophy of depiction is usually thought of, when it is thought of at all, as a sub-discipline of aesthetics. This is like conflating the philosophy of language with the philosophy of literature' (1). That the study of depiction may grow to occupy a position comparable to philosophy of language might seem doubtful to us now, but Abell and Bantinaki are right to draw attention to the fact that the place of depiction within aesthetics is an historical happenstance. As the papers collected in this volume illustrate, there is usually only incidental concern with the aesthetic and artistic in the literature on depiction. The big issue addressed by that literature in the past is symptomatic of this unconcern with art and aesthetics: it has centred on finding a definition of depiction, one that applies equally to snapshots and Signorellis. This collection largely avoids the problem of definition to focus on issues that are only now beginning to attract substantial attention. It is telling of the state of the field just how much one such issue, the experience of pictures, dominates: it is the central topic of five of the book's eight chapters. But let me say something about the other three chapters first. The first of these, by John Kulvicki, investigates the commonplace that there are many different ways-styles and systems-of picturing. Kulvicki argues that the situation is, in some ways, simpler than this suggests: there are many different ways of producing a picture, but rather fewer ways of interpreting it. The key is to recognize that it is not the multitude of different styles and systems of picturing that are significant for interpretation, so much as the representationally salient properties they instantiate-and these present much less diversity. Kulvicki goes on to argue, with some justification to my mind, that the constraints on interpretation are explained by the fact that pictures resemble what they depict, a central plank of his own (2006) theory of depiction. Abell includes a paper of her own, investigating the epistemic value of photographs. Photographs are generally superior to handmade pictures as sources of knowledge about what they depict. Abell argues, in the face of opposing views, that this fact has its roots in the reliability of the standardized, mechanical processes of photography. Abell's position has the appeal of common sense, and it does seem to me that this is one instance where common sense has it pretty much right. Dominic Lopes's chapter begins with a less commonsensical proposal. Looking at a picture of X, it often seems natural to say 'That's X', rather than 'That's a picture of X'-something we would never do in the presence of a description of X. Lopes holds that this 'image-based demonstrative'-'That's X'-is literally, and not just figuratively, true. He argues that this is so because pictures perceptually ground such reference through deixis, an aspect of visual experience usually associated with actually being in the presence of
Could Perspective Ever be a Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer
Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology II/1, 2015
Erwin Panofsky’s essay “Perspective as Symbolic Form” from 1924 is among the most widely commented essays in twentieth-century aesthetics and was discussed with regard to art theory, Renaissance painting, Western codes of depiction, history of optical devices, psychology of perception, or even ophthalmology. Strangely enough, however, almost nothing has been written about the philosophical claim implicit in the title, i.e. that perspective is a symbolic form among others. The article situates the essay within the intellectual constellation at Aby Warburg’s Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in Hamburg, and analyzes the role of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms for the members of the Warburg circle. Does perspective meet the requirements for becoming a further “symbolic form,” beyond those outlined by Cassirer? The article argues that, ultimately, perspective cannot possibly be a symbolic form; not because it does not meet Cassirer’s philosophical requirements, but rather, because that would uproot Cassirer’s overall project. While revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer unearths the wide-raging philosophical implication of the essay, revisiting Cassirer with Panofsky means to highlight the fundamentally perspectival nature of all symbolic forms.