georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

92 Confronting Imagesin a single smooth entity. Here again, what I have called the momentof antithesis produced a rigorous and perhaps uneasy statement of thelimits entailed by any posited notion. Thus Kant initially presented theaesthetic Idea through its inadequacy to the concept.By an esthetic Idea, however, I mean that representation thatoccasions much thinking though without it being possible forany determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it,which, consequently, no language fully attains or can makeintelligible.—One readily sees that it is the counterpart (thependant) of an Idea of reason, which is, conversely, a conceptto which no intuition (representation of the imagination) canbe adequate. 17The disegno of Vasari and, beyond, that of Zuccari—each of whomsought in his own way to suture everything, to promote the unityof intellect and hand, of concept and intuition—this disegno of theacademicians, then, underwent the trial of a split, of a cut-in-two thatopened again. We should not be surprised to discover in Kant anunequivocal critique of mannerism, construed precisely as an abusivebut sophisticated use of the Idea. 18 Liberated anew by this split, Kantfinally broke down the humanist conjunction of mimesis and the aestheticIdea, distinguishing the faculty to know nature from the facultyto judge art, distinguishing the objective universality of pure reasonfrom the subjective universality of works of genius. 19 This means inparticular that genius, the ‘‘faculty of aesthetic Ideas’’ capable of ‘‘express[ing]what is unnameable in the mental state in the case of acertain representation’’ and making it ‘‘universally communicable,’’ is‘‘entirely opposed to the spirit of imitation,’’ a phrase that Kant spontaneouslyassociates with such unflattering epithets as ‘‘aping’’ and‘‘blockhead.’’ 20These citations, although summary and incomplete, suffice to giveus a sense of a certain number of essential modifications that, sinceKant, have affected the sphere of questions about art, and especiallyhistorical questions. Changing its Idea, so to speak, changing its metaphysics,the artistic object could no longer have the same history. And