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

History of Art, Reason 97want to invoke what they believe to be the charter and foundingdocument of the ‘‘new’’ discipline of the history of art, namely iconology.Remember that in this American version, everything springs—thehistory of art itself seems ‘‘to spring up anew’’—from a very simpleexample drawn from daily life, ‘‘an acquaintance’’ who ‘‘greets [one]on the street by removing his hat.’’ 32 Let’s say that the example is notonly as pedagogic as one could wish but literally engaging, rather as ifPanofsky were tipping his own hat to his new, and welcoming, English-speakingpublic, with the explicit intention of reactivating thegesture’s original meaning—for he later tells us that it is a ‘‘residue ofmedieval chivalry: armed men used to remove their helmets to makeclear their peaceful intentions and their confidence in the peacefulintentions of others’’ 33 ...Quite different, let it be said in passing,from Freud’s attitude crossing the Atlantic in the same direction, ifwe credit the report that he said: ‘‘They don’t know that I am bringingthem the plague.’’ In any case, Panofsky’s example, like the attentivepedagogy of his entire text, places us squarely on the level of a proposedand desired communication—a communication that wants topersuade the interlocutor by guiding him or her without violencefrom the simplest (What do I see when someone in the street tips hishat?) to the most complex (What is the iconological interpretation ofworks of art?). Let’s remain for a moment on the most elementarylevel. Panofsky calls this the formal level of vision:What I see from a formal point of view is nothing but thechange of certain details within a configuration forming partof the general pattern of color, lines and volumes which constitutesmy world of vision. 34From there, Panofsky goes on to infer a whole system constructedin accordance with an order of increasing complexity. ‘‘When I identify,as I automatically do,* this configuration as an object (gentleman),and the change of detail as an event (hat-removing), I have already*French ed.: ‘‘et je le fais spontanément.’’