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

98 Confronting Imagesoverstepped the limits of purely formal perception and entered a firstsphere of subject matter or meaning,’’ which he calls natural or primary.A second threshold is crossed with secondary or conventional signification,which comes into play ‘‘when I interpret the removal of a hat asa polite greeting.’’ So a consciousness is posited to provide the modelfor the iconographic level of the interpretation of works of art. A thirdlevel, called ‘‘intrinsic meaning’’ or ‘‘content,’’ finally brings us towardwhat Panofsky means by ‘‘iconology’’ in the radical sense: elucidatedhere are the elements at once the most specific (How, exactly, didthis gentleman remove his hat?) and the most fundamental (general,‘‘cultural’’) of the visual object. Here, then the history of art accedesto its end: to see in an individual work or in an entire style the ‘‘underlyingprinciples’’ that condition its very existence, and a fortiori itsmeaning. 35In the German article of 1932, the interpretive vocation or endascribed to the history of art is no less radical and ambitious, it, too,being directed toward the ‘‘ultimate and highest region’’ of ‘‘essentialmeaning’’ (Wesenssinn), a term that Panofsky borrowed from KarlMannheim. 36 But to the extent that this project was radical, it wasdifferent: uneasy, traversed by a force that, far from being pedagogical,was questioning, almost convulsive ...and quite authenticallyphilosophical. Tellingly, the opening example here is a thousand milesfrom the gentleman decorously tipping his hat. It is an example drawnfrom painting itself, and painting of the most paradoxical, violent, andtroubled kind. ‘‘If, let’s say (to take an example at random), we arefaced with the problem of ‘describing’ the celebrated Resurrection byGrünewald . . .’’ 37 Clearly, the example in question burns with otherdesires and other meanings. Far from being ‘‘engaging’’ or serene, itis obsessed by the contrast with this body unforgettably lacerated bythorns that Christ displays above and below the Resurrection—hangingon the cross and lying in the tomb—in the same altarpiece. Panofskyreminds us, moreover, that the ‘‘spectators’’ at the same spectacle, theones painted into the picture by Grünewald himself, ‘‘crouch as ifstupefied . . . or reel, gesturing as if terrified or dazzled.’’ 38 Fartheralong, intending to underscore how difficult it is to know what one isseeing when one looks at ‘‘any’’ painting, Panofsky uses language that