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

200 Confronting Imageseverything, he wanted to make a work of art, namely an image-object,whereas his project remained that of an image-trace and animage-mystery whose humble secret he could not keep to himself.Stripping the image bare, ‘‘undressing the figures’’*—something requiredin all religious fervor by the sublime theology of the pseudo-Dionysius, 131 something required, basically, by any work devoted tothe mystery of the Incarnation: was that ultimately to turn away from‘‘great art,’’ by which I mean the art retained by our historians asbearing genius? The example of Ugo da Carpi might make us thinkso, and suggest the view that the incarnational requirement finallyconcerns only ‘‘popular art,’’ ‘‘popular devotion’’—all the more sincethe implicit ends of such images are often directed toward miracleand legend (images that open and close their eyes, images that speak,images that bleed, etc.). All the more since the paradigm of the livingimage seems operative above all in a realm we like to call archaic. 132But this judgment is in fact too hasty. The ‘‘living image’’ belongs tosystems as learned and complex as can be the theology of Nicolas ofCusa, for example. 133 Why wouldn’t it also have some bearing—likethe obscure pulsation that gazes at us, more than like the clear appearancethat we know how to grasp—on ‘‘great painting,’’ on learnedpainting? The inquiry has yet to be pursued among the galaxy offamous artists on whom the theological or at least devotional elementmight have come to bear. The case of Ugo da Carpi is exemplary inone sense, and very poor in another: for this artist was unable toproduce a visual symptom of his ‘‘archiropoïèse.’’ Neither the compromisenor the tension found issue in either figure or disfiguration, andthat is why his painting has never made an impression on anyone,neither on tasteless believers nor on non-believing aesthetes.If by contrast we again turn to the much more famous example ofFra Angelico, we find in his works a truly impressive series of visualsymptoms that play on the mimetic economy of the image in a relationshipof perpetual disquiet, a disquiet that I would describe as fecundas much as critical, which is to say, in particular, crisis-laden andrich in effects. Fra Angelico felt compelled, on a large expanse of wall*dévêtir les figures.