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

Image as Rend 207of the open flesh, in other words by the effusion of red liquid—paint,certainly, but as disfiguring as blood. The operation is invasive insofaras the only thing about this body that henceforth matters is itsbreached part. For here the whole body—the whole image—becomeswound. What does this imply? It implies a paradoxical work of presentabilityin the image: it is there, before us, much too far away or muchtoo close. It gives (quite badly, moreover) the appearance of the bodyof Christ that would be seen from a reasonable distance, whereas itsmajor visual event—the intense red paint—suddenly creates a distancethat is irrational and captating, an irrationally proximate distance thatmakes the small painted sheet the visual place of a quasi-embrace, likethat of Saint Bernard at the foot of the crucifix.Perhaps this image was produced to the end of making the devoutperson close his eyes under so much violence, and to let his ‘‘heartbleed’’ within him, in accordance with the demands of so many fourteenth-centurymystics. This image, in any case, manifests in thebluntest possible way the requirement of limits addressed by the Christianfaith to the visible world of our bodies: since we are condemnedto the earthly purgatory of our own bodies, let us at least transformthem by imitating the incarnate Word, in other words, Christ sacrificinghis body for the future redemption of all sins. Let us mimic thesacrifice of the body to the fullest extent that we can. This was neithermore nor less than an appeal to the symptom: to require of the bodythat it be breached, afflicted, disintegrated, almost annihilated . . . inthe name and in imitation of a mystery that spoke of the divine Wordand of the flesh of this Word. The simple folio sheet in the SchnütgenMuseum places us before the preposterous choice—the challenge, almost—ofan artist having disfigured his drawing by throwing purecolor onto it ‘‘blind,’’* in other words, just so, without prejudging themimetic success or even the mimetic effect that would result. Theartist here took the risk of the unthinkable: how can you make a stainby thinking it in advance, by prejudging it as you would construct avanishing point? The stain, it is made, it makes itself by itself, and soquickly that elaborative thought has no time to construct anything*au jugé.