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

The Detail and the Pan 247Image not availableFIG 14 Jan Vermeer, View of Delft (detail), c. 1658–60. Oil on canvas. TheHague, Mauritshuis.Svetlana Alpers, might search through all the topographical views ofDelft dating from the years 1658–60 in order to make comparisons, toidentify the exact point of view, on the canal bank, in order to recoverthe referent: for such a person, jaune refers to the wall. It’s the world,it’s the wall that was yellow under the eye of the painter Vermeer,that particular day, probably between 1658 and 1660, from the canalbank. And at present, in the painting, the yellow continues to refer toa wall from a ‘‘stilled’’ time; it speaks to us of seventeenth-centuryDelft, and so in a sense is ‘‘cleansed of all pictorial material,’’ is outsidethe canvas; it is ‘‘delicate,’’ as Claudel says, it is exact. For such aperson, then, it is the wall that is yellow, and in its capacity as wall itis a detail, a circumscribed piece of a much larger topographical ensemblecalled Delft. 37