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

270 Appendix: Detail and Panthe image, in other words, toward a work of stoppage that enablesthe assignment of definitive meanings and a logical organization ofthe phases of a historia; whereas a pan is an index of a moment that ismore latent—a potential figure—and more metaphorical.All of this, of course, is not without its effect on the very situationof the iconic sign relative to these two figural ‘‘objects’’ that are thedetail and the pan. In a way, the detail is the limit-state of the iconicsign, in the sense that it offers understanding its minimal, most discreet,most tenuous visibility: it should be clear that the thread mightconstitute the detail’s very excellence. For this thread, held as it isbetween the fingers of the lacemaker, is much more than a line ofpaint: it represents an object in reality; it is a form quite detachedfrom its ground; its existence in the picture is wholly optical; it participatesfully in a mimetic configuration; it can readily be situated in thepicture’s illusionist depth; it tends toward the exactitude of appearance;it seems painted only to possess an aspect. The pan, by contrast, shouldbe envisaged as the limit-state of the iconic sign in the sense that itconstitutes its catastrophe or syncope: simultaneously ‘‘supplementarytrait’’ and ‘‘indicator of lack’’ 72 in the mimetic configuration. Itdoes not represent univocally an object in reality; although ‘‘figurative,’’it imposes itself first as non-iconic index of an act of paint; inthis capacity, it is neither precise nor aspectual; it is painted . . . likenothing; we might call it a deficient sign, a sign dispossessed; it impliesnot illusion but the collapse of illusionist representation, somethingthat might be called delusion. 73 Its existence in perception has more todo with what Riegl called ‘‘haptic’’ space—supposing the collapse ofplanes and a quasi-touching—than with a purely optical existence.The pan collapses the spatial coordinates of the detail: it literallymakes a front in the picture;* thus Vermeer’s filet presents itself aboveall as a passage, in the picture, in which painting no longer pretends—pretends to lie about its material existence; hence it ‘‘faces up.’’† Thepan tends to ruin the aspect, by means of auras, or liquifaction, orthe weight of a color that imposes itself, that consumes and infects*il fait littéralement front: wordplay with faire front, ‘‘to close ranks.’’†fait front.