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

280 Notestheoretical terms paradigm and origin, see H. Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, 12–17,37–52, 79–89 [English ed., xix–xxiv, 23–40, 75–86].39. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, xxxv.i.2; Loeb Classical Library (1952), 9:260–61.40. Vite 2:95–96 [Lives 1:246–47 (‘‘Preface to the Second Part’’)].41. Rather, the history of art in the objective genitive sense has defined the history ofart in the subjective genitive sense—the interesting thing in this context being that the riftbetween the two was operative in the work of this painter who decided to take up thepen . . .42. Whose own ‘‘life’’ is the climax of Vasari’s work. Vite 7:135–404 [Lives 2:642–769].43. And regarding historicity only. We will see that, in their implicit philosophy ofknowledge, most art historians are neo-Kantian—and unknowingly so. For a discussion ofthis question of implicit philosophy, of its specific role in the practice that concerns us hereand its difference from a pure and simple ‘‘world picture,’’ see Louis Althusser, Philosophieet philosophie spontanée des savants (1967; Paris: Maspero, 1974), esp. 98–116.44. Hegel specifies: ‘‘Universal history ...isthen, generally speaking, an exteriorizationof Spirit (Geist) in time, as Idea exteriorizes itself in space.’’ G. W. F. Hegel, ThePhilosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), 72 [translation altered]. Firstpublished in German in 1837.45. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (1807; Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1977), 19, 492.46. For a rigorous analysis of Hegel’s conception of the end of art (in which ‘‘end’’signifies neither conclusion nor death), see Pierre-Jean Labarrière, ‘‘Deus redivivus: Quandl’intelligible prend sens,’’ in Mort de Dieu: Fin de l’art, proceedings of a conference held inStrasbourg in 1988 (Strasbourg: C.E.R.I.T., 1990), 245–55.47. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 492 [translation altered].48. Ibid., 455–56 [translation altered].49. Hegel’s Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (London: Clarendon Press, 1975), 1:103.50. In Greek, symptôma designates that which chooses or falls with: a fortuitous encounter,a coincidence, or an event that disturbs the order of things—in accordance withthe invisible but sovereign law of tuché.51. On this fundamental notion of the ‘‘revelatory death’’ and the Aristotelian to ti ènaï (designated in the Latin tradition by the term quidditas), see Pierre Aubenque, Le Problèmede l’être chez Aristote (3d ed.; Paris: P.U.F., 1972), 460–76.52. Visit the Louvre and stand in front of the Mona Lisa, if what you want to contemplateis the reflection of a crowd. Is this another visual effect associated with the cult ofimages?Chapter 21. ‘‘The villain of the piece, I mean the Renaissance, invented the notion of art onwhich we still live, although less and less well. It conferred on the production of objects—which has always been the acknowledged raison d’être of the artistic profession—thatsolemn investiture of which we may rid it only by ridding ourselves of the object at thesame blow.’’ Robert Klein, ‘‘The Eclipse of the Work of Art’’ (1967), in Form and Meaning:Essays on Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. Madeline Jay and Leon Wieseltier (New York:Viking Press [1979], 180.2. It is no accident that the most famous art historians—from Heinrich Wölfflin andAby Warburg to Bernard Berenson, Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, E. H. Gombrich, FrederickHarrt, and André Chastel—were interested primarily in the Italian Renaissance.3. See the famous article by Erwin Panofsky (to which we will return): ‘‘The History