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Notes 30931. Ibid., 156–58.32. Paul Claudel, L’Oeil écoute (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 32. The passage actually concernsSoldier and Laughing Girl (c. 1657) in the Frick Collection, New York. It is quoted [inpart] by Alpers, The Art of Describing, 30 [translation altered].33. Alpers, The Art of Describing.34. Maurice Blanchot, L’Espace littéraire (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 23.35. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–22; Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 3:889.36. Ibid., 187.37. To my knowledge, no one except a painter, Martin Barré, has noticed that thefamous yellow ‘‘wall’’ is not a wall at all, but a roof: another example to add to the list ofaporias of the detail. But if we have seen a ‘‘wall’’ there instead of the inclined plane of aroof, perhaps this is precisely because the color yellow—as pan—tends to ‘‘go frontal’’ inthe picture: in other words, to obfuscate the iconic transparency of the representationalinclined ‘‘plane.’’38. A differentiation broached previously in Didi-Huberman, La Peinture incarnée, esp.43–61, 92–93.39. Claudel, L’Oeil écoute, 34.40. This in reference to the technique for making what is known as bobbin lace orpillow lace (dentelle au fuseau), in which the threads, placed on little bobbins, are unrolledonto a ‘‘pillow’’ where they cross and interweave in a rotating motion controlled by thelacemaker, who pins each stitch with needles, which she moves as the work proceeds.41. That the visible is the elective air of the process of denial (Freud’s Verleugnung), thisis what we are taught, beyond Claudel, by the profusion of texts, always contradictory, towhich the history of painting has given rise. On the visual logic of the Verleugnung, see O.Mannoni, ‘‘Je sais bien, mais quand même,’’ in Clefs pour l’Imaginaire, ou l’Autre Scène(Paris: Seuil, 1969), 9–33.42. See Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), 56; Alpers, TheArt of Describing, 31.43. Alpers, The Art of Describing, 31–32.44. Ibid. The hypothesis that Vermeer used a camera obscura was supported by DanielA. Fink, ‘‘Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura: A Comparative Study,’’ Art Bulletin 53(December 1971): 493–505; and contested by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Perspective, Optics,and Delft Artists Around 1650 (New York: Garland, 1977), 283–92 (regarding The Lacemaker,291–92).45. Alpers, The Art of Describing.46. See P. Bianconi and G. Ungaretti, L’opera completa di Vermeer (Milan: Rizzoli, 1967),nos. 40 (pl. lx) and 9 (pl. vii–ix).47. Ibid., no. 30 (pl. l).48. Ibid., nos. 24 (pl. xxxix), 33 (pl. lv), and 42 (pl. lxi).49. Ibid., nos. 21 (pl. xxxv), 31 (pl. xli), and 32 (pl. xl).50. Ibid., nos 14 (pl. xix–xxi), 15 (pl. xxii), 18 (pl. xi–xii), and 20 (pl. xxiii).51. Ibid., nos. 5 (pl. v–vi), 7 (pl. xiii), and 8 (pl. x).52. Ibid., nos. 32 (pl. xl).53. Georges Bataille, ‘‘Masque,’’ in Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1970–79),2:403–4. On hysterical paroxysm and the hysterical fit, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Inventionde l’hystérie: Charcot et l’Iconographie photographique de la Salpétrière (Paris: Macula,1982), 150–68, 253–59.54. See J. M. Charcot and P. Richer, Les Démoniaques dans l’art (1887; Paris: Macula,1984), 150–68, 253–59.