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

History of Art, Practice 17present white—that present white of the fresco diffused throughout thespace of the cell. What to make of this glare, and what to make ofthis white? The first constrained us initially to distinguish nothing, thesecond hollowed out all spectacle between the angel and the Virgin,making us think that Angelico had simply put nothing between hisfigures. But to say that is not to look, it is to be satisfied with whatwe’re supposed to see. Let’s look: there’s not nothing, because there’swhite. It isn’t nothing, because it reaches us without our being ableto grasp it, and because it envelops us without our being able, in ourturn, to catch it in the snare of a definition. It is not visible in the senseof an object that is displayed or outlined; but neither is it invisible, forit strikes our eye, and even does much more than that. It is material.It is a stream of luminous particles in one case, a powder of chalkyparticles in the other. It is an essential and massive component of thework’s pictorial presentation. Let’s say that it is visual.Such is the new term that must be introduced, to distinguish the‘‘visible’’ (elements of representation, in the classic sense of the word)from the ‘‘invisible’’ (elements of abstraction). Angelico’s white selfevidentlybelongs to the mimetic economy of his fresco: it provides,a philosopher would say, an accidental attribute of this representedinner courtyard, here white, and which elsewhere or later could bepolychrome without losing its definition as an inner courtyard. In thisrespect, it indeed belongs to the world of the representation. But itintensifies it beyond its limits, it deploys something else, it reaches itsspectator by other paths. Sometimes it even suggests to seekers-afterrepresentationthat there’s ‘‘nothing there’’—despite its representinga wall, although a wall so close to the real wall, which is painted thesame white, that it seems merely to present its whiteness. Then again,it is by no means abstract; on the contrary, it offers itself as an almosttangible blow, as a visual face-off. We ought to call it what it is, in allrigor, on this fresco: a very concrete ‘‘whack’’* of white. 4But it is very difficult to name it as one would a simple object. Itis more event than painted object. Its status seems at once irrefutable*A colloquial meaning of pan, which can also mean ‘‘section’’ (of a wall), ‘‘panel’’ (intailoring), ‘‘patch’’ (of blue sky—or of a painting).