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

34 Confronting Imagestwo texts reveals that both authors contributed to the misunderstanding—itsbeing questionable whether exact description, and in particularthe attribution of ownership of these boots ‘‘of’’ Van Gogh,amounts to the truth ‘‘of’’ this picture. 24The other risk courted by debates of this kind is the reciprocalclosure of the opposing modes of thought. The philosopher will remain‘‘brilliant,’’ which is to say pointless for the art historian, who,for his part, will justify the paucity of his problematics by telling himselfthat at least everything they advance is correct (he is accurate, hehas found an answer). So goes the scientistic illusion in the history ofart. So goes the illusion of specificity, with regard to a field of studynonetheless undefinable, save as a relative field, and, oh, how unstable!Perhaps art historians think they are keeping their object forthemselves and safeguarding it when they enclose it within what theycall a specificity. But by doing this, they enclose themselves withinthe limits imposed on the object by this premise—this ideal, this ideology—ofclosure. 25Where is the ‘‘specificity’’ of a Gothic stained glass window? Absolutelynowhere. It is in the firing of the glass, it is in the long route oftraders in colored minerals, it is in the dimensions of the windowpiercing determined by the architect, in the tradition of forms but alsoin the stylet of the monk recopying his translation of Pseudo-Dionysiusthe Areopagite, it is in a Sunday sermon on the divine light, it is inthe tactile sensation of being touched by color, and of simply lookingup toward the source of this contact. Visual objects, objects investedwith a figurability value, develop all of their efficacy to establish multiplebridges between orders of reality that are nonetheless quite heterogeneous.They are luxuriant agents of displacement andcondensation, organisms for the production of knowledge as much asof not-knowledge. Their functioning is multidirectional, their efficacypolymorphous. Isn’t there something incoherent about separatingtheir ‘‘definition’’ from their efficacy? So how could art historians notneed, in order to think the dynamic and economy of visual objects(qualities that exceed the visible, physical limits of said objects), anintricate semiology, an anthropology, a metapsychology? Anyonewho says: ‘‘I am going to speak to you about this visual object from