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

46 Confronting Imagesway perfect [essersi trovato uno in ogni cosa perfetto], and whobrought his work, whether in invention, or design, or coloring,to the standard of today? The credit [lode] of this is certainlydue to the third age, wherein it appears to me that Ican say surely that art has done everything that it is possiblefor her, as an imitator of nature, to do, and that she hasclimbed so high that she has rather to fear a fall to a lowerheight than to ever hope for more advancement [e che ellasia salita tanto alto, che più presto si abbia a temere del calare abasso, che sperare oggimai più augmento].Having pondered over these things intently in my ownmind, I judge that it is the peculiar and particular nature ofthese arts to go on improving little by little from a humblebeginning, and finally to arrive at the height of perfection [alcolmo della perfezione]. 40Beginning with Vasari, then, the history of art defined itself 41 as theauto-movement of an idea of perfection (we shall return to this term),an idea heading toward its full realization. The specific historicity ofthe ‘‘arts of design,’’ their ‘‘differences’’ depending on the period inquestion, the singularity of each artist, of each work, all of these thingswere already being measured according to their greater or lesser distancefrom a unique point whose common name, in our text, is ilcolmo della perfezione, and whose proper name is everywhere in Vasari:Michelangiolo—Michelangelo as perfection realized, perfection mademanifest. 42 Today, many historians continue to think in accordancewith this value schema, which has the double advantage of presentinghistory as the adventure of an idea and of providing an ‘‘enlightened’’(I would say rather: idealist) basis for valuations in today’s art market.Moreover, we might say, with some irony, that the first great historianof art had already opted, of course unawares (but then most oftoday’s are scarcely more aware of it), for a neo-Hegelian positionwith regard to historicity. 43 What does this mean? Only three things,which provide an approximation of a system at once more rigorous,more generous, and more imperious than the one that Hegel himselfgave us. In short, Hegel reduced (with some distortion, hence my use