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

Art as Rebirth 71second edition of the Lives: if Vasari essentially refused to subscribe tothe limits set by Borghini regarding its biographical component, heamply developed the procedures of cataloguing, chronology, and ekphrasisof works that the humanist suggested to him. 37 But does thismean, as is widely claimed, that between 1550 and 1568 Vasari passedfrom the ‘‘literary’’ field to that of the history of art? Not at all. Forthe problem, yet again, lies elsewhere.A history can be realistic and accurate in the same way that we saya novel is plausible. Realism and catalogue can tally completely withthe rhetorical traits of a discourse—but this changes nothing about theproblem of the crack between knowledge and truth. Vasari indeeddrew up lists, gave dates, researched details. Like historians today, hemust have assembled note files. It might even be said that he did notwait for Borghini’s suggestions to constitute one of the fundamentaltools of his history of art, namely his famous collection of masterdrawings, his Libro de’ Disegni. 38 But does that mean that Vasari’s endschanged? Nothing could be less certain. For his collection of drawings,far from constituting a call to order from some supposed ‘‘real’’ ofhistory, became on the contrary the most tractable tool imaginablefor the invention of an order, the invention of a meaning of history.Assembling a collection was not a matter of illustrating history-in-themakingwith a rosary of concrete proofs; rather, it was a matter ofpreconceiving and fabricating the reality of these proofs, which basicallycomes down to inventing history itself as a rhetorical strategy ofthe album. 39 It was to choose the order before the proofs, to choosethe relations before the terms. And thus to invent outright a reality—infact: a symbolic order—of history. It was to frame, to isolatewhat it seemed necessary to isolate, and, moreover, to create relationsbetween places, antecedents, analogies, etc; in short, it was to legislateover the objects and give them a meaning, a direction. 40 Vasari arrangedhis Libro of drawings like his book of Lives: he strung pearls (away of saying that he accumulated his treasure of knowledge), but soas to give form to his necklace (the preconceived form of ideal ends)and to create at the same time an object of prestige (in accordancewith the social ends of nobilità). 41Vasari, then, won the day on every front: a realistic and accurate