About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W H Auden
This case study considers the extent to which ideas proposed by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography may be applicable generally to other types of images, particularly paintings. It should be acknowledged that this is not a line of enquiry that Barthes himself would have countenanced. He asserts at the outset a desire ‘to learn at all costs what Photography was in itself, by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of images’.[1]
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W H Auden
This case study considers the extent to which ideas proposed by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography may be applicable generally to other types of images, particularly paintings. It should be acknowledged that this is not a line of enquiry that Barthes himself would have countenanced. He asserts at the outset a desire ‘to learn at all costs what Photography was in itself, by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of images’.[1]
My particular understanding and
knowledge of ‘the community of images’ acts as a barrier to fully engaging with
Barthes’s method; he asserted, ‘I want to be a primitive, without culture.’[2] My experience is grounded on the opposite
premise, that images can only be understood
within culture through objective analysis. My approach to Art History remains broadly in line with
the methodology set out in Panofsky’s essay History
of Art as a Humanistic Discipline in which he proposed placing art objects within a ‘cosmos of
culture’.[3] Wood characterised this approach: ‘The strategy was to isolate the work
temporarily in order to grasp more clearly its deep structural principles, and
then ultimately to reinsert the work into its primordial environment on more
legitimate grounds. ‘[4] Some critics adopted a more scientific
approach. For example, Gombrich’s Art and Illusion, employed discoveries
relating to visual perception to explore ‘illusionism’ in Western Art. [5]
Where more recent developments were embraced – relating to semiotics for
example – Berger’s influential Ways of
Seeing sought to place discussion of the image firmly within the context of
material culture.[6]
Given this broadly ‘cultural turn’ then Barthes’s more provocative
assertions such as ‘a photograph is
always invisible, it is not it that we see’ seem at times counter-intuitive and
sometimes deliberately mystifying, and any attempt to place Camera Lucida
within ‘the community of images’ fated
towards an inevitable impasse.[7]
1. An Encounter with Barthes in
Bruges
Coincidence came to the
rescue. During a visit to Bruges I
happened to read an excerpt from Camera Lucida just before visiting the
Groeninge Museum. A subsequent ‘encounter’ with two works in the museum helped
me to place Barthes’s ‘mathesis singularis’ within a broader art historical
context. It demanded that I reflect on my personal responses to the pictures. Although this risked blurring the boundary
between critical analysis and anecdotal reflection, in order to understand Barthes’s
heuristic approach it seems necessary to engage in it. First I need to recount a minor incident
which occurred next to Van Eyck’s Virgin
and Child with Canon Van der Paele (Appendix 1, Fig 1):
In order to
turn ‘singularity into a virtue’ and enable his heuristic pursuit of the
‘genius’ of Photography, Barthes performed a simple rhetorical trick.[9] He corralled ‘average’ images and the culture in which they
were situated into an invented category termed ‘the studium’.[10] This move cleared the way for Barthes to ‘make himself the sole
‘mediator for all Photography by concentrating on those images which ‘existed’ only
for him, and from that ‘formulate the fundamental […] universal features’ of
Photography.[11] The incident in the
museum reveals that Barthes’s – admittedly egotistical – approach is not merely
a rhetorical flourish. Art galleries can be regarded as ‘the studium’ institutionalised.
An image hung in a gallery is elevated and made ‘average’ simultaneously:
elevated into a cultural icon, but equal among many.
The
attendant’s intervention indicates that galleries operate not as cultural
store-houses but as shrines. Berger expresses this as a process of
‘mystification’ where the works of art are ‘enveloped in an atmosphere of bogus
religiosity’.[12] He acknowledges his debt
to Walter Benjamin’s work which developed the notion of works of art being
accorded an ‘aura’; Benjamin usefully differentiates between the original ‘cult
value’ of the image – often derived from its religious function – and a
latter-day ‘exhibition value’, based upon pricelessness, hence Berger’s
assertion that the ‘aura’ is ‘bogus’. [13] The attendant
intervened, not because there was any physical risk to the painting protected
by a thick glass screen, but because the spectator’s enthusiastic gesture offended
some unspoken decorum accorded to the image, not because of its ritual value but
from its material, exhibition value.
The
on-looker’s animated, visceral response before Van Eyck’s iridescent altarpiece
(Appendix 1 fig. 1) resembles Barthes ‘affective intentionality’ towards those
photographs which ‘pricked’ him and stood out from the mass of images he deemed
as ‘unary’. He termed these ‘poignant’ images ‘the punctum’, ascribing a
variety of epithets to the phenomena: wounds, specks, stings, little holes (p26),
also, adventure (p19) a turn (as in milk) (p6).[14] In most cases, for Barthes, it is an apparently insignificant
detail within the image which provokes the visceral reaction. By comparing the
experience of visitor to the Bruges museum with descriptions of Barthes’s
response to photographs it is possible to speculate if the two reactions are
related and so draw some conclusions regarding the extent to which assertions
about the nature of photography can be applied more broadly to some types of
painting.
It unsurprising
that a spectator standing in front of the Van Eyck is struck by the detail of
the carpet, for it spills, like a garish cascade down the dais’ steps towards
them. Van Eyck’s mastery of linear perspective enables the Virgin and Child,
Canon Van der Paele, his patron saints and
the onlooker to share the same space. The painting is an early Flemish example
of a type of devotional painting which had recently emerged in Italy known as a
Sacra Converzione. The painting represents a revolution in terms of theology,
composition and technique. Comparison with The
Wilton Diptych (Appendix 1, fig 2) produced thirty years previously reveal
these innovations; in The Wilton Diptych
the realms of the divine and secular are physically separated on opposing
panels, whereas, Van Eyck includes mortal and divine participants within an integrated
space. Moreover, the beholder of the Van Eyck is summoned through the
perspectival device of a single vanishing point to share the pictorial space,
whereas the Wilton Diptych’s profile portrait of Richard II emphasises the
pre-eminence of the picture plane. Barthes, one suspects, would have dismissed
such an overt, illusionistic ploy as an instance of a unary image where ’”unity”
of composition (is) the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric.’[15] However, it is not the absorbing illusionism - the arrangement
- which ‘pricks’ the onlooker, but the peculiar physicality of the painting,
and it is here where the relationship with Barthes’s ‘punctum’ resides.
Erwin Panofsky
writes of the Van Eyck painting in the following terms:
From the sheer sensuous beauty of a
genuine Jan Van Eyck there emanates a strange fascination not unlike that which
we experience when […] hypnotised by precious stones or when looking into very
deep water.[16]
Van Eyck’s technique is to apply a
uniform intensity across the whole picture, thus the tufts on the carpet are afforded
the same miniaturist attention as The Virgin Mary’s facial features. Whereas
the earlier Wilton Diptych had asserted the cult value of the artefact through
the use of extensive use gold leaf and expensive lapis lazuli pigment, it is Van
Eyck’s virtuoso skill that imparts the devotional function; that this was well
understood at the time is shown by the Latin inscription on the frame which refers
to a ‘spotless mirror’ clearly connecting the painter’s technique with a
metaphor used in contemporary theological writing in relation to The Virgin
Mary’s purity.[17]
Early in the twentieth century the
pioneering Art Historian, Bernard Berenson, sought to account for the material
impact of such paintings by putting forward a theory linking retinal
impressions to ‘tactile values’; that a painting’s texture stimulated a
‘tactile imagination’ through a process akin to synaesthesia.[18]
Texture’s appeal to ‘tactile values’ are also central to certain of Barthes’s reflections
concerning the ‘punctum’. His description of the dirt road which forms the
background to - A Kertesz: The
Violinist’s Tune, Abony, Hungary, 1921 (Appendix
1 fig 3) - is typical.[19]
He writes, ‘…the dirt road; its texture gives me certainty of being in in
Central Europe; […] (here the photograph really transcends itself…to annihilate
itself as medium, to be no longer a
sign but the thing itself?).’ Compare Panofsky’s concluding thoughts regarding
the Jan Van Eyck altarpiece: ‘it claims to be both a real object […] and a
reconstruction rather than a mere representation of the visible world.’ The
correlation is apparent, both images, though the intensity of their ‘tactile
value’ transcend the representational medium to reconstruct experience rather
than represent it.
Other images in Camera Lucida display similar textural
presence, for example Charles Clifford’s Alhambra (p 39). However, it would be
wrong to assert that the majority of the images that ‘pricked’ the author were
of this ilk. Rather the point here is that there are closer connections between
established art theory and Barthes’s observations than his avowed heuristic
method might lead us to believe. For example, the analysis of gesture in
Mapplethorpe’s Young Man with Hand
Extended (p58) and the commentary on
the image of two nuns in Koen Wessings’s Nicaragua
(p22) could easily fall within established
iconographical discourse concerning ‘expressional meaning’.[20]
Moreover, discussion of ‘Lewis H. Hine: Idiot Children in an Institution, New Jersey
1924’ explores detail - ‘the boy’s huge Danton collar, the girl’s finger
bandage.’ [21]The ‘wounding’ effect of this image could just as easily accounted for from a
classical semiotic standpoint which considers the connotations of each detail
as Barthes insistent refusal to ‘inherit anything from another eye than my
own’.
Perhaps the aspect of Camera Lucida
which is most interesting and distinct from previous theory concerns the discussion
of photographs in relation to ‘punctum as time’ rather than ‘form’ – the
lacerating emphasis of the noeme (that-has-been”).[22] It is this ‘catastrophic’ aspect of
Camera Lucida which will now be considered.
2. The Invisible Picture – A Barthesian Murder Mystery.
First, however we must briefly
re-visit the Groeningse Museum and the notion that galleries are the ‘studium
institutionalised’. The museum’s chronological arrangement of artefacts charts
the slow decline of Bruges as a mercantile power. The great works of the Flemish Primitives are
displayed in the first room; when you
approach the exit the paintings become more provincial, less ‘important’. I
noted as I left, a Magritte (minor work!), and a late nineteenth century
realist family portrait which I glanced at cursorily. Over the next few days something unexpected
occurred; it was not the Flemish masterpieces that I recalled, but the
disregarded family portrait. Furthermore, the face of the youth on the left of
the picture haunted me; when I thought of it I was struck by a pervasive sadness.
An annoyingly irrational response; nonetheless I felt compelled to track the
painting down. This proved more difficult than envisaged; no amount of
searching – Boolean or otherwise – could unearth the image. Ignoring an anxiety
that I may have dreamed the picture, I gave up on Google and emailed the museum
(Appendix 1 fig 4).
This situation illustrates two key ideas
in Camera Lucida. Firstly, the picture had become invisible; recovering it
required me to articulate a lost painting. It felt like some kind of whodunit
where the image had replaced the ubiquitous body in the library. Secondly, the
way I had been moved by a detail – the youth’s facial expression – resembled the
effect on Barthes of particular photographs ‘punctuated with […] sensitive
points.[23]
A forthcoming seminar presentation
required me to find a still image as the basis for discussion. When the curator
responded to my email identifying the ‘lost painting’ as a work by Edmond von Hove - Triptych, with
portraits of the artist and his family; I decided to comparison of the painting with ideas taken from Camera
Lucida.
Rather than reiterating the
presentation’s content I prefer to critically re-evaluate it, as I became
dissatisfied with its conclusions almost immediately. Comparing the description of the painting in
the email (Appendix 1, fig 4) with the work itself (Appendix 1, fig 3) reveals
key differences between the actual image and the way I recalled it: the memorized picture was a unified
scene, not a triptych, moreover, the figure of the artist’s wife had been
sidelined.[24]
Barthes’s apparently counter-intuitive
assertion that the picture is ‘not what we see’ was shown to be perceptive; it
is what we remember and know which re-constitutes the image in
our mind’s eye. The various ‘readings’ of the painting (the studium) put
forward in the presentation are relevant here only to the extent they failed
entirely to account for its punctum – the young man’s face.[25] The presentation
concluded that the visceral response was sparked by ‘latent recognition’; that
the onlooker recognized his own face as a child in that of the young man in the
painting, and recalled a particular family photograph which provoked a strong
emotional response (Appendix 1, Fig. 6.)[26]
This conclusion was troublesome on
two counts: Firstly the extent to which it rested on subjective, personal
anecdote felt at odds with accepted academic standards related to objectivity
and personal bias; secondly, the conclusion appeared to contradict Barthes in
one important respect - his insistence that the punctum cannot be explained. He
likens it to a haiku which is ‘undevelopable: […] neither the Haiku or the
Photograph can make us “dream”’.[27]
What then of my conclusion? Was it merely a rationalisation after the fact, an
outbreak of sentimentality?
3. The Remembrance of the Dead
As I prepared the presentation it
became clear that my understanding of Camera Lucida was hampered from having
read only substantial extracts, all taken from part one. After I found a
complete copy it soon became clear that part two of the work is fundamentally
different and develops ideas found in earlier chapters to the point of
contradicting them. Far from asserting that the punctum cannot be explained,
Barthes, grieving at the recent death of his mother, expands his ideas around
this ‘subtle beyond’ into a profound contemplation of the relationship between the
‘noeme’ of photography (that-has been) with memory, lineage and mortality.
Indeed, his discussion in chapter 40 of ancestral resemblance comes uncannily
close to my own speculation regarding the young man in the Van Hove painting.
How could this be? Setting aside
intuition, a shared source had to be the only explanation.
Section VI of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction states:
In photography, exhibition value
begins to replace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give
way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human
countenance. […] The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers
the last refuge of the cult value of the picture.[28]
Part 2 of Camera Lucida can be
interpreted as an extended and profound re-evaluation of the ‘cult value of the
picture’. Some of the earliest representations of recognisable individuals lie
in the funerary monuments of ancient Athens. The deceased are shown seated,
bidding farewell to their loved ones. These modest sculptures share with
Barthes’s photographs, a punctum - the noeme (that has been). Barthes is correct to recognise the unique
evidential power of the photograph which unlike previous types of representation
can never ‘feign reality without having seen it’.[29]
Nevertheless, in the area of portraiture at least, as Benjamin states, there is
continuous, long standing pictorial tradition linked to the ‘the cult of
remembrance’. Gombrich suggests a physiological basis to this: ‘the recognition
of the human face […] is based on some kind of inborn disposition of biological
significance to our survival’.[30]
Camera Lucida is more closely
connected with the theory and history of Western Art than Barthes would have us
believe. His singular approach, segregating particular photographs to analyse
them heuristically, resembles Panofsky’s method of isolating works from culture
in order to reinstate them more legitimately. After a century where the thrust
of History of Art seemed largely a quest for objectivity, Barthes reinstated
the subjective, treating photographs as having cult value – devotional objects.
However, whereas the cult value of religious art depended upon adherence to
received doctrine as the onlooker contemplated immutable truth, Barthes
substitutes religious meditation with what might be termed humane pensiveness and proposes a ‘new science for each object’, a
secular methodology to engage with the latent power of the image within a unary
culture that rejoices via Snapchat.
[1] Barthes,
Roland, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, (London:
Vintage, 1980, trans 1993) p 3
[2] Ibid.
p.7
[3] Panofsky,
Erwin, ‘History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’, in Meaning in the
Visual Arts, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993) , pp 23-81.
[4] Wood,
Christopher S, ‘Introduction’, in Perspective as Symbolic Form, Erwin
Panofsky, trans, by Christopher S Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991) pp. 7-24.
[5] Gombrich,
E, H, Art and Illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial
representation, 5th edn, (Oxford, Phaidon, 1977)
[6] Berger,
John, Ways of Seeing, (London: BBC and Penguin Books, 1972)
[7] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.6.
[8] Heels
For Dust. (2013) Windmills in the Mist. [On-line] 1.11.2013.
Available from - http://gillandpete.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/windmills-in-mist.html
[Accessed: 14.12.2013].
[9] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.8
[10] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.26
[11] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.9
[12] Berger,
John. op. cit,. p21
[13] Benjamin,
Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936
). [On-line] Available from - http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
[Accessed 13.12.12]
[14] ‘Barthes.
Roland, op.cit.
[15] ‘Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.41.
[16] Panofsky,
Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting, (London: Oxford University
Press, 1954) vol. 1, p. 180.
[17]
Kilbourn, Russel, J. A., Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representation of
Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema, (Oxford: Routledge, 2013) p.
151
[18] The
Dictionary of Art, ed. by Jane Turner, (London: Grove Dictionaries, Macmillan,
1996) pp. 764-765
.[19]
Panofsky, Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting, op. cit., p180.
[20]
Panofsky, Erwin, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of The Renaissance,
(Oxford: OUP, 1939) p3. Ebook, Perseus On Demand:
http://tems.umn.edu/pdf/Panofsky_iconology2.pdf [Accessed 17.12.2013]
[21]
Barthes. Roland, op.cit., p.50.
[22]
Barthes. Roland, op.cit., p.96.
[23]
Barthes. Roland, op.cit., p.27.
[24] Turpie,
Peter, The invisible picture: encountering Barthes in Bruges .
Microsoft Powerpoint, 13 /11/2013 , slide 7. Available from - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1F5OCp74F-tIMd2Uc6lbSQ4ycXQUQkqF37uybepFXoQs/edit?usp=sharing
[25] Ibid,
slides 8 – 11.
[26] Ibid,
slides 13 & 14.
[27] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.49
[28] Benjamin,
Walter, op. cit.
[29] Barthes.
Roland, op.cit., p.76
[30] Gombrich,
E, H, op. cit., p. 87
Appendix 1
Figure 1, Jan Van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Canon Van der Paele; Bruges, Groeninge Museum. 1436
Figure 1, Jan Van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Canon Van der Paele; Bruges, Groeninge Museum. 1436
Figure 2, Unknown, the Wilton Diptych, London: National Gallery, around 1395 – 1399.
Figure 3, A. Kertesz: The Violinist's Tune, Hungary, 1921.
Figure 4. Email to Groeninge Museum, 31.10.2013
Figure 3, A. Kertesz: The Violinist's Tune, Hungary, 1921.
Figure 4. Email to Groeninge Museum, 31.10.2013
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