Narcissus in Troubled Waters: Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall [1 ed.] 9788891304834, 9788891304896

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Protea

Henri de Riedmatten is Head of the Research Program of the Swiss Institute in Rome. He holds a master’s in philosophy and a doctorate in history of art from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In the course of his studies he has been a research assistant at Harvard University, and a scientific collaborator at the National Centre of Competence in Research “Mediality– Historical Perspectives” of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is also the author of articles on issues of reflection and self-reflection in contemporary art.

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NARCISSUS IN TROUBLED WATERS

NARCISSUS IN TROUBLED WATERS Francis Bacon Bill Viola Jeff Wall

Francis Bacon Bill Viola Jeff Wall Henri de Riedmatten Preface by

Victor I. Stoichita

Henri de Riedmatten

Narcissus in Troubled Waters explores the myth of Narcissus from its earliest sources, to offer a study of its repercussions on the art of the 20th century. The myth is a cultural archetype, to be found all through Western literature and art history, a myth that is at the origin of a strategy of representation that confronts a person with his or her own image through a medium. This study brings to light the situations of illusion structuring this founding story in each of its variations, and examines their reformulation in visual terms: in the work of Caravaggio and Poussin, then through various examples taken from the artistic activity of the 20th century right up to our own time. As such, the metamorphosis of Narcissus into a concept—narcissism—and above all its re-elaboration through the image—the mirror stage—are confronted with the myth. On the strength of the different historical, exegetic, and visual layers covering the story of Narcissus, this book offers case studies taken from the work of three artists, Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, and Jeff Wall. Each of the three bodies of work selected exemplifies the use of a different artistic medium: painting, video, and photography. They offer not only a reverberation of the myth and/or its visual instantiations but can, moreover, interact with each other, communicating at times through the grace of an explicit reference from one artist to another, in such a way that this work is constructed as a coherent thematic circuit.

On the cover:

H. DE RIEDMATTEN NARCISSUS ISBN 978-88-913-0489-6

«L’ERMA»

«L’ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER

Bill Viola, Purification, 2005, rear projected color High-Definition video diptych, screen size: 223 cm x 260 cm; room dimensions variable. Performers: Jeff Mills, Lisa Rhoden. Photo: Kira Perov.

PROTEA 3 Collection directed by Marc Bayard

This work has been published with the support of the Boner Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur, the National Centre of Competence in Research “Mediality– Historical Perspectives” (Swiss National Science Foundation) and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland The English translation of this work has been made possible thanks to the support of the Office of Cultural Affairs of the State of Valais, Switzerland

Henri de Riedmatten

NARCISSUS IN TROUBLED WATERS Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall Preface by

Victor I. Stoichita Translated by

Alison Anderson

«L’ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER

Henri de Riedmatten Narcissus in Troubled Waters Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall Graphic design and layout Rossella Corcione ISBN 978-88-913-0489-6 (BROSSURA) ISBN 978-88-913-0483-4 (PDF) © Copyright 2014 «L’ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER Via Cassiodoro, 11 - 00193 Roma http://www.lerma.it All rights reserved. The reproduction of text and illustrations is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher. Originally published as Narcisse en eaux troubles Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall © Copyright 2011 «L’ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER

The bibliography has been amended and updated for the English-language version

Riedmatten, Henri de Narcissus in Troubled Waters: Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall / Henri de Riedmatten. - Roma : «L’ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER, 2014. - 240 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. (Protea ; 3)



Table of Contents

9

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

11

PREFACE by Victor I. Stoichita

15 1. INTRODUCTION 21

2. THE SOURCES OF NARCISSUS

21 26 28 31 35

Ovid The Stage of the Other Caravaggio’s Narcissus The Stage of the Mirror Nicolas Poussin, Echo and Narcissus

45 45 47 49 52 61 64

Greek Sources Konon Pausanias The Narcissus Flower in the Myth of Demeter and Persephone Philostratus Nicolas Poussin, The Birth of Bacchus In the Mirror of Zagreus/Dionysus

67

Leon Battista Alberti

71

3. NARCISSUS ENCOUNTERING NARCISSISM: THE MIRROR IMAGE

72 75 76 78

Jacques Lacan: The Mirror Stage The Specular Reflection The Illusion of the Image Death

81 85

Der Todestrieb Scopic Drive and Death Drive

6 93 93

4. FRANCIS BACON “DE-FACED” SELF-PORTRAITS “Death at Work”

107 Late 60s 112 The Face in Shreds 116 The Face on a Strip 120 Early 70s 122 The Black Hole-Face 129 The End 130 The Face of Shadow and Light 131 The Face to Dust 135 5. BILL VIOLA A DISTURBED MIRROR 135 The Reflecting Pool 147 Narcissus in Tears 147 The Passions 173 Purification 187

6. JEFF WALL SELF-REPRESENTATION AND THE SELF-REFLECTIVITY OF THE MEDIUM

207

7. CONCLUSION

211

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

235

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

For my parents

Acknowledgments

T

his book came about as the result of a doctoral thesis in art history, presented in 2009 at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, under the direction of Victor Stoichita. Professor Stoichita’s generosity, patience and ever-willing support, as well as the work shared with his team and the numerous discussions, courses, and seminars, all contributed to a precious working environment to which this study is entirely beholden. It is my heartfelt hope that these few lines will convey to him and his wife Anna Maria Coderch the depth of my gratitude. My sincere thanks go also to Christiane Kruse, who very kindly agreed to officiate as second expert on the jury, which also comprised Véronique Dasen, Tiziana Suarez-Nani and Luca Zoppelli. Their comments and support have greatly contributed to this work. This volume is the result of several years of research in my capacity as scientific collaborator on the project entitled: “Repères pour une histoire de la représentation de la chair dans l’art occidental (Benchmarks for a History of the Representation of Flesh in Western Art),” within the framework of the “Transference” program at the National Centre of Competence in Research “Mediality – Historical Perspectives” (Swiss National Science Foundation/ University of Zurich). From the very start, my research has enjoyed the unconditional support of Ambros Boner and the Boner Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur, who made it possible for me to spend time at Harvard University as a research assistant. From the moment I took up my position at the Swiss Institute in Rome, the director, Christoph Riedweg, the president of the scientific commission, Philippe Mudry, and his wife Anica, along with the council of the foundation as presided over by Charles Kleiber, have unfailingly encouraged me to publish this work.

10 This book is, in fact, the result of a fortunate encounter at the Villa Medici with Marc Bayard, the director of the collection which this book has had the honor to inaugurate; our encounter very soon led to friendship. He and the entire team at L’Erma di Bretschneider—in particular Caterina Pazzi, Elena Montani and Rossella Corcione—have literally carried this project in their outstretched arms, with unfailing enthusiasm and without ever allowing the author to lose heart. My friends Etienne Parrat, Nicolas Galley and Marc Bayard read various versions of the manuscript and helped to ensure its clarity and accessibility. My thanks also go to Marie Vacher and to my mother for their reading and final editing of the text. I would also like to express my gratitude to Bill Viola, Kira Perov and Christen Sperry-Garcia of the Bill Viola Studio for their assistance and for so graciously providing me with pictures of the artist and for allowing me to reproduce them in this book. Likewise, my gratitude to Jeff Wall and Shane Osterhof of the Jeff Wall Studio. For the acquisition of other images and reproduction rights, my thanks once again to Patrizia Bicelli, Eva Bodinet, Vazken Davidian, Joanna Ling, Jessica O’Donnell, Kenneth Pietrobono and Michela Santoni. I would also like to extend my thanks to Alison Anderson for translating this book into English. Her insight into the text frequently enriched it. In Fribourg, Zurich, Cambridge (MA), Rome and elsewhere, I am immensely grateful for the information, advice and encouragement granted me by François Ansermet, Benjamin Buchloh, Thomas Cummins, Bill Duba, Jörg Dünne, Nicolas Duruz, Brian English, Eckart Goebel, Yves Hersant, Lilian Juriens, Christian Kiening, Alexandre Métraux, Dorothea von Mücke, Barbara Naumann, Valentin Nussbaum, Edgar Pankow, Martina Stercken, Damien Travelletti, Hugo van der Velden, Tristan Weddigen and Benno Wirz.

Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the French are by Alison Anderson.

Preface

T

his book questions the received opinion according to which the great myths of classical antiquity have died for good. It proves, in particular, that the beautiful story of Narcissus (whom we have seen, since Leon Battista Alberti, as a figure of pictorial representation), far from succumbing to the pressure of time and the inevitable changes in the notion of art in the contemporary era, has retained, even to this day, all its emblematic value. Henri de Riedmatten’s book deals with the avatars of the myth of Narcissus in contemporary art, and it does so in a subtle and nuanced way. It does not aim to conduct research into iconology, but rather into mediology. An initial chapter demonstrates analytically that the myth of Narcissus, as crystallized in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and discussed by other ancient sources, has, in essence, been a “visual” myth. The story of the young man who falls in love with his own reflection concerns, on the one hand, the medial perception of the reflective surface and, on the other, the relationship between identity and otherness—whence the multiple psychological or even psychoanalytic implications inherent in this myth. Two analyses of images, focused on Caravaggio’s Narcissus and Nicolas Poussin’s Echo and Narcissus have been conceived as case studies whose aim is to shed light on two different modalities of “visualizing a visual myth.” Caravaggio’s well-known painting is examined as a deconstruction of the original myth, which “freezes our ‘effect of seeing’” by granting a place of privilege to the violence of the moment and the fascination elicited by focalizing on the figure, whereas Poussin’s Echo and Narcissus aims to contain the entire story of Narcissus and Echo within the limits of a painting. On the strength of this preamble the book then launches into a critique of the Lacanian notion of the “mirror stage.” This is a core chapter detailing the importance of Jacques Lacan’s approach on the one hand, and on the other, the weak or even obscure as-

12 pects of his theory. His conclusion emphasizes the fact that the reelaboration of Freudian narcissism through the Lacanian mirror stage remains at a distance from the myth. Narcissus, as Henri de Riedmatten shows us, never really undergoes the ordeal of narcissism. And yet madness and death resonate in the perception of his specular image. Once this theoretical basis has been established, the book turns to the “Narcissus effect” in contemporary art, analyzing the work of three significant artists from the 20th and 21st centuries: Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, and Jeff Wall. Implicit in Riedmatten’s choice is the conscious focus of his research on three ways of expressing the theme of “narcissism” through different media: painting, video and photography. There are several useful conclusions one can draw here. The discussion of Francis Bacon’s art, for example, seen above all in the light of his self-portraits, is based on the Deleuzian notion of “faciality [visagéité]” and emphasizes the role played by the mirror within the production scenario as implemented by the English artist. The chapter devoted to Bill Viola investigates three important cycles of the video director’s work: The Reflecting Pool (1977-1979), The Passions (2000), and Purification (2005). It is based on a thorough knowledge of the three works in question and the relevant documentation available. Personal contact and conversation with the video artist gave Henri de Riedmatten direct insight into Viola’s creative laboratory. Of particular interest are the conclusions regarding the baptismal symbolism of water and the cleansing connotations of tears. This chapter also provides a good example of modern visual research, as conducted by Bill Viola, anchored in the figurative tradition of devotional images. Finally, the last chapter, through the work of Jeff Wall, examines self-representation and the self-reflexivity of a medium. Here once again the debate with tradition as opened by the Canadian artist is analyzed from every angle. Riedmatten shows us what a work like the pseudo-triptych Picture for Women (1979) owes to Manet’s last masterpiece, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, which Jeff Wall, significantly, had studied attentively during his stay in London at the beginning of the 1970s. He also shows how the mise en scène of this image creates a “balancing act” between transparency and opacity, between the real and illusive presence of the mirror, between the photographic representation of the artist and the mark of the author. What makes this book a remarkable achievement is the author’s ability to combine philosophical reflection and the study of written

13 sources with the deciphering of the language of images, considered in close relation to the medium. The book proves not only that great myths survive but also that the history of art, far from having used up all its resources, is capable of self-renewal by bringing important answers to the burning questions of present-day artistic creation. Victor I. Stoichita

1

Introduction

This book will explore the myth of Narcissus from its earliest, ancient origins then, from a medial perspective, study its repercussions on the art of the 20th century. In the version of the myth that has come down to us from Ovid,1 Narcissus relates with his reflected image on the surface of the water through a dual process of recognition: the recognition of self, and the recognition of the medial properties of the surface. This process, which can range from a complete ignorance of the presence of a surface up to the recognition of a mirror, constitutes the “poetics of illusion”2 that underlie the drama with which Narcissus is confronted. Initially he does not recognize himself; he is stunned and fascinated as he contemplates the “other young man” looking back at him, a youth of unprecedented beauty. The illusion is total. Such an illusion, which causes him to fail to recognize his own reflection, is the fruit of his “strange passion,”3 which Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, has chosen as the instrument with which to inflict her punishment on Narcissus, for spurning love and disdainfully rejecting his many admirers, both men and women. Eventually Narcissus—not before going through various stages of recognition—will grasp that this “other,” whose peerless beauty he has been admiring, is an image—an image of himself—requiring the support of a medium in order to gain access to its visibility.4 However, even after he has identified his reflection as such, Narcissus’ amorous madness persists: tears come to disturb his image on the surface of the water, and his madness will ineluctably lead him to certain death. The current medial reading of the Ovidian version is in line with the ideas expressed in the work of Rheinart Herzog and Christiane Kruse,5 The Ovidian version of the myth of Narcissus can be found in: Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 339-510 (Met., III). English translation by Anthony S. 1

Kline, in: Ovid, Metamorphoses, A.S. Kline (ed.), 2004. 2 This term was taken from the title of the work by P. Hardie, 2002. 3 Met., III, 350 (novitasque furoris). 4 See the definition of the medium according to H. Belting, (2001) 2011, p. 18: “In art historical parlance “medium” is commonly used either of the genre in which an artwork is produced or of the material used by an artist. When I speak of a “medium” however, I am talking about that which conveys or hosts an image, making it visible, turning it into a picture.” See also G. Boehm, 1994, pp. 325-343; G. Boehm, 1999, pp. 165-178. 5 R. Herzog, 1992, pp. 21-23 (My thanks to Christiane Kruse for giving me access to this text). Reinhart Herzog also refers to Karlheinz Stierle, replicating the structure of his Dreistufenmodell in: K. Stierle, (1975) 1997, pp. 289-326. Cf. C. Kruse, 1998, pp. 102-103. This article also appeared in a slightly modified and enhanced form as a chapter in: C. Kruse, 2003, pp. 312-313.

16

H. Belting, (2001) 2004, p. 9 (Foreword to the French edition): “Therefore I chose another path, by deciding to analyze the image in a so-to-speak triangular configuration, through the relation shared by three distinct parameters: image-medium-gaze or image-device [dispositif]-body, for I could not possibly imagine an image without immediately placing it in a close correlation with a gazing body and a medium that is gazed at.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 7 Met., III, 418-426. 8 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 23, pp. 88-89. The title of the collection in Greek is Eikones: Images. On the connection between painting and the surface of the water in the ekphrasis of the work representing Narcissus, see also Fr. Frontisi-Ducroux, 1980, p. 123. 9 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 26, p. 46: “Things being so, I have taken the habit of saying, among friends, that the inventor of painting was, according to the opinion of the poets, that [famous] Narcissus who was transformed into a flower. As the painting is in fact the flower of all the arts, thus the whole tale of Narcissus perfectly adapts to the topic itself. To paint, in fact, is what else if not to catch with art that surface of the spring?”. 6

while it is also based on the triangular configuration of image – medium (device [dispositif]) – gaze (body) proposed by Hans Belting in his plea for “an anthropology of images.”6 The myth of Narcissus according to Ovid or even the Greek sources—Konon, Pausanias or Philostratus, for example—is fascinating in and of itself: not only does it portray in a primordial way this anthropological perspective with its three parameters, it also simultaneously projects a situation of disturbance and interference that tend, in a way, to contaminate the relationship between each of them. Each of these ancient acceptations of the myth preserves, to varying degrees, the representational kernel engaging Narcissus’ perception of the self-image through a medium, while portraying various strategies of illusion that serve to disturb the tripartite relation—sowing confusion, for example, as to the nature of its elements and their interaction. My approach throughout will be principally of a visual nature. While I aim, through my analysis, to bring to light the instances of illusion that structure this founding myth in each of its variations, it is above all with a view to discussing their expression and reformulation in visual terms, in particular in the work of artists such as Caravaggio or Nicolas Poussin. The myth of Narcissus, moreover, seems to appeal to any form of visual representation—pictorial or other. Indeed, the story itself already brings together the viewer and the illusionist work of art. Just to take one example, Narcissus is fascinated by what Ovid describes as a peerless work of art.7 As for Philostratus, he has us wander through a gallery of paintings and insists on the homological connection between watery surface and pictorial surface;8 whereas during the Quattrocento the myth was enriched by a new assertion on the part of Leon Battista Alberti: Narcissus is the inventor of painting.9 The myth of Narcissus is a cultural archetype, to be found all through Western literature and art history, a myth that is at the origin of a strategy of representation that confronts a person with his or her own image through a medium. It has become paradigmatic of any reflection engaging individuals with their own image in the mirror, and seems, likewise, to be authoritative when it is necessary to consider the relationship of individuals to their image, not only reflected by a mirror but also represented by any other twodimensional support: the canvas of a painting, a cinematographic screen, or a photographic surface, for example. My aim throughout this study, by resorting to different examples from the art of the 20th century to the present day, will be

17 to highlight the various mises en scène and representational strategies that have their origins in this classical example of the Western tradition, but which reformulate it—particularly as these productions and strategies are both filtered through and enriched by the anthropological concerns peculiar to the context from which they have emerged. Therefore I will start my analysis with the dawn of the 20th century, in order to take a closer look at what was then the nascent science of psychoanalysis; to be more exact, the metamorphosis of Narcissus into a notion—the Narcissus-like tendency.10 This notion starts by describing an excessive form of auto-eroticism, before going on to encounter several shifts that will lead to the Freudian hypothesis of a “normal” narcissism that can be attributed to all human beings.11 And it is precisely the re-elaboration of Freudian narcissism through the image, as undertaken later by Jacques Lacan—the mirror stage 12—that will constitute the crux of my study. In particular, I will endeavor to confront the Lacanian mirror stage with the myth of Narcissus, principally in its Ovidian version, and I will also attempt to see to what extent this stage reflects the “full meaning of the myth of Narcissus”—whether this meaning refers to the specular reflection, the illusion of the image, or death, per Lacan’s own terms.13 In the course of this analysis, I will therefore be called on to go deeper into the two Freudian concepts of the death drive—the “suicidal tendency” according to Lacan—and the scopic drive. I will try to evaluate whether instruments like these can, in turn, be said to enrich any hermeneutic undertaking with regard to the myth. On the strength of the various historical, exegetic, and visual layers covering the myth, I will conduct case studies of the work of three artists, each of whom exemplifies the use of a different, but always two-dimensional artistic medium: painting, video and photography. My study will not seek to be exhaustive, but will focus primarily on exemplarity. This is the result of a deliberate choice, yet it cannot be accused of being incomplete for all that.14 Indeed, the examples chosen from the oeuvre of these three artists—Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, and Jeff Wall—offer not only a reverberation of the myth and/or its visual instantiations but can, moreover, interact with each other, communicating at times through one artist’s explicit reference to another, in such a way that my project is constructed as a coherent thematic circuit. My purpose therefore will be neither to compile an inventory of those works of art directly incarnating the character of Narcissus, nor to conduct strictly iconographic research, but rather to con-

H. Ellis, 1898, pp. 260-299. Cf. also H. Ellis, (1933) 1948, pp. 114-116. 11 S. Freud, (1914) 2003, p. 3. 12 G. Wajcman, 2001, pp. 231232. 13 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 21. 14 V.I. Stoichita, 2008, p. 5. 10

18 sider the various mises en scène that make use of the myth’s specificities in order to render the theme of a “troubled” situation, thus echoing, for example, the different phases of Narcissus’ encounter at the spring. “Troubled” may be interpreted here in a number of ways: the troubled surface of the water, of the medium, causing the figure to be distorted, or even the spectator’s troubled feelings on discovering how difficult it is to discern what he is seeing in the image (different projections of the artist within the body of his work; presence of an individual and his double in the work; mirror relation between the work and the spectator who gazes at it [painted mirror]; etc.). Francis Bacon’s relation with his mirror image as he created his self-portraits will be the subject of one chapter. The mirror showed him, indeed, the daily effects of dying upon his body—on his face, in particular15—which he would invariably try to render on the pictorial surface. To be sure, to undertake in this way the transcription of one’s reflected image onto the surface of the canvas is already part of a tradition of self-representation that goes back to the Albertian myth of Narcissus being the inventor of painting. We will however go deeper into the different pictorial expressions of death that are inherent in the face, by situating them in particular in the perspective of a triadic relation that is already part of the myth and is also at work within the Lacanian stage of the mirror: one’s own body (face)—the image of one’s own body (face) in the mirror—death.

D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 5 (1975), pp. 130-131. 15

The projection of a watery surface, in a dialogue with the screen-surface, is a recurring element in the work of American video artist Bill Viola. The artist constantly resorts to the reflecting properties of such a surface—particularly to disturb it—within the visual construction of his works. A number of his recent projects, for example, deal with the bodily and above all facial expression of human passions, surpassing the traditional representation of pathos inscribed on the protagonists’ faces, through the growing disturbance of the watery surface—whether that surface happens to be a mirror supporting their image, or an obstacle between the screen and the stage where the actors are located. The result is a distortion of their facial features that depicts even more strikingly the emotion that is gripping them. The trouble that is legible on face and surface—especially when it is obtained through tears— with a view to representing human passions even in their most extreme forms can, moreover, be linked, according to Viola himself, to the work of Francis Bacon. Through the manipulation and flow

19 of paint on canvas Bacon was able to imprint suffering on a face or on a body.16 The final chapter will be devoted to Canadian photographer Jeff Wall. His artistic production will be analyzed both within the framework of the artist’s self-representation on a medial surface— photographic this time—and within the poetics of illusion and the improbable, whose aim is to unsettle the viewer and thus question his or her ability to recognize what the image has to offer, oscillating for example between the real or illusive presence of a mirror. In this context I will also examine the reflexive, self-referential nature of his work, as well as the various ways in which it is exhibited, either within a dialectic between depth and flat surface, or when confronted with an image that seeks to unveil its own production scenario. The link created by the artist between photography and the liquid element will lead to a final staging of the place where Narcissus exhaled his last breath.

16 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 207-208.

2

The Sources of Narcissus

Ovid The tale of Narcissus as told by Ovid (43 B.C. – 17 A.D.) appears in the third book of his Metamorphoses. This volume begins with the story of Cadmus, the son of the Phoenician king Agenor, who arrived in Greece to search for his sister Europa (who had been abducted by Jupiter) then vanquished the dragon-snake, son of Mars, and founded the city of Thebes. Cadmus took Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus, as his wife.17 Together they had the daughters Autonoe, the mother of Actaeon; Agave, the mother of Pentheus; Semele, the mother of Bacchus; and Ino, wife of Athamas and mother of Melicertes. They also had a son, Polydorus. By virtue of this genealogy, it turned out that the third book (and part of the fourth book) of Metamorphoses became a suite of Theban legends—and more generally of Boeotian legends, as Thebes was the ancient capital of Boeotia, which belonged primarily to the family of Cadmus.18 Book III unfolds as follows: Cadmus – Actaeon – Semele – Tiresias – Narcissus – Echo – Pentheus – Acoetes (the Tyrrhenian sailors).19 We can also infer from this composition the “all-encompassing” role played by Bacchus vis-à-vis the myth of Narcissus, as the god was directly concerned by the tales dealing first with Semele then with Pentheus and Acoetes. Semele was pregnant with Bacchus, the fruit of her coupling with Jupiter, who seduced her in the guise of a mortal. Juno then sought her revenge: the goddess took on the features of the old nurse Beroe and filled Semele’s mind with doubt as to the nature of her child’s father. She persuaded the young girl to ask Jupiter to appear before her in all his splendor, that he should come and show himself to her just as he would show himself to Juno herself. So Semele asked a favor of Jupiter, without telling him what it was, and the god promised to grant her this favor, no matter what it was.

As is logical, I have preferred to use the Latin appellations for Greek gods all through the passages that refer to Ovid’s text. 18 Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, J. Chamonard (ed.), 1966, pp. 409-410 n. 152. 19 See also the outline suggested by H. Cancik, 1967, p. 46 n. 12. 17

22

Met., III, 253-315. Met., III, 512-733. 22 H. Dörrie, 1967, pp. 59-60. 23 The canton of Boeotia, whose name was extended to all of Boeotia. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, G. Lafaye (ed.), 1928, p. 80 n. 2. 24 Met., III, 316-340. Cf. also H. Dörrie, 1967, pp. 59-60. 20 21

She made her request of him just as Juno had urged her to and, on hearing her words, Jupiter moaned in distress but did not go back on his promise. Semele’s body could not withstand the god’s devastating power, so she died in her lover’s flames. The god did save the barely formed child, however, tearing it from its mother’s womb and sewing it to his own thigh, where it could finish gestating. In the utmost secrecy, the god, still in his cradle, was tended by his aunt Ino. He was then entrusted to the nymphs of Nysa, who hid him in their cave and fed him with milk.20 As for Pentheus, he succeeded Cadmus on the throne of Thebes. He was opposed to the introduction of Dionysian worship in his kingdom, and mistreated the Tyrrhenian sailor Acoetes, who turned out to be Bacchus himself. As a consequence Pentheus suffered the god’s wrath. He went onto Mount Kithairon to spy on the Bacchic rites. He was found out and dismembered by the maenads, led by his own mother, Agave, and his two aunts, Ino and Autonoe: overcome by Bacchic delirium, they took him for a wild boar.21 However, while the character of Bacchus and his birth were important as far as the figure of Narcissus was concerned, it was the seer Tiresias who was at the very origin of the Ovidian structure of the Narcissus myth.22 Tiresias was walking through the forest, and with his stick he disturbed the coupling of two large snakes. Miraculously, he was turned into a woman for seven years. When the eighth year came, he saw the same snakes again and he said, “Since there is such power in plaguing you that it changes the fate of the giver of a blow to the opposite fate, I will strike you again, now.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 328-330). And finally Tiresias regained his initial form as a man. One day Jupiter was exchanging pleasant banter with Juno, and he claimed that women took greater pleasure from the sexual act; Juno contradicted this assertion and together they decided to consult the learned Tiresias for his opinion. As Tiresias was acquainted with the pleasures of Venus as granted to both sexes, he was able to corroborate Jupiter’s opinion. Now Juno was more irritated by his decision than was warranted, and in her anger she “damned the one who had made the judgment to eternal night” (Met., III, 335). Then Jupiter—for no god must undo the works of another god—granted to Tiresias, in compensation for the light that had been taken from him, the gift of foresight. And indeed Tiresias, whose reputation spread throughout the cities of Aonia,23 was infallible in the replies he gave those who consulted.24 To prove that this was so, Ovid would narrate the first event that was proof of the truth of his predictions: the fateful story of Narcissus. Narcissus was the son of the god Cephisus, the river of Boeotia, who took the nymph Liriope in his winding embrace and, once she

23 was imprisoned, raped her. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and gave birth to a child worthy of the love of nymphs; she named him Narcissus. Liriope was the first to consult Tiresias, and asked him how long her child would live: “Being consulted as to whether the child would live a long life, to a ripe old age, the seer with prophetic vision replied “If he does not come to know himself” (Si se non noverit). For a long time the augur’s pronouncement appeared empty words. But in the end it proved true: the outcome, and the cause of his death, and the strangeness of his passion. ([…] exitus illam/Resque probat letique genus novitasque furoris) (Met., III, 346-350).”25

The infallibility of the oracle, which seemed to be contradicting the Delphic precept of gnothi seautón,26 and which underlay the myth, incites Ovid to reveal Narcissus’ death from the very start by alluding to the misfortune that will strike him. This being so, the interest of the narration resides in making explicit what it is that will propel Narcissus into his strange passion (novitasque furoris. Met., III, 350), and the various aspects that passion will assume until the ephebe’s tragic end. The story of Narcissus, in Ovid’s version, is also linked to that of the nymph Echo. Ovid himself is probably responsible for this association, borrowing the character from another context in order to integrate her in a form that perfectly suits his own tale.27 Whenever Juno happened to find nymphs in Jupiter’s company, Echo would offer them the chance to get away by drawing the goddess into a long conversation. Juno eventually caught her at her game, and condemned her to using her speech solely to repeat the last words uttered by those she was conversing with. Narcissus is now fifteen years of age, both boy and youth. He arouses the desire of many young men and girls, but his delicate beauty is accompanied by such intense pride (dura superbia, Met., III, 354) that no one has the right to touch him. Echo, the nymph who can only repeat a sound, sees the handsome young Narcissus chasing the frightened deer, and she instantly falls in love with him. She watches him wandering through the countryside and follows furtively in his footsteps. How often does she hope to go up to him with a caressing word! But she cannot speak first, therefore she listens out for a sound which might allow her to return her own words. Before long the young man, who has become separated from his companions, cries out, “‘Is anyone here?’ (ecquis adest?) and ‘Here’ Echo replied.” (adest). (Met., III, 380)

Met., III, 346-350: “[…] De quo consultus, an esset/Tempora maturae visurus longa senectae,/Fatidicus vates: ‘Si se non noverit’ inquit/Vana diu visa est vox auguris; exitus illam/ Resque probat letique genus novitasque furoris.” 26 Gnōthi seautón means, as is well-known, “know thyself.” For further discussion of this potentially allusive word play, see H. Dörrie, 1967, p. 61; see also H. Cancik, 1967, pp. 47-48. 27 S. Eitrem, 1935, p. 1725; H. Dörrie, 1967, p. 56; H. Cancik, 1967, p. 45; L. Vinge, 1967, pp. 11-12. 25

24 After a few seconds of stupefaction Narcissus gazes in every direction and goes on calling. But all he ever hears are his own words. He does not give up, misled by the illusion of a voice responding to his own (Perstat et alternae deceptus imagine vocis):28 “Here, let us meet together.” (Huc coeamus) And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies “Together,” (coeamus) and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing. He runs from her, and running cries “Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours.” (Emoriar quam sit tibi copia nostri) She answers, only “What’s mine is yours!” (sit tibi copia nostri) (Met., III, 385-392).

Met., III, 385. L. Vinge, 1967, p. 12. In n. 29, p. 333, she refers to earlier examples of this metaphor, taken from Virgil, Horace and Cicero, among others, and compiled by F. Wieseler, 1844, p. 15n. See also P. Hardie, 2002, p. 152. For a deeper examination of this question, see C. Kiening, 2009; J. Ringleben, 2004, in particular pp. 354-359. 30 Met., III, 393-401. 31 Nemesis, the goddess of Divine Retribution, had her own sanctuary at Rhamnous in Attica. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, J. Chamonard (ed.), 1966, p. 411 n. 168. 28 29

We are witnessing a game of vocal reflection: already before Ovid, imago vocis (or simply imago, which means, naturally, above all, “visual image” or “reflection”), was the Latin idiom for the term “echo,” an acoustic phenomenon of the reflection of sound29—a “reflection” which turns out to be exact but incomplete when compared to the model: only the end of the sentence is repeated here. The punishment inflicted on Echo is meant to reduce the dialogue between the two protagonists to the sole unit of speech uttered by Narcissus, which the nymph will then repeat, a simple psittacism, a pure mirror of the voice. Yet Echo’s fragmentary return of the words uttered by Narcissus allows a new seed of otherness to be planted. The adolescent’s slightly truncated words suddenly become the vector of the erotic charge that Echo is seeking to convey to him, whereas he seems to be far more worried about the absence of his companions. Narcissus rejects any display of love, however, and greets Echo with the same disdain he reserves for the many young men and women who desire him. Scorned, Echo goes to hide in the woods, living in a solitary cave, covering her face with foliage to hide her shame. But her love remains; sorrow and woe ravage her poor body. She grows thin and her skin dries out as if the very sap of her body were evaporating, and soon all that is left of her are her voice and her bones. Her voice is intact, but it is said that her bones have taken the shape of a rock. So she hides in the forest and no one will see her in the mountains ever again. But everyone hears her; all that survives of Echo is a sound.30 Thus Echo was disdained by Narcissus, along with many other nymphs, both of the water and the mountains, not to mention a host of young men. Soon one of his victims will cry out, raising her hands to the sky: “‘So may he himself love, and so may he fail to possess what he loves!’ (Sic amet ipse licet, sic non potiatur amato). Rhamnusia, who is the goddess Nemesis, heard this just request.”31 (Met., III, 405-406).

25 Narcissus’ punishment, as invoked by the victim, corresponded to the ancient lex talionis, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” It consisted in the reciprocity of crime and punishment. Narcissus would get his just desserts. Just as those who had loved him had never been able to possess him, so would Narcissus be forced to love and never be able to possess the object of his love.32 Narcissus’ passion (novitasque furoris. Met., III, 350) would be precisely the instrument used to execute his punishment. As we shall see, this will lead our story, at the very end, to the double understanding of Tiresias’ oracle. Narcissus, tired from hunting, went to drink from a clear spring with sparkling water that no one, neither shepherd, nor cattle, nor even the branch of a tree, had ever disturbed. And there he saw his own image reflected in the water, and fell passionately in love. The play on the reflection of sounds in the sequence between Echo and Narcissus served to foreshadow an encounter of another kind, between Narcissus and his own reflection, thus resorting this time to the theme of visual reflection.33 Before we continue to examine Ovid’s text in detail, let us pause to observe the two stages at work in this founding story, the two phases of Narcissus’ reception of his own image on the watery surface, which we shall call (A) the stage of the other, and (B) the stage of the mirror. Initially, we are in presence of the phase of the other (A). Narcissus does not recognize himself in the spring. He lies on the ground and “While he desires to quench his thirst, a different thirst grows. (Dumque sitim sedare cupit, sitis alter crevit). While he drinks he is seized by the vision of his reflected form. He loves a bodiless dream. He thinks it is a body, when it is only a wave [shadow]. (Dumque bibit, visae correptus imagine formae,/spem sine corpore amat; corpus putat esse quod unda [umbra]34 est)” (Met., III, 415-417). Narcissus went up to the spring to “drink” and not to “see.” He perceives the water of the spring as a liquid “matter” which will quench his thirst, and in no way, at that moment, does he envision it as a surface, still less as a reflecting surface. Which is why he is so surprised and intrigued when he sees someone—of unparalleled beauty—looking up at him. Narcissus conceives a passion for the beauty of the form that is offered to him and commits a two-fold error: he thinks he is seeing a body when in fact it is nothing but a reflection, a shadow. This body, moreover, with which he falls in love, is his own body, although he is not aware of it: “Unknowingly he desires himself. (Se cupit inprudens et, qui probat, ipse probatur.)” (Met., III, 425)35 Stunned, he is like a statue. The author warns him of his mistake, and describes what is misleading him. This image is nothing but an illusion, it is nothing in and of itself. All to no avail:

32 P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, pp. 138139; H. Dörrie, 1967, pp. 64-65. 33 This relationship has been viewed in particular as an additional argument in favor of the thesis which holds that the joining of the myths of Echo and Narcissus was an invention of Ovid’s. Cf. F. FrontisiDucroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 211; see also L. Vinge, 1967, p. 12; P. Hardie, 2002, p. 152. 34 Certain manuscripts propose umbra instead of unda. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, G. Lafaye (ed.), 1928, p. 83 v. 417. 35 L. Vinge, 1967, p. 12.

26 Narcissus does not recognize himself and in his mirror double he sees the face of another, the object of his sudden passion.36 Then comes the moment of identification, the stage of the mirror (B). Narcissus realizes that he is looking at his reflection. He is no longer deceived by his own image, it can no longer fool him. He now recognizes himself in the other’s face: “I am he. I sense it and I am no longer deceived by my own image. (Iste ego sum! Sensi, nec me mea fallit imago)” (Met., III, 463). This process of self-recognition can be perceived even more clearly if one attentively observes its necessary counterpart all through the story: Narcissus’ progression towards a recognition of the medium. His awareness of the presence of the medium is expressed through the poetics that extend from total illusion to the recognition of the reflecting qualities of the watery surface.37 See also P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, pp. 139-142, in particular p. 139: “Narcissus’ madness consists precisely in the fact that he does not recognize himself, and his punishment in the fact that he has been doomed to a passion and thirst that he will never be able to assuage.” 37 I am following here the development of the different medial phases as delineated by R. Herzog, 1992, pp. 21-23. Herzog himself refers to Karlheinz Stierle. See also C. Kruse, 1998, pp. 102-103; C. Kruse, 2003, pp. 312-313, cf. supra n. 5. For an explanation of the mechanisms of the illusion that are used throughout the story of Narcissus according to Ovid, see also P. Hardie, 2002, pp. 143-172. 38 Ekphrasis (ἔκϕρᾰσις), from phrazô [ϕράζω], to make one understand, to explain, and ek [ἐκ], until the end. An ekphrasis is a detailed description of a work of art, whether real or fictitious, embedded within a story. 39 P. Hardie, 2002, p. 146. He is referring in particular in this passage to J. Elsner, 1996, p. 252. 36

The Stage of the Other The first moment is that of the complete ignorance of the medium (A.1). Narcissus looks at himself in the spring and sees not his reflection but a completely different person, truly “incorporated,” present there before him and part of the same spatial reality. The illusion is total: “He is astonished by himself, and hangs there motionless, with a fixed expression, like a statue carved from Parian marble. Flat on the ground, he contemplates two stars, his eyes, and his hair, fit for Bacchus, fit for Apollo, his youthful cheeks and ivory neck, the beauty of his face, the roseflush mingled in the whiteness of snow, admiring everything for which he is himself admired. Unknowingly he desires himself, and the one who praises is himself praised, and, while he courts, is courted, so that, equally, he inflames and burns.” (Met., III, 418-426).

Ovid goes into a minutely detailed description, a simultaneous ekphrasis38 of Narcissus’ face and of the face he is contemplating in amazement. The ephebe seems to be a peerless work of art, “a statue carved from Parian marble,” and his beauty is worthy of the gods Bacchus and Apollo. Moreover, the gaze that Narcissus confers upon himself is like that of a viewer who when confronted with an illusionist work of art actually believes in the reality of the image he sees.39 The “poetics of illusion” are focused here upon the sense of sight. But very quickly Narcissus can no longer be satisfied with mere gazing. The sensorial fascination spreads rapidly to touch. He is seized by a haptic fever; he covets what he sees, tries to embrace it by whatever means he can:

27 “How often he gave his lips in vain to the deceptive pool, how often, trying to embrace the neck he could see, he plunged his arms into the water, but could not catch himself within them! What he has seen he does not understand, but what he sees he is on fire for, and the same error both seduces and deceives his eyes.” (Met., III, 427-431).

At this point in the story Ovid emerges from his retreat as simple narrator to berate Narcissus. He warns him against his illusion through a rhetorical procedure which generates at the same time in the listener/reader, for a brief instant, the illusion of a possible interaction with a purely textual character:40 “Fool, why try to catch a fleeting image, in vain? What you search for is nowhere: turning away, what you love is lost! What you perceive is the shadow of a reflected form: it is nothing by itself. It comes and stays with you, and leaves with you, if you can leave! (Credule, quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas?/Quod petis est nusquam; quod amas. Avertere, perdes./Ista repercussae, quam cernis, imaginis umbra est./Nil habet ista sui; tecum uenitque manetque;/Tecum discedet, si tu discedere possis)” (Met., III, 432-436).

Narcissus is held captive by something that is no more than a simulacrum, he has fallen in love with the shadow of a reflected image (repercussae […] imaginis umbra), an uncertain, troubled image.41 But he remains deaf to Ovid’s warnings. Neither hunger nor lack of sleep can extricate him from that place: Narcissus stays there to gaze at the deceitful image, without ever reaching a point of satiation: “Narcissus is doomed, victim of his own eyes.”42 (Perque oculos perit ipse suos)” (Met., III, 440). Before long Narcissus’ frustration at the impossibility of a tactile encounter with “the other” will account for a new level of medial recognition: the naïve reception of the medium as a simple obstacle (A.2): “…and it increases my pain the more, that no wide sea separates us, no road, no mountains, no walls with locked doors. We are only kept apart by a little thin film of water! (exigua prohibemur aqua). He too desires to be held, because whenever I extend my lips to the clear liquid, he tries to raise his lips to me.. You would think he could be touched: it is such a small thing that is an obstacle to our love. (Posse putes tangi; minimum est quod amantibus obstat)” (Met., III, 448-453).

The medium—the fine film of water—is perceived as a transparent obstacle within a same space of reality, rather than as the support of a reality other than the one in which Narcissus moves about. The illusion—still within the phase of the other—is now part of the confusion, the failure to distinguish between real space

P. Hardie, 2002, p. 147; L. Vinge, 1967, p. 15. 41 It might be useful to recall here that the terms signifying “shadow” and “reflection” remained interchangeable for a very long time and could also be used to refer to the shades of the dead in the underworld. Cf. J. Schickel, 1962, p. 488; L. Vinge, 1967, pp. 12-13. See also V.I. Stoichita, 1997, pp. 32-33. 42 Ovid, Métamorphoses, G. Lafaye (ed.), 1928, p. 83. Translation by the author from the French. 40

28 and virtual space. Narcissus’ behavior at this precise stage of the illusion is comparable to that of a contemporary television viewer trying to penetrate the screen in order to gain access to a football pitch and take part in the frenetic race involving twenty-two players and a ball, or that of an energetic young man attempting to break through the screen at the cinema to rush to the assistance of the film’s heroine. Narcissus cannot grasp the disconnect between real space and virtual space, a disconnect engendered by the medium. He cannot conceive that this other might be an image requiring the support of a medium to attain visibility.43 Caravaggio’s Narcissus

43 H. Belting, (2001) 2011, p. 18. See also supra n. 4. 44 For a more detailed description of this complex image, which cannot be reduced solely to an interpretation of a medial nature, see the article by Hubert Damisch which was very inspiring to me: H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, here pp. 161-165. See also C. Kruse, 1998, pp. 111112; C. Kruse, 2003, pp. 340-343. 45 H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 162.

Caravaggio’s Narcissus (1598-1599) makes marvelously explicit the stage of the other as it is depicted in the myth (fig. 1).44 The image is divided horizontally by the line separating earth and water, and is articulated vertically in the relationship between Narcissus and his mirrored double. The composition of the scene is reduced to a close-up, portraying the young man bathed in light against a black background, fascinated by his own image as it emerges in the half-light. The ephebe radiates the image with this chiaroscuro effect while his double struggles against the darkness. This eloquent contrast between the two protagonists of the picture emphasizes their difference. The figure of the double is evanescent, and seems ready to disappear at any moment, to plunge again into the depths whence it came. Various corporeal details subtly illustrate the theme of the adolescent’s two sensorial thrills at the fountain. His right hand is at the very edge of the water and is reflected without touching the surface. His face, torso mid-body, and knee—with its phallic connotation—are also reflected. Narcissus gazes at the “other” and is delighted by what he sees. His left hand, however, already desires to touch the other; it is seeking to caress him. Never taking his eyes from him, the aim now is to go from contemplation to embrace. Narcissus is captivated by the face, while we see his hand plunge into the water—without any refractive effect—where it is reflected again almost in its entirety. A very faint ripple, glistening around the palm of his left hand, and along the mirrored line, suggests the presence of the surface.45 Thus two instances of Narcissus’ sensorial capture of this other create a dialogue from one hand to the other. These two hands also form two meeting points on the surface of the water, joining the figure of Narcissus to that of his double in a continuous circular form, but off-center in relation to the edge

29

1. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1598-1599, oil on canvas, 110 cm x 92 cm, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, in the Palazzo Barberini.

30 of the painting. Matteo Marangoni sees this as an “ideal wheel” where the tensed knee—la palla del ginocchio—acts as a pivot: “The work was discovered by Roberto Longhi, and he attributed it to Caravaggio; although none of the biographers alluded to it, and not all the experts are convinced that Longhi was right to do so—their doubt was reinforced by the poor condition the painting was in—it remains a remarkable work for all that, and worthy of Caravaggio, if for no other reason than the unprecedented imagination in the conception of the figure which, together with the one reflected in the water, forms a closed circle—reminiscent of a similar one, in the “Fall of Saint Paul”—where the sphere of the tensed knee, a worthy “piece” typical of Caravaggio, seems almost the pivot of the ideal wheel formed by the two figures together.”46

46 M. Marangoni, 1922, p. 43. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 47 H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 162: “A circle, but closed here only by using the relay of the mirror; unity but founded on a dédoublement, a reflection in another element, a detour through appearance, a ‘deception.’” 48 H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 163; see also H. Damisch, 1996, here p. 32, where he revisits certain ideas already broached in the 1976 article.

The adolescent’s bared right knee, in full light, occupies—with its reflection—the center of the composition and functions as the pivot of this circle of homoerotic illusion, a half-circle doubled by the mirror.47 The turgescent member, associated with the left knee which is not reflected and is covered with a piece of clothing split down the middle,48 points to the sexual drive governing Narcissus, as he is misled by his reflection. Finally, this protruding knee heading dangerously in the direction of the viewer can also be perceived as a symbol of contact and penetration with the surface, which in this case might just as easily be the “painting-surface” as the watery surface. We have here an example of a medial mise en abîme, where the viewer, through the canvas-screen, can witness Narcissus’ intoxication with his double represented in the mirrorscreen. Ovid’s text continues, and Narcissus exhorts the peerless boy to come out, and go through the flimsy obstacle in order to join him. He is all the less aware of the tragedy of the situation in that the boy is filling him with hope, returning with equal passion each of the gestures and emotions with which he graces him: “Whoever you are come out to me! Why do you disappoint me, you extraordinary boy? Where do you vanish when I reach for you? Surely my form and years are not what you flee from, and I am one that the nymphs have loved! You offer me some unknown hope with your friendly face, and when I stretch my arms out to you, you stretch out yours. When I smile, you smile back. And I have often seen your tears when I weep tears. You return the gesture of my head with a nod, and, from the movements of your lovely mouth, I guess that you reply with words that do not reach my ears! (Quisquis es, huc exi; quid me, puer unice, fallis?/Quove petitus abis? certe nec forma nec aetas/Est mea quam fugias et amarunt me quoque nymphae./ Spem mihi nescio quam vultu promittis amico;/Cumque ego porrexi tibi bracchia, porrigis ultro;/Cum risi, arrides. Lacrimas quoque saepe notaui/Me lacrimante

31 tuas; nutu quoque signa remittis;/Et quantum motu formosi suspicor oris,/Verba refers aures non pervenientia nostras)” (Met., III, 454-462).

The Stage of the Mirror Ovid implies that Narcissus has discovered the synchronism between his own movements and those of the other.49 And at last the moment of identification comes: Narcissus recognizes the other as his reflection, his own image on the surface of the water, (B): “I am he. I sense it and I am no longer deceived by my own image. (Iste ego sum! Sensi, nec me mea fallit imago)” (Met., III, 463)

The medial properties of the watery surface have been unveiled to him. Narcissus is looking down at a reflective surface, a natural mirror that is sending his own features back to him. He is no longer trying to go through a barrier dividing a given space in two, like a glass door. The illusion has been broken by the correct perception of the medium, the support of a representational space which is meant to be seen as an image—a space that is distinct from the viewer’s space—and, moreover, in this case, a self-image. Narcissus perceives this moment as a drama: the drama of identification. Now he will lament the fact he cannot shed his own body in order to love himself as another: “What I want I have. My riches make me poor. O I wish I could leave my own body! Strange prayer for a lover, I desire what I love to be distant from me. (Quod cupio mecum est; inopiem me copia fecit./O utinam a nostro secedere corpore possem!/Votum in amante novum, vellem quod amamus abesset)” (Met., III, 466-468).

Ovid’s Narcissus wants to part from the object of his love in order to love it as a thing apart. He does not love himself out of self-sufficiency or self-satisfaction when confronted with his own image. His love is not some egotistical self-projection. In this regard he is not “narcissistic” or vain. The vast majority of the text’s commentators agree in asserting that at no time in the story—be it before or after his identification in the natural mirror—is Ovid’s Narcissus, strictly speaking, “narcissistic.”50 But Narcissus weakens, and the forces that inhabited him now begin to fade: “Now sadness takes away my strength, not much time is left for me to live, and I am cut off in the prime of youth. Nor is dying painful to me, laying

P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 141. J. Kristeva, (1983) 2002, p. 133. 50 See, among many others: J. Schickel, 1962, p. 492; L. Vinge, 1967, pp. 16-17; H. Dörrie, 1967, pp. 72-73; H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, pp. 175177; U. Orlowsky/R. Orlowsky, 1992, pp. 19-21/pp. 29-65; R. Herzog, 1992, p. 9; F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 213-214; G. Wajcman, 2001, pp. 229-232; C. Kruse, 2003, p. 309. 49

32 For a detailed explanation of the concept, see infra chap. 3, particularly the section Scopic Drive and Death Drive. 52 P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 141 and p. 499 nn. 85-86; H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, pp. 196-197; F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 213. 53 See also H. Dörrie, 1967, p. 70. 54 This is not the first time we see his tears in the story—“And I have often seen your tears when I weep tears.” (Met., III. 460)—but in that instance they emphasized the reciprocity of gestures and emotions between Narcissus and his as yet unrecognized reflection. At no time did they carry the theme of the troubled surface, as is the case here. 55 In the second moment of the stage of the other (in A.2), the other’s existence is perfectly independent of the surface. The surface is no more than a pure obstacle separating the two youths, but in no way does it threaten Narcissus’ belief in the total autonomy of the other at that moment. Therefore at this particular point in the story, even the ripples on the surface, certainly caused by his arms reaching into the water as well as the kisses lavished on the deceitful wave, would not change the status of simple obstacle granted to the surface, and less still the individuality of the other. Ovid, in any event, does not discuss the blurring of the surface at the moment of the stage of the other (in A. 2); the blurriness would in this case merely be another facet of the obstacle. The obstacle would go from being transparent to somewhat opaque, and would now prevent Narcis51

down my sadness in death. I wish that him I love might live on, but now we shall die united, two in one spirit.” (Met., III, 469-473).

Narcissus now senses but above all knows that he is dying. And indeed, the motif of death appears even before that of recognition. Narcissus is doomed, victim of his own eyes (Perque oculos perit ipse suos. Met. III, 440), before he has even recognized himself. The scopic drive that overcomes him from the moment of his first confrontation with the spring is a “scopic drive toward death [pulsion scopique de mort].”51 The seer Tiresias, when asked “whether the child would live a long life, to a ripe old age,” had said: “‘If he does not come to know himself (Si se non noverit).’” (Met., III, 348). And this prediction is in fact an ambiguous statement, already dual insofar as it plays on the double meaning of novi, which should be understood as “if he does not see himself” before it is understood as “if he does not recognize—or know—himself [s’il ne se (re)connaît pas].”52 However, before Narcissus recognizes himself in the reflection, whose image he thought belonged to someone else, he is most probably not aware of the death sentence already hanging over him, as he is nurturing the hope that he will soon be united with his beloved. It is only after the Iste ego sum (Met., III, 463) that he knows he is truly lost, as is the object of his affection, from whom he will never be able to dissociate himself.53 After evoking his imminent death, Narcissus, in his delirium, returns to his gazing, and his relation to the medium has one final revival: “He spoke, and returned madly to the same reflection, and his tears stirred the water, and the image became obscured in the rippling pool.54 As he saw it vanishing, he cried out ‘Where do you fly to? Stay, cruel one, do not abandon one who loves you! Allow me at least to gaze at what I cannot touch, and so provide food for my miserable passion!’ (Et lacrimis turbavit aquas obscuraque moto/Reddita forma lacu est. Quam cum vidisset abire:/ ‘Quo refugis? Remane nec me, crudelis, amantem/Desere;’ clamavit ‘liceat quod tangere non est/Adspicere et misero praebere alimenta furori’)” (Met., III, 475-479).

The surface becomes troubled, and the ripples now leave the image unclear. The reflective qualities are so affected that Narcissus calls again to his own face, speaking in the second person singular and thus reinvesting his own image with a strong sense of otherness. He engages his mirror image, as he did before (in A. 2), as if that image could be physically dissociated from the model of which it is the reflected form, as if it could become an individual entity and go wherever it liked beyond the surface of the water.55

33 But Narcissus has already recognized this other as his own image. So this is not a regressive process taking us back to the second stage of the other (A.2),56 when Narcissus perceived the medium as a simple obstacle within a same space of reality, a transparent obstacle preventing him from reaching a perfectly autonomous other who seemed to desire him in return. For now he knows the ontological impossibility of reaching the space where his reflection is. He is no longer seeking to touch, to reach this so-called other. It is his tears and not his hands which trouble the surface. He also knows that the other’s existence is fragile, and of necessity depends on the surface that supports it. He just wants to see it, for the “clear” mirror allows him, if not to touch himself as another, at least to see himself as another: “[…] Allow me at least to gaze at what I cannot touch, and so provide food for my miserable passion!” (Met., III, 478-479) This moment corresponds to the confrontation between Narcissus and the “troubled mirror.” The “troubled mirror” does not destroy the surface of the mirror as such, even though it does considerably reduce its reflective quality. The scene of the “troubled mirror” is not a medial phase, insofar as it does not imply any strict mutation in the recognition of the qualities peculiar to the medium, but it is, rather, the negative counterpart of the mirror—an object which is normally perfectly clear—within the stage of the mirror.57 These are the two possible and contradictory conditions of the natural mirror formed by a watery surface. The impact upon the surface when Narcissus’ tears come in contact with it, however, is significant in the relation between Narcissus and the mirror-medium. It would seem, in particular, that this impact can go a long way toward explaining the otherness that is already present in any mirror, and any “clear” reflecting surface: the otherness of the mirror resides in the path it causes us to follow, a path which goes “from self to self through the other.” While the mirror leaves us unattainable to our own selves in tactile terms, we can nevertheless observe ourselves the way another might. It allows us access to a vision of self that carries its own seed of otherness within: this vision reveals to us a reverse figure of ourselves and places us within a space we are not actually in.58 The troubled

sus from clearly distinguishing the other, just as it has already prevented him from touching him. 56 See also B. Manuwald, 1975, p. 364. 57 In the stage of the other (A), once Narcissus has perceived the medium as an obstacle implicating no break between two worlds (A.2), he cannot de-

cently go on ignoring its presence and return to the moment (A.1) when he perceived nothing between himself and the young man he was gazing at. (A.2→ ~A.1). Similarly, when he recognizes his own image (B), he can no longer consider the medium the way he used to (A.2). The accession to a new status of medial recognition through these different phases implies the rejection and abandonment of the previous ones. (B→ ~A). But in the stage of the mirror (B), the “troubled mirror” is the counterpart of the “clear mirror,” on the strength of its integral reflecting properties, and this dialogue between the two does not mean one must deny the previous recognition of the surface as a mirror to attain a new status of medial recognition. We are witnessing a cyclical game between “clear” and “troubled” regarding the mirror-medium, just as in A.2 we could have had a “transparent / opaque” game involving the obstacle-medium. Cf. also supra, n. 55. 58 M. Foucault, (1984) 1986, p. 24: “The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint

34 mirror allows us to qualify the substantial ambiguity of the mirror, while alienating still further that “other image” of ourselves, making it literally unclear. But the troubled surface induces something that is more tragic than the simple accentuation of this effect of otherness that composes any self-image. It arouses in Narcissus a despair that is all the greater for the fact that his earlier recognition cannot be so easily removed. The troubled mirror refuses to allow Narcissus the possibility to gaze at his own face, the final fuel to his madness. He is tormented, tortured by the temporary visual inaccessibility of his image. He is the plaything of a surface that shows him to himself, then hides him, and ultimately reveals him again. Narcissus suffers intensely from this oscillation between seeing himself and not seeing himself. This is the most pathetic moment of Narcissus’ relation with the surface, emphasized by wrenching lamentation and desperate behavior: “While he weeps, he tears at the top of his clothes: then strikes his naked chest with hands of marble. His chest flushes red when they strike it, as fruit are often pale in part, part red, or as grapes in their different bunches are stained with purple when they are not yet ripe. As he sees all this reflected in the dissolving waves, he can bear it no longer, but as yellow wax melts in a light flame, as morning frost thaws in the sun, so he is weakened and melted by love, and worn away little by little by a hidden fire.” (Met., III, 480-490).

of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am.”

Narcissus’ madness—even though he has recognized his own mistake—consists in claiming, still, to love his reflection the way one loves another person. To be sure, he understands that he will never be able to embrace it, but nevertheless he wants to continue to delight in the contemplation of this reflection which, inscribed on the surface of the mirror, is none other than the reversed form of the original face. So while Narcissus’ haptic drive would remain forever frustrated, the scopic drive which has gripped him from the very first continues to consume him until the fatal outcome: the whiteness of his complexion, with its blush of red, has now left him; he has lost his vigor and strength, along with everything that once charmed his eyes. The nymph Echo sees him again, and although she is still full of resentment toward Narcissus, she is dismayed by what she sees. Whenever the poor man utters, “Alas,” she repeats his words. And when he strikes his own arms with his hands, she in turn echoes the sound produced by his blows. Then Narcissus speaks his last, calling to his image, which has once again become clear: “Alas, beloved boy, my love in vain! (Heu frustra dilecte puer!)” (Met., III, 500).

35 And those words also resounded in that place, equal in number. Then from his lips came “Goodbye! (Vale!)” (Met, III, 501), repeated by Echo. Weary, he places his head on the green grass, “death closing those eyes that had marveled at their lord’s beauty. (Lumina mors clausit domini mirantia formam)” (Met., III, 503). Narcissus wastes away and dies, stretched out on the shore, “unhappy that he is not different from himself.”59 But even once he is welcomed into the infernal realm, he still gazes at himself in the waters of the Styx. In the kingdom of Hades he is now “a shade gazing at a shade.”60 His sisters the Naiads61 weep for him, cut their hair and leave it on their brother’s tomb. The Dryads62 also weep for him, and Echo lends her voice to their tears: “And now they were preparing the funeral pyre, the quivering torches and the bier, but there was no body. They came upon a flower, instead of his body, with white petals surrounding a yellow heart” (Met., III, 508-510). The body of Narcissus has disappeared, and in its place is blooming the flower that will always bear his name, the narcissus. Thus only at the very end of the story are we confronted with the phenomenon of metamorphosis, and it has the accents of a disappearance rather than a transformation. Moreover, this “metamorphosis” is above all an aition, an etiological explanation, in order to inform us of the origin of the flower. Therefore we can draw a parallel with Echo’s metamorphosis, which is also less a phenomenon of mutation from one body into another body63 than an explanation for the plausibility of a bodiless voice—her bones taking the shape of a rock but her voice remaining to be heard by all.64 Indeed, in this version of the myth of Narcissus, the emphasis is placed not so much on the notion of metamorphosis, as on Tiresias’ prediction, and its veracity—for long before anyone else, he knew that Narcissus would go mad as a result of his punishment, and knew how the story would unfold.65 Ovid returns to the story of the seer and his oracle concerning the ephebe; thus he concludes the myth of Narcissus, while embarking on that of Pentheus (which comes immediately afterwards): “When all this became known it spread the prophet’s fame throughout the cities of Achaia, and his reputation was high” (Met., III, 511-512). Tiresias’ oracle embraces the myth of Narcissus, and is prominent both at the beginning and the end of the tale. Nicolas Poussin, Echo and Narcissus The painter Nicolas Poussin depicted the theme of Echo and Narcissus several times; it seems to have haunted him all his life.66 The

59 Cf. Ovid, Fasti, V, 226, p. 276: “Infelix quod non alter et alter eras.” Cf. P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 142; F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 214. 60 J. Brenkman, 1976, p. 325. Quoted in P. Hardie, 2002 p. 158. 61 Water nymphs. 62 Forest nymphs. 63 H. Dörrie, 1967, p. 63 and pp. 71-72; P. Hardie, 2002, p. 154; H. Cancik, 1967, p. 51. 64 Met., III, 393-401. 65 H. Dörrie, 1967, pp. 59-61. 66 D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 112.

36 C. Wright, 2007, p. 88, n° cat. 53. There is another painting on the subject of Echo and Narcissus: Nicolas Poussin (circle), Echo and Narcissus, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, (C. Wright, 2007, p. 262, n° cat. A7). But while D. Panofsky (see previous note) still attributed it to Poussin, more recent studies agree that he was not the artist. Wright believes the painting must have been made by one of Poussin’s skilled students, and not before 1635. Echo and Narcissus do appear again, although in the midst of other mythological groups, in The Empire of Flora, 1631, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (C. Wright, 2007, p. 98, n° cat. 62). Echo (sometimes simply portrayed as a nymph) and Narcissus are surrounded by an anthology of other characters, all united by the theme of floral metamorphosis: Ajax (a carnation bursting from his blood), Clytie (the sunflower), Hyacinth, Adonis, Crocus et Smilax (greenbrier). Cf. D. Panofsky, 1949, pp. 114-115; P. Rosenberg/L.-A. Prat, 1994, pp. 203-205, n° cat. 44. Finally, The Birth of Bacchus, 1657, Harvard University, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, (C. Wright, 2007, p. 249, n° cat. 190), also incorporates Echo and Narcissus. This work will be studied in a sub-chapter, cf. infra the paragraph entitled Poussin, The Birth of Bacchus. 68 D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 114; A. Blunt, 1967, p. 79; P. Rosenberg/L.-A. Prat, 1994, pp. 193-194, n° 38; C. Henry, 2006, pp. 414-415. On the other hand, for poses and representations of Narcissus in antiquity, see in particular F. Wieseler, 1856; P. Zanker 1966. 67

most famous painting is his Echo and Narcissus from 1628-1630, on display at the Louvre in Paris (fig. 2).67 The drama has already unfolded. Narcissus is lying on the ground by the spring and before his body has even had time to disappear there are narcissi blooming in his hair. A cupid, carrying a torch that is fluttering in the wind, is standing behind him, along with Echo, who is leaning against a rock—the object of her metamorphosis according to Ovid’s tale; her posture is one of lamentation. The nymph may ”form one body” with the rock, but she has not yet been turned to stone, and is still fully recognizable. The painter breaks with Ovid’s chronology by showing us Echo’s mortal coil at the time of Narcissus’ death, or shortly thereafter. According to Ovid, Echo was nothing but a sound, a bodiless voice, when Narcissus expired. Poussin, moreover, unites spatially the two characters’ bodies and their respective “metamorphoses”: Echo and the rock, Narcissus and the flowers with their white corollas, when in fact—one is tempted to say by definition—it is impossible to observe the simultaneous presence of a body and the thing into which it will be transformed, unless one is to focus on the dynamic process of the metamorphosis itself. Perhaps that is precisely what is unfolding before our very eyes, in a rather strange way all the same. According to commentators, Narcissus’ position and the entire composition of the painting derive from a Dead Christ (ca. 1550) by Paris Bordone that once hung in the Doge’s Palace in Venice (fig. 3).68 The figure also bears a strong resemblance, as Oskar Bätschmann has pointed out, to the supine Niobid in the ancient group of Niobids discovered in Rome in 1582 (now at the Uffizi in Florence), as well as to a drawing by Michelangelo depicting the torture of Tityos (1533, Windsor, Royal Library).69 Bordone’s work emphasizes the representation of the male nude: the body of Christ—lying in the foreground of the painting—is shown to the viewer in almost total nudity, displaying a frontal view of his mortal, suffering humanity. Clearly the recumbent Narcissus, lying on his side, has adopted the position of Bordone’s Christ, and we are witnessing the transfer of a Christian iconographic type onto an ancient theme. But what is already striking in Bordone’s work is the dynamic character of the gestures and the position adopted by a body which, to be sure, might have been dead but was destined to come back to life very soon. Indeed if this same body were raised vertically, it would represent a man who is

69

O. Bätschmann, 1979, pp. 31-35; see also O. Bätschmann, 1990, pp. 23-24.

37 walking, a man in movement. Thus the position of this recumbent figure already seems to herald the position of a body that will soon rise up in the glory of its Resurrection. It is all the more interesting therefore to see that Poussin chose this model in order to represent a metamorphosis. Here, the dead body will not rise, but it will be transformed into another “body.” Narcissus adopts a twisted position, and also seems to be the horizontal variation on a moving figure. To see this clearly all one need do is turn the picture ninety degrees to the right. The absence of support, as well as the opposing lines drawn by his two arms, accentuate the effect of dynamic movement, and in terms of verticality this brings the picture closer to a figure of mannerist statuary: the figura serpentinata (fig. 4). The study of body movements of this kind, within a process of metamorphosis, could lead to the representation of Daphne in Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne (1622-1625), which Poussin would also certainly have heard of, and may even have been able to admire for himself at the time in Rome, in the collection of Scipione Borghese (fig. 5).70 In this sculpture Bernini represents the very instant of metamorphosis.71 Apollo reaches out for Daphne; he touches her but does not see what he is touching.72 His mouth agape, he seems overcome by surprise: his sense of touch is informing him of an extraordinary event, while his sight cannot confirm this to him. Indeed, four of the fingers of his left hand are no longer grazing the skin of the superb nymph, but the trunk of the laurel (fig. 6). Daphne had been trying in vain to flee; now her wish has been granted by her father, the river god Peneus, and she is already taking the shape of the laurel. She is shown turning to one side, through the dialectic between sight and touch which connects the two figures. The bark of the tree envelops the nymph in a violent whirlwind movement, like a chrysalis regaining possession of a butterfly. Already her fingers are extending into branches, her feet are taking root and her hair is becoming foliage (figs. 7-8). Nor should we forget that during the same era, or shortly thereafter, Poussin represented the theme of Apollo and Daphne (fig. 9) for the first time.73 And in this painting, where Apollo stands op70 My thanks to Valentin Nussbaum regarding the issue of a possible comparison between the Narcissus by Poussin and Bernini’s Daphne. Moreover, several female figures of the two versions of The Rape of the Sabine Women executed by Poussin in the 1630s (1634, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 1637, Musée du Louvre, Paris), are very evocative of Bernini’s Daphne, with their broad gestures, their whirling hair, and their faces half-turned toward their aggressor. There are also numerous references to the Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna (1581-1583, Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi) and the Rape of Proserpina, again by Bernini (1621-1622, Galleria Borghese, Rome).

Cf. also D. Arasse, 2000, p. 347 and p. 351 n. 50. 71 Ovid tells the story of the metamorphosis of Daphne in the first book of Metamorphoses (Met., I, 452-567): Cupid, to take revenge on Apollo (himself an archer), who had made fun of him, shoots two arrows simultaneously. A golden one at the god, which causes him to fall madly in love with the nymph Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus. The other arrow is made of lead, and he shoots it at the nymph, and this leaves her with nothing but disgust for love. This is followed by a chase, Daphne is exhausted, and the god is gaining on her, so she begs her father to come to her assistance. Just as Apollo is about to reach her she is transformed into a laurel (Dàphnê in Greek), which the god uses as a crown ever after. 72 A. Bolland, 2000, pp. 312-313. 73 N. Poussin, Apollo and Daphne, ca. 1625, Munich Alte Pinakothek. (C. Wright, 2007, p. 40, n°cat. 14). Also noteworthy is the suggestion that in the Apollo and Daphne at the Louvre (C. Wright, 2007, p. 261, n°cat. 204)—which Poussin began late in life and could not finish, given his declining health and death in 1665—the figure in the background lying down, as if dead, is Narcissus. But the majority of specialists have subscribed to the thesis of Erwin Panofsky who claims, rather, that the figure is Hyacinth. Cf. E. Panofsky, 1950, pp. 27-41; P. Rosenberg/L.-A. Prat, 1994, pp. 520-523, n°cat. 242; A. Blunt, 1967, p. 336.

38

39 posite Daphne and holds her in his arms, her body also displays agitation in her movements. Whatever the case may be, our twisting Narcissus, his hair mingling with the budding narcissi, seems to contain, although he is dead, those dynamic elements that represent a process of metamorphosis. This being so, we can give Poussin credit for having created, after Bordone, a veritable visual oxymoron, a dynamic recumbent statue. The aim with the figure of Narcissus is different, however: to make explicit the passage of the body from one state to another. But for all that, we cannot assert that in this case Poussin is resorting to a thoroughly baroque virtuosity, capturing a precise moment of the story and expressing it in visual terms, as Bernini did, or that his aim was to focus on an instant of stupefaction, so he has left us with a close-up, like Caravaggio. On the contrary: if there is a method to what Poussin is doing, it is a slow, drawnout process, leading to the juxtaposition of two states of being of the body, before and after its metamorphosis. Poussin’s goal here is to contain the entire story of Narcissus and Echo within the limits of his painting. The canvas seeks therefore to offer the viewer a clear and exhaustive reading of the myth of Echo and Narcissus. In going about it like this, Poussin is demonstrating a concept of painting as the representation of a story, something he himself summed up perfectly in the letter he wrote to Paul Fréart de Chantelou on April 28, 1639, when he sent him the painting of the Manna74: “Read the story and the painting, in order to know whether each thing is appropriate to the subject.”75 Consequently one must read the story, then the painting, and determine thereby whether the latter fully represents the story in its whole as well as its parts.76 This makes it easier to understand why the idea that painting is a representation which should appropriate the story in a global, exact fashion was not a notion that Caravaggio’s painting could embrace. This was so great a disparity that Poussin felt a certain hostility toward the works of his colleague, who died a few years before his own arrival in Rome (1624). Witness these words relayed by André Félibien (16291695) in his biography of Nicolas Poussin: “Monsieur Poussin, I said, could not bear anything about Caravaggio, and he said he had come into this world in order to destroy painting. But one should not be surprised by this aversion he felt. For if Poussin sought to depict nobility in his subjects, Caravaggio let himself be carried away by the truth of what is natural. So they were indeed opposed to one another.”77

2. Nicolas Poussin, Echo and Narcissus, 1628-1630, oil on canvas, 74 cm x 100 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

3. Paris Bordone, Dead Christ, ca. 1550, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 225 cm, location unknown (previously Venice, Palazzo Ducale).

N. Poussin, Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert, 16371639, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris. 75 N. Poussin, Correspondance, p. 21. Cf. also N. Poussin, Lettres, pp. 35-36. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 76 L. Marin insists upon the hierarchy which is contained within this injunction, L. Marin, 1977 (1997), pp. 41-42, here p. 41: “‘Read first the story, then the painting.’ Go from the story you already know before you even look at the painting, because I have given you its title, its proper name, its summary: The Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert, go from the story to the painting, to the story in painting. Read the latter through the former. […]” [Translation: A. Anderson]. See also L. Marin (1977) 1995, p. 30. 77 A. Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes, p. 205. Shortly before, in the text, Félibien already exposed his criticism of Caravaggio’s realism, p. 203: “There is nothing, I said, that a Painter must seek more ardently than to make his creations pleasing. But that is something Caravaggio has never done. Think for a mo74

40 ment, please, of how talented he was. He painted with a harmony of color and light more skillful than that of any Painter. You may notice a truth in the figures and other things which accompany them; and one might say that Nature could be no better imitated than in everything he has painted. But he never conceived any ideas on his own. He made himself the slave of nature and not the imitator of beautiful things. He only represented that which appeared before his eyes and he behaved in its presence with so little judgment that he neither chose beauty nor fled from ugliness. He painted both, indifferently.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. Cf. also L. Marin, (1977) 1997, pp. 11-14 and pp. 3940; L. Marin (1977) 1995, pp. 3-5 and pp. 28-29. 78 The historia is one of the major themes of De Pictura which Leon Battista Alberti, who was living at the time in Florence, wrote between the years of 1435 and 1436 in two different languages: the local dialect of Tuscany (Della Pittura), and Latin. The influence of De Pictura would increase over time but did not truly make its influence felt until after it was printed in the middle of the 16th century, at which time it became the model treatise on painting. Here is the explanatory note by JeanLouis Schefer regarding historia: “Neither the term story, nor anecdote, nor subject corresponds exactly. The historia is the very subject of the painting that results from an invention (the subject, which can be the object of a narration or a description), and a finished composition (construction of shapes, parts, bodies).

While in the early commentaries on the works of these two painters there is already mention of a strong disagreement in their understanding and treatment of mimetic realism, one can also sense the awareness of a fundamental divergence in their concept of painting. For example, already in 1642 the Roman painter and historian Giovanni Baglione, in his Vita di Michelagnolo da Caravaggio, Pittore, which chronicles the recurrent criticism of Caravaggio, describes the fundamental attack that Caravaggio would deliver upon the traditional representation of stories—going back in particular to Alberti’s requirements for the historia78— by using his method and his utterly different centers of interest in order to lead astray the young painters who regarded him as an example. “On the contrary, there are some who consider that he has destroyed painting; since a number of young painters have been following his example by trying to imitate the rendering of a head from nature, and having studied neither the basic principles of drawing nor the depth of art, they are content with the mere use of color—so much so that they do not know how to put two figures together, or to weave the slightest story, and have no grasp whatsoever of the goodness of such a noble art.”79

Thus, concerning the work and the treatment of the subject by Poussin, his accusation that Caravaggio was “destroying painting” takes on an additional dimension and is endowed with new modalities: the purpose here is also to denounce Caravaggio’s destruction of the representation of stories as it has been understood by the partisans of history painting. And indeed if we take the example of his Narcissus (fig. 1), Caravaggio deconstructs the story and stuns us with the instant; in a way he

But one cannot exclude this simple meaning: Alberti’s “realistic” program requires that painting show and tell. In its most formal definition, the historia is a construction of parts (bodies, characters, things) endowed with meaning,” [Translation: A. Anderson], in: L.B. Alberti, De Pictura/De la Peinture, p. 115 n. 1; cf. also the Introduction by Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, pp. 44-62; and Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, pp. 3-14 (Introduction). See also infra the section devoted to Leon Battista Alberti. 79 G. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti, p. 138: “Anzi presso alcuni si stima, haver’esso rovinata la pittura; poiche molti giovani ad essempio di lui danno ad imitare una testa del naturale, e non studiando ne’ fondamenti del disegno, e della profondità dell’arte, solamente del colorito appagansi; onde non sanno mettere due figure insieme, nè tessere historia veruna, per non comprendere la bontà di si nobil’arte.”

41

4. Giambologna, Mercury, 1564-

1580, bronze, h: 180 cm, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

42 5. Gian

Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 16221625, marble, h: 243 cm, Rome, Galleria Borghese.

43 6. Gian Lorenzo Bernini,

Apollo and Daphne, detail, 1622-1625, marble, h: 243 cm, Rome, Galleria Borghese.

freezes our “effect of seeing,” leaves us in the dark and exhibits figures in a strong antithetical setting of chiaroscuro. He favors the violence of the moment, the fascination exerted by focusing on the figure, without any distance. To be sure, he does not, strictly speaking, banish from his work any content referring to the story, but his focus is radically different from that of someone like Poussin. The treatment of Ovid’s myth of Narcissus by Poussin and by Caravaggio, insofar as it brilliantly exemplifies the process peculiar to each one of them, can thus prove to be one of the best ways there is to make their opposing conceptions of painting explicit.

44 7. Gian

Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, detail, 1622-1625, marble, h: 243 cm, Rome, Galleria Borghese.

8. Gian Lorenzo Bernini,

Apollo and Daphne, detail, 1622-1625, marble, h: 243 cm, Rome, Galleria Borghese.

45 Greek Sources Konon The Greek mythographer Konon (active from 36 B.C. to 10 A.D.) was the author of a collection of fifty stories known all through Antiquity as Diegeseis, or Narrations. This work has not reached us in its original form, with the exception of forty lines or so containing fragments of two stories, published in 1984.80 The Narrations survived in a re-transcription in the Bibliotheca by Photius (810-893 A.D.), who was the patriarch of Constantinople. The Bibliotheca consists of 280 codices and anthologizes both ancient and early Christian authors, excerpts of whom Photius quotes or summarizes. Codex 186 in this major work includes Konon’s Narrations, in particular story number 24 devoted to the tale of a boy of unparalleled beauty who came from Thespies in Boeotia, Narcissus [Narkissos]: “24. Narkissos-The twenty-fourth. In Thespeia in Boeotia (The town is not far from Mt. Helikon) a boy was born, Narkissos, extremely beautiful and disdainful of Eros and erastai [lovers]. And the rest of his erastai swore off loving [him], but Ameinias was very persistent and importunate. When, however, [Narkissos] did not admit him but even sent him a sword, [Ameinias] killed himself before Narkissos’ doors after earnestly beseeching the god to avenge him. When Narkissos saw his own face and form at a fountain, reflected in the water, he became the first and only paradoxical lover of himself (`O de N£rkissoj „dën aØtoà t¾n Ôyin kaˆ t¾n morf¾n ™pˆ kr»nhj „ndallÒmhn tù Ûdati, kaˆ mÒnoj, kaˆ prîtoj ˜autoà g… netai ¥topoj ™rast»j).81 Finally, at a loss and believing that he suffered justly in return for his contemptuous treatment of Ameinias’ passionate desires, he killed himself. And from that time the Thespeians decided to revere and honor Eros more and to sacrifice to him privately in addition to the public sacrifices. The inhabitants believe that the narcissus flower first appeared from that spot of ground on which the blood of Narkissos was shed.”82

Konon is believed to have been active under the reign of Augustus, most probably between 36 B.C. and 10 A.D., and therefore he would have been a contemporary of Ovid (43 B.C. – 17 A.D.).83 It may even be that this story pre-dates Ovid’s tale of Narcissus, if we assume that Ovid probably wrote Metamorphoses during the last years of his life (the manuscript seems to have been completed in around 8 A.D., the year Ovid was banished, although it was not published at that time).84 Malcolm Kenneth Brown posits however that it would be going too far to suggest that Ovid was familiar

80 M.K. Brown, 2002, p. 1 and n. 1. 81 See also F. FrontisiDucroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 203-204; L. Vinge, 1967, p. 20. 82 M.K. Brown, 2002, p. 172. 83 For the dates concerning Konon, cf. M.K. Brown, 2002, pp. 1-6. 84 M.K. Brown, 2002, p. 173.

46

9. Nicolas Poussin, Apollo and Daphne, ca. 1625, oil on canvas, 97.2 cm x 130.9 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

85 B. Manuwald, 1975, p. 353 n. 12. 86 M.K. Brown, 2002, p. 173. Regarding the various Hellenistic collections of metamorphosis myths, Brown refers to P.M.C. Forbes Irving, 1990, pp. 19-36. On the question of the “homeland of Narcissus,” see D. Knoepfler, 2010, who opts— with archeological discoveries to support his thesis—for the city of Eretria on the island of Euboea.

with Konon’s work, as does Bernd Manuwald in his article on Ovid and Konon.85 What he retains as the most likely hypothesis is that each of the two authors learned of the fable—which probably had its source in a local Thespian legend—through one of the numerous Hellenistic collections of metamorphosis myths which were in circulation at the time.86 Konon’s story does not have the mythical aura of Ovid’s. In this version Narcissus is not the child of extraordinary parents (in Ovid’s version he is the son of the river god Cephisus and the nymph Liriope) nor is he beloved by the nymphs; it is generally agreed that Ovid was the first to intertwine the stories of Narcissus and the nymph Echo.87 Nor does Konon have a seer, like Tiresias, to predict his tragic end. Moreover, the love that binds

87

Cf. supra n. 27 and n. 33.

47 Narcissus to his admirers is purely homosexual, without any mention of female passion. Finally, Narcissus takes his life without allowing himself to languish until he disappears completely, with a flower coming to take his place. Quite the contrary: according to the local inhabitants, the narcissus flower is born from his own blood.88 There are similarities, however, between Konon’s and Ovid’s versions: they share the same geographical location, Boeotia, and they cultivate the same motifs. Konon’s Narcissus is a youth of unparalleled beauty, but the scorn he feels for the trappings of love, not to mention his admirers, drives the most fervent among them to suicide. Ameinias takes his life outside the door of his beloved’s house, in all probability using the very weapon that Narcissus had procured for him for that purpose, not without first imploring the revenge of the god Eros.89 Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in the water: distraught and aware that he is receiving a just punishment, he commits suicide. Konon does not tell us whether Narcissus recognized himself in the surface of the water. He seems to take his own life, frustrated that he cannot attain this lover who is always out of reach, and aware that he is suffering the same fate and will die the same death as Ameinias, who was never able to possess him. The fact that Narcissus might recognize himself in the image he sees is never explicitly developed.90 According to Konon, the punishment that is inflicted on Narcissus—who is certainly even more guilty than Ovid’s Narcissus91—has the effect of reinforcing and intensifying the Thespians’ veneration of the god Eros. Obviously, both Konon and Ovid insist upon the two motifs of frustrated passionate love and divine retribution. Armed with this comparison, clearly Ovid, regardless of his sources, was the first to have “metamorphosed” a virtually anecdotal story, that of an unrequited love avenged by Eros and inspired by a local legend, into a poetic masterpiece based primarily on illusion and on the (re)cognition of self.92 Pausanias In the ninth book of his Description of Greece (Hellados Periegesis, ca. 174 A.D.), the tireless traveler, geographer, historian and writer Pausanias (115-180 A.D.) relates his exploration of Boeotia. Once he arrives in the land of the Thespians, he gazes at the fountain of Narcissus, and relates the local legend:

L. Vinge, 1967, p. 20; M.K. Brown, 2002 p. 173. See also B. Manuwald, 1975, pp. 349-72, who compares the two texts directly. 89 In Ovid’s text, the avenging god who is implored by the victim of his scorn is the goddess Nemesis, and not Eros. Cf. Met., III, 403-407. 90 L. Vinge, 1967, pp. 20-21. 91 B. Manuwald, in particular, displays how Ovid emphasizes several aspects of the myth with an aim to attenuating Narcissus’ guilt. Cf. B. Manuwald, 1975, pp. 370-372. Quoted in M.K. Brown, 2002, p. 173. 92 Cf. L. Vinge, 1967, pp. 2021. See also H. Valladares, 2006, pp. 106-107. 88

48 “[7] In the territory of the Thespians is a place called Donacon (Reed-bed). Here is the spring of Narcissus. They say that Narcissus looked into this water, and not understanding that he saw his own reflection, [skia, reflection, shadow] unconsciously fell in love with himself, and died of love at the spring. But it is utter stupidity to imagine that a man old enough to fall in love was incapable of distinguishing a man from a man’s reflection. [8] There is another story about Narcissus, less popular indeed than the other, but not without some support. It is said that Narcissus had a twin sister; they were exactly alike in appearance, their hair was the same, they wore similar clothes, and went hunting together. The story goes on that Narcissus fell in love with his sister, and when the girl died, would go to the spring, knowing that it was his reflection [skia, reflection, shadow] that he saw, but in spite of this knowledge finding some relief for his love in imagining that he saw, not his own reflection, but the likeness of his sister [eikona/the image of his sister].93 [9] The flower narcissus grew, in my opinion, before this, if we are to judge by the verses of Pamphos. This poet was born many years before Narcissus the Thespian, and he says that the Maid, the daughter of Demeter, was carried off when she was playing and gathering flowers, and that the flowers by which she was deceived into being carried off were not violets, but the narcissus.”94 F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant point out the chiasmus, “the ideal figure of reflection,” which Pausanias resorts to here: “imagining that he saw, not his own reflection, but the likeness of his sister” in: F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 22. It may be useful to refer to the original: “Νάρκισσον δὲ ἐρασθῆναι τῆς ἀδελφῆς, καὶ ὡς ἀπέθανεν ἡ παῖς, φοιτῶντα ἐπὶ τὴν πηγὴν συνιέναι μὲν ὅτι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σκιὰν ἑώρα, εἶναι δέ οἱ καὶ συνιέντι ῥᾳστώνην τοῦ ἔρωτος ἅτε οὐχ ἑαυτοῦ σκιὰν δοξάζοντι ἀλλὰ εἰκόνα ὁρᾶν τῆς ἀδελφῆς”; Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 9, chap. 31, 7-9, pp. 310-311. 94 Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 9, 31, 7-9, pp. 310311, 95 For a commentary on Pausanias’ text, cf. L. Vinge, 1967, p. 22. 93

Pausanias reminds us in the most laconic way of the story of Narcissus according to the Thespian tradition: Narcissus gazes at himself in the water of the fountain and, not recognizing his own face, falls in love with his reflection. He dies of love at the edge of the fountain. The author merely relates a very condensed version of the fundamental structure of the story: the illusion of the reflection, the frustrated passionate love, and death. At no time does he emphasize Narcissus’ beauty or his scorn for love and its trappings. Nor does he evoke the motif of the crime that requires divine punishment, still less the fact that the punishment Narcissus incurred was very similar to that suffered by his victim. So he makes no reference to the repetition of the motif of frustrated passion leading to death. This total absence of any explanation regarding the context in which Narcissus meets his reflection at the fountain shows very clearly how little interest or credit Pausanias granted to this version of the myth. For him it is, moreover, totally absurd to imagine that Narcissus, who had reached an age where one can fall in love, was unable to tell a real body from the image of a body [skia], not to mention the fact that the image is his own, being his own reflection on the water—supposing he had ever even encountered it before.95 No doubt in search of a more plausible story, Pausanias offered another version of the myth which is much closer to satisfying his demand for rationality. Narcissus has a twin sister who is absolutely similar to him. They have the same hair, wear the same clothes, and go hunting together. Narcissus falls in love with his sister, but the

49 young girl suddenly dies. He starts going to the fountain, knowing full well that it is his own face he sees there, but in order to find some consolation for his lost love he indulges the illusion that it is his sister he is seeing. Pausanias’ position regarding the first version of the Narcissus myth is often considered far too rationalist. He refuses to take into account the Dionysian madness that overcomes Narcissus and prevents him from recognizing himself, and which causes him to fall in love with the ineffable beauty of this “other” and suffer from a thirst that he can never assuage, as prescribed by the terms of punishment ordered by the offended goddess.96 Illusion, however, is not completely absent from the second version of the narrative as told by Pausanias. Here Narcissus is aware right from the start that he is seeing his reflection—something which, it would seem, is by no means the case all through tradition, except at the very end in Ovid’s version—but he deliberately indulges in the illusion, and allows himself to become intoxicated, consciously, in order to calm the pain of his grief.97 Narcissus’ passion is heterosexual in nature, and incestuous. He is in love with his twin sister, his living double, and once she has died, in her place he knowingly substitutes the figure of his own reflection, his “medial” double. Thus in his own image reflected on the surface of the water he recovers those features that are both identical and other, the very features of his dead twin.98 Narcissus is irretrievably lost in this gentle illusion which, like a “narcotic,” restores the vision of his sister to him: “The Ancients attributed calming properties to the heady smell of the narcissus, and tended to see an etymological similarity between narkissos and narké, which meant drowsiness. Pausanias’ Narcissus asks for his own image to have a narcotic effect on him. This dédoublement, which allows him to see himself, acts like a drug, and eventually leads to death. The story does not make the cause of death explicit.”99 Pausanias himself refers to the narcissus flower, reminding us that it existed prior to the myth; he is eager to assure us in this way that any etiological explanation based on the flower cannot be pertinent. The narcissus is neither the fruit of a metamorphosis nor did it spring from the ephebe’s blood; it was in bloom long before Narcissus the Thespian, and according to the legendary poet Pamphos it was the instrument behind the ruse which enabled Hades to abduct Persephone. The Narcissus Flower in the Myth of Demeter and Persephone Pausanias refers to the legendary poet Pamphos when he speaks of the flower known as the narcissus, in relation to the myth of

P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, pp. 138139. 97 See also F. FrontisiDucroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 217-218. 98 On the question of the double and of identity, see F. Frontisi-Ducroux, 1980, pp. 123-125, and for an even more thorough version: F. Frontisi-Ducroux/ J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 217-221. 99 F. Frontisi-Ducroux, 1980, pp. 123-124. [Translation: A. Anderson]. This passage also appears with a few minor changes in F. FrontisiDucroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 218. 96

50 Persephone and Demeter. Pamphos is said to have written the most ancient Athenian hymns,100 and his compositions for the Eleusinian mysteries were recited by the Lycomids101 to accompany the ceremonial rites.102 Pausanias informs us that Pamphos lived before Homer, and he sometimes compares their two Hymns to Demeter: Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 7, 21, 9, pp. 294295. 101 The Lycomids were a sacerdotal family who were entrusted, within the Eleusinian priesthood, with the office of the Daduchos—second only in importance to that of the Hierophant—after the ancient lineage of the Daduchi had died out, ca. 380 B.C. The Lycomids had hitherto celebrated their own mysteries in the pastos of Phyla, and claimed to be the guardians of the hymns attributed to Pamphos, Orpheus, and Musaeus, which were then recited at the ceremonies of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Cf. F. Lenormant [E. Pottier], 1892, p. 550. 102 Cf. Homer, Hymnes, p. 7. 103 Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 8, 37, 9, pp. 88-89. See also Homer, Hymnes, p. 7. 104 The manuscript is now kept at Leiden and is known as Leidensis 33H (Humbert refers to it as M because it is the ex-Mosquensis) and dates from the 14th century. Cf. Homer, Hymnes, pp. 11-13 and pp. 3234. 105 Homer, Hymnes, pp. 38-39. 106 Homer, Hymnes, p. 5. 107 Homer, Hymnes, p. 32. 108 Persephone is also simply known as Kore or Maiden, young girl. 109 Homeric Hymns, Homeric Hymn to Demeter, v. 1-21, pp. 32-33. 100

“9. This Mistress the Arcadians worship more than any other god, declaring that she is a daughter of Poseidon and Demeter. Mistress is her surname among the many, just as they surname Demeter’s daughter by Zeus the Maid. But whereas the real name of the Maid is Persephone, as Homer and Pamphos before him say in their poems, the real name of the Mistress I am afraid to write to the uninitiated.”103

Of these two hymns, the only one to have survived is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, preserved in a single manuscript that dates from the 14th century, and found by chance in a stable in Moscow in 1780.104 The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is generally said to date from the sixth century before Christ, although Jean Humbert suggests we can go even further back, to the end of the seventh century B.C.105 The term “Homeric” does not, however, signify that the author of the hymn was named Homer. The sole purpose of this adjective is to specify that from the point of view of their form, these poems belong to the epic genre and thus are to be considered as distinct from other types of hymns.106 The hymn is made of up two themes: The Abduction of Persephone and subsequent to that, The Institution of the Mysteries of Eleusis.107 And here the narcissus flower—just as in Pamphos’ hymn according to Pausanias—is the instrument of the ruse which enables Hades—“He who receives so many guests”—to seize Kore/Persephone:108 “Of Demeter the lovely-haired, the august goddess first I sing, of her and her slender-ankled daughter, whom Aïdoneus seized by favor of heavybooming, wide-sounding Zeus as she frolicked, away from Demeter of the golden sword and respledent fruit, with the deep-bosomed daughters of Ocean, picking flowers across the soft meadow, roses and saffron and lovely violets, iris and hyacinth, and narcissus, that Earth put forth as a snare for the maiden with eyes like buds by the will of Zeus, as a favor to the Hospitable One. It shone wondrously, an awe-inspiring thing to see both for the immortal gods and for mortal men. From its root a hundred heads grew out, and a perfumed odor; the whole broad sky above and the whole earth smiled, and the salty swell of the sea. In amazement she reached out with both hands to take the pretty plaything. But the broad-wayed earth gaped open on the plain of Nysa, and there the Hospitable Lord rushed forth with his immortal steeds, Kronos’ son whose names are many. Seizing her by force, he began to drive her off on his golden chariot, with her wailing and screaming as she called on her father Zeus, the highest and noblest. ”109

51 The narcissus, a flower of wonderful brilliance, delights all those who gaze at it, whether they are gods or mortals. And the very perfume of the flower enchants, and causes the vast sky, the kingdom of earth, and the turbulent sea to smile. The ruse, which at first glance seems to be part of a visual fascination, could equally be founded on the heady smell of the flower, and the torpor it was reputed to provoke.110 On the basis of the testimony of the Ancients, we may conclude that the narcissus was used during worship at the Eleusinian ceremonies.111 One of these testimonies is a verse from Sophocles (495-406 B.C.) in Oedipus at Colonus, describing the relationship between Persephone and the narcissus flower: “And there flourishes ever day by day, fed by dew from heaven, the narcissus with its lovely clusters, the ancient crown of the two great goddesses, and the crocus that gleams with gold; […]” 112

According to Plutarch (46-125 A.D.), who mentions Sophocles, the association between the narcissus and Persephone can be explained precisely because of the flower’s narcotic virtues: “Some plant names also document the ancients’ search for knowledge about these matters. The hazel (karua) they so named because it gives off a heavy and soporific (karôtikon) exhalation harmful to those who lie beneath it, and the narcissus they called by this name because it dulls the nerves and induces a narcotic heaviness–which is the reason why Sophocles has called it ancient crown of great divinities, by which he means the Chtonic Goddesses.”113

Finally, within the framework of the Eleusinian worship in honor of the two goddesses (Demeter and Persephone), Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux and Jean-Pierre Vernant also refer to the pure hypothesis which described the use of “narcotic, if not hallucinogenic, plants to facilitate the epopteia114 during the initiation.”115

F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 236: “‘[…] the perfume of this ball of flower’ is also mentioned: it is enchanting, and causes the vast sky, the entire earth, and the turbulent sea to smile. Does it paralyze the universe? When Hades suddenly appears, no one hears Persephone’s cry, except for Hecate and Helios, who are both very far away from earth and from the scene of the tragedy.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. One should also note S. Reinach’s reservations regarding Persephone’s drowsiness, said to be caused by the smell of the narcissus, for the simple reason that “[…] according to the poet, Proserpine resists Hades and fills the air with her cries […] Someone who is drowsy cannot struggle in this way, nor do they shout: there is no point 110

insisting. Moreover, Proserpine’s cries are vital to the story, because Hecate hears them in her lair, and she is the one who alerts Demeter in the end (v. 57),” in: S. Reinach, (1918) 1996, pp. 423-434. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 111 Cf. F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 236-238. 112 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, vv. 681-685, pp. 492-493. Of interest here, too, is the fact that S. Reinach debates the opinion of the more ancient commentators, and affirms that the great goddesses wearing crowns of narcissi, mentioned by Sophocles, are the Eumenides (or Erinyes), and not Demeter and Kore. See: S. Reinach, (1918) 1996, pp. 429-433. 113 Plutarch, Table-Talk, Book III, 1, 3, 647 B, pp. 210-211. 114 For a detailed explanation of epopteia, cf. C. Lenormant [E. Pottier], 1892, in particular p. 553: “The passage from Plutarch about Demetrius Poliocretes, which we have just mentioned, establishes that in addition to the minor mysteries of Agrae there were, at the great mysteries of Eleusis itself, two levels of initiation, which could only be undertaken at an interval of one year. The second level constituted what was known as the epopteia, epopsia, or the autopsy, autopsia. There can be no doubt that corresponding to this well-established ranking there was also a succession of ordinary rites, practices, instructions and revelations, which tended increasingly toward this elevated goal, this sort of religious perfection which was the very concept of the teletê, a word used to designate both the mysteries as

52 a whole and the final result of the initiation. It is above all positive that the epopteia consisted in a particular spectacle, in one part of the mystical drama, represented no doubt by a special night where the myths of the first level were not accepted.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 115 F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 238. They refer in n. 4 of the same page to S. Eitrem, 1935, p. 1727. There is however no precise reference to this hypothesis in Eitrem’s article. 116 S. Eitrem, 1935, p. 1727. See also F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 238. 117 Philostratus, Imagines. The question regarding the authorship of the Eikones, by one or the other of the Philostratuses recorded by tradition, is ambiguous and much-debated. For further discussion of the issue, see Philostratus, La galerie, pp. 1-7. 118 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 1, 4, pp. 4-7. 119 The term used to designate them here is pinakes, and is applied to panels. These were not frescoes, therefore, but rather paintings fixed in the wall. This is the only use of the word pinakes in Imagines. Everywhere else Philostratus speaks of graphè when he refers to these paintings. Cf. Philostratus, La galerie, p. 121 n. 7. 120 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 1, 4, pp. 6-7. See also M.-H. Quet, 2006, pp. 41-42: “Philostratus did not specify the nature of the games (¢gèn/agôn) that were held during his stay in Naples. But these games must have been the Neapolitan Sebasta, a very popular event, well known by the agonistic inscriptions dating from the imperial era during

In light of the relation between the narcissus flower and the goddesses of the Underworld, it is no surprise to learn that it bore an affinity with death itself, and that it was used for the decoration of tombs.116 Philostratus Approximately two centuries after Ovid’s tale, the Greek Philostratus of Lemnos (170-250 A.D.)—writer, orator, and sophist of the Second Sophistic—takes us on a tour of a picture gallery which includes a representation of Narcissus; Philostratus provides us with a detailed description of the painting, an ekphrasis. It was, moreover, thanks to his Imagines (Eikones)117—and subsequently the Ekphraseis (Descriptions of Statues) by Callistratus (4th century A.D.)—that the ekphrasis would emerge as a literary genre of its own, no longer merely included within a story; it would also take on more of the meaning ascribed to it today, that of a painstaking description of a work of art, whether real or fictitious. Philostratus would, moreover, explain in his prologue the particular context that gave rise to his Imagines. His intention was not to name painters nor to tell their life stories, but to explain a variety of paintings to young people: it is a conversation composed for young people, in order to teach them to interpret, and to mold their taste.118 Philostratus happened to be staying in Naples, which deserves to be considered as a Greek city at the time, and games were being held. As he did not want to recite in public, although many of the young men who visited his host’s house urged him to do so, an elegant solution was found. His host lived outside the city walls in a large property by the sea, where a gallery with a colonnade, four or five stories high, had been built looking out onto the Tyrrhenian Sea. The most beautiful thing about the gallery were the paintings embedded in the walls,119 chosen with great care, proof of the talent of a great many painters: “The idea had already occurred to me that I ought to speak in praise of the paintings, when the son of my host, quite a young boy, only ten years old but already an ardent listener and eager to learn, kept watching me as I went from one to another and asking me to interpret them. So in order that he might not think me ill-bred, ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘we will make them the subject of a discourse as soon as the young men come.’ And when they came, I said, ‘Let me put the boy in front and address to him my effort at interpretation; but do you follow, not only agreeing but also asking questions if anything I say is not clear.’”120

53 So we must not lose sight of the effect produced by the contextual mise en scène made explicit in the prologue when we begin reading each of Philostratus’ ekphraseis. We are joining his young listeners (in the world of the story); we wander with them through the picture gallery—and in the end it matters little whether this gallery actually existed or not121—and we remain attentive during the private lecture delivered for each work of art by a learned and refined orator, one of the most brilliant “Hellenes” of the Empire. Finally, after pausing before a number of paintings, we find ourselves looking at a picture with Narcissus for its theme (I, 23). This is how Philostratus begins his description of the work: “The pool paints Narcissus, and the painting represents both the pool and the whole story of Narcissus.122 A youth just returned from the hunt stands over a pool, drawing from within himself a kind of yearning and falling in love with his own beauty; and, as you see, he sheds a radiance into the water.” (I, 23, 1).123

The ekphrasis of the work reveals right from the start the interplay of surfaces which condition the spectator for the perception of Narcissus admiring himself in a body of water. The spectator gazes at the painted surface reproducing Narcissus, who is himself gazing at the surface of the water reflecting his figure.124 He is confronting a mechanism of medial mise en abîme—a mechanism whose existence we had already hinted at in the presence of Caravaggio’s Narcissus. Philostratus dwells on the description of the space surrounding the ephebe: “The cave is sacred to Acheloüs and the Nymphs, and the scene is painted realistically. For the statues are of a crude art and made from a local stone; some of them are worn away by time, others have been mutilated by children of cowherds or shepherds while still young and unaware of the presence of the god. Nor is the pool without some connection with the Bacchic rites of Dionysus, since he had made it known to the Nymphs of the wine-press; at any rate it is roofed over with vine and ivy and beautiful creeping plants, and it abounds in clusters of grapes and the trees that furnish the thyrsi, and tuneful birds disport themselves above it, each with its own note (I, 23, 2).”

Acheloüs is a river god from Aetolia, the greatest river in Greece. He is considered to be the eldest of the three thousand river

which under the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus—as in the Capitolia in Rome, in the Pithya from Delphi and numerous other games from

the cities of the Roman east— spectacles of pantomimes had been officially introduced that hitherto had only been allowed in panegyries. Crowds of people flocked to these games as well as to temporary installations where the panegyries were held; they included the “Hellenistic group” (tÕ `EllhnikÒn) and among them were young people who escorted the prominent Sophists. It was to escape this crowd (Ôcloj) that Philostratus refused to give his speeches (poie‹sqai t¦j melštaj), in public (™n tû fanerîj), no doubt at the Odeon or at the theatre of the city.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 121 For an overview of the abundant debate on the subject, see the introduction to the text already quoted here: Philostratus, La galerie, pp. 1-7. 122 “Ή mὲν πηγ¾ γράφει τÕν Νάρκισσον, ¹ δὲ γραφ¾ τ¾ν πηγ¾ν καˆ τ¦ τοà Ναρκίσσου πάντα”. See also H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 200 and p. 510 n. 81; F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, pp. 225-230. 123 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 23, 1, pp. 88-89. 124 See also F. Frontisi-Ducroux, 1980, p. 123: “Emphasizing the homology between the painting and the surface of the water which both represent Narcissus, he [Philostratus] insists upon the multiple repetitions of the images [la démultiplication en abyme des images]. The reflection on the fallacious ambiguity of art thus complements Narcissus’ fundamental ambivalence, offering an unparalleled pretext for every dizzying manner of trompe-l’oeil.” [Translation: A. Anderson].

54

Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995, vol. 1, I, 23, pp. 342348, here p. 345. 126 Plato, Phaedrus, 230b, pp. 422-423: “[Socrates is speaking] By Hera, it is a charming resting place. For this plane tree is very spreading and lofty, and the tall and shady willow is very beautiful, and it is in full bloom, so as to make the place most fragrant; then, too, the spring is very pretty as it flows under the plane tree, and its water is very cool, to judge by my foot. And it seems to be a sacred place of some nymphs and of Acheloüs, judging by the figurines and statues.” D. Panofsky refers to Blaise de Vigenère’s commentary in: D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 120 n. 33. 127 I have preserved here the Greek name in keeping with Philostratus’ text, similarly to the way I preserved the Latin when discussing Ovid’s text. Cf. supra n. 17. 128 F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 227. 129 Cf. K. Lehmann-Hartleben, 1941, pp. 33-36 (image, p. 35). See also Philostratus, La galerie, pp. 3-4; P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 135 and pp. 496-497 n. 58; and F. Frontisi-Ducroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 227 n. 2. 125

gods, his brothers, to which the Titan Oceanus and his sister and wife Thetys gave birth. Blaise de Vigenère, in the Annotation which follows his French translation (1578) of I, 23,125 points out that the cave of Acheloüs and the nymphs is a direct reference to the beginning of Plato’s Phaedrus, where Socrates and Phaedrus pause to discuss the subject of love.126 The scene of the painting, stamped with realism, is also placed under the patronage of the god Dionysus:127 he is the god who has caused this spring to flow for the sake of the Bacchants. Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux and Jean-Pierre Vernant pause to comment on the myth’s cultural background, which the description of the painting refers to, and which the lecturer’s educated listeners would have easily recognized. Thus, while the cave of Acheloüs and the nymphs was undeniably part of Phaedrus, Dionysus’ presence here would not have been foreign, either, to Platonic eroticism: “The cave of Acheloüs and the nymphs refers to the beginning of Plato’s Phaedrus, and the Dionysus of the Bacchic ecstasy to whom the appearance of the spring has been attributed evokes the Symposium, of which the god was a patron, together with Eros, and whose powers are affirmed at the end of the dialogue through the Silenic figure of Socrates. The very birds perched in the vine and the ivy, by adding the sound of their learned harmonies to the painting, contribute to this Dionysian atmosphere, for the verb that is used to describe their frolicking (komazein) is also that of the Bacchic festival. In this way the two founding works of Platonic eroticism are invoked.”128 Finally, one must not forget that as we join Philostratus on this visit, the painting of Narcissus is surrounded by works that evoke the power of Dionysus: I, 14 (The Birth of Dionysus); I, 18 (The Bacchants); I, 19 (The Tyrrhenian pirates); I, 20 (The Satyrs); I, 25 (the Andrians), and still others. Obviously, some comparisons can be made between the paintings which follow one another and often echo each other, depicting as they do similar themes. The study by Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, which seeks to reinforce (and certify) the notion that the gallery really existed, goes one step further in that direction, and suggests a reading of the entire text according to a distribution into five rooms, each of which corresponds to a cycle: Rivers (I, 1-13); Dionysus (I, 14-30); Aphrodite (II, 1-12); the primitive world (II, 13-19); Herakles (II, 20-25). According to this study, the walls in each of the rooms are hung with large panels and secondary friezes on their upper part. The painting of Narcissus (I, 23) is located in the room devoted to the Dionysian cycle, and decorates a frieze, along with its matching piece, the young Hyacinth (I, 24) and other works that belong to the Dionysian myth (fig. 10).129

55 Philostratus continues his description of the painting, and insists on the work’s realistic slant: “[…] white flowers grow about the pool, not yet in blossom but just springing up in honour of the youth.130 The painting has such regard for realism that it even shows drops of dew dripping from the flowers and a bee settling on the flowers – whether a real bee has been deceived by the painted flowers of whether we are to be deceived into thinking that a painted bee is real, I do not know. But let that pass (I, 23, 2).”

The mimetic nature of the painting is so successful that it gives an illusion of reality, and leaves Philostratus unable to locate precisely the boundary between the space of the viewer and that of representation. The ambiguity rests on the nature of the bee: is it deceived by the realism of the work, coming to land on the canvas in order to gather pollen from a painted flower or, on the contrary, does the deceived viewer believe he or she is observing a very real bee, even though it is painted and is thus an integral part of the scene represented? This rhetorical game makes no attempt, however, to solve the question it raises but seeks rather to emphasize the realistic nature of the painting, which could be applied to various scenarios and degrees of illusion. It aims to reformulate the founding story surrounding the question of a work of art’s mimetic perfection: the rivalry opposing the two painters of Antiquity, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, as described two centuries earlier by Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), in the 35th book of his Natural History: “This last [Parrhasius], it is said, entered into a pictorial contest with Zeuxis, who represented some grapes, painted so naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. Parrhasius, on the other hand, exhibited a curtain, drawn with such singular truthfulness, that Zeuxis, elated with the judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside to let the picture be seen. Upon finding his mistake, with a great degree of ingenuous candour he admitted that he had been surpassed, for that whereas he himself had only deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist.”131

The verdict delivered by Zeuxis himself is very clear: a painting that can fool even an expert will be of a mimetic quality superior to that of a work capable of fooling only an animal. As for Philostratus, he joins these two unequal levels of illusion within one single painting. He does however leave the question open, and in this way he shows that the very eye of the connoisseur, while not yet fooled, may well be at some point. And in order to resolve this difficulty, the viewer would have to involve yet another of his

130 The narcissus flower is already present in the scene even before the hero’s death. Thus the painting indeed depicts the young man’s entire story, cf. supra n. 122; Frontisi-Ducroux/J-P. Vernant, 1997, p. 228. 131 Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, XXXV, 36.

56 10. Illustration

by Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, Room of Dionysus.

132 H. Valladares, 2006, pp. 141-142. 133 J. Elsner, 1995, pp. 21-48; here p. 36: “Whatever happens, realism is dependent on deception as the image strives to do its best to elide the unbridgeable gap between life and art. Mimesis is always illusion. […]” See also S. Halliwell, 2002, pp. 2-3, cited in H. Valladares, 2006, p. 141. 134 Philostratus, La galerie, p. vii; M. Bettini/E. Pellizer, 2003, p. 90. 135 The painting is a panel made with wax polish. The colors are diluted in wax—generally beeswax—which is heated before use. See Philostratus, La galerie, p. 126 n. 127.

senses—touch, for example.132 Thus the painting, too, is on a superior level of realism.133 In this precise context, the choice of a theme where a situation of illusion has been left unresolved has the effect of leaving the viewer in a situation analogous to Narcissus’ own134—bearing in mind, however, that the viewer is not confronted with his or her own image and consequently is not, unlike Narcissus, prey to an autoscopic drive. But Philostratus now takes the ephebe to task within the painting: “(3) As for you, however, Narcissus, it is no painting that has deceived you, nor are you engrossed in a thing of pigments or wax 135 but you do not realize that the water represents you exactly as you are when you gaze upon it, nor do you see through the artifice of the pool, though to do so you have only to nod your head or change your expression or slightly move your hand, instead of standing in the same attitude; but acting as though you had met a companion, you wait for some move on his part. Do you then expect the pool to enter into conversation with you? Nay, this

57 youth does not hear anything we say, but he is immersed eyes and ears alike […]” (I, 23, 3).

Narcissus’ illusion differs, first of all, from the illusion the viewer might succumb to, in that it is tributary of another medium, the mirror, and not the painted surface of the canvas. His illusion, therefore, resides in the non-recognition of the reflective properties of the water. Yet to Philostratus it seems obvious that if Narcissus were to make just the slightest gesture—something which is naturally impossible for him as a painted figure, and which in any event did not (at least initially) suffice for Ovid’s Narcissus—he would lift the veil of illusion. But of course he does not move, he remains immobile, captivated by the young man staring back at him. Narcissus seems to want to strike up a conversation with the “spring,” just as Philostratus, overstepping, in terms of sound, the boundary between two distinct spaces, is trying to catch the attention of this painted Narcissus.136 Philostratus now embarks on a detailed description of Narcissus’ face in the painting; it would be pertinent to accompany his description with some support of a visual nature. This support does exist, if we take a moment to examine the history of the reception of Philstratus’ Imagines (Eikones). The French translation in 1578 by Blaise de Vigenère, along with its commentary, was a significant moment in this history.137 And as of the major posthumous edition in 1614—which presented in one volume both the translation and the commentary by Blaise de Vigenère of the Tableaux and of their Suitte, as well as of Callistratus’ Descriptions138—the text would be illustrated with sixty-eight engravings in the mannerist style of the School of Fontainebleau, accompanied by moralizing epigrams. Each of Philostratus’ paintings was now preceded by the engraving that represented it, in other words sixty-five full page plates; the three remaining engravings, duplicates originally made to illustrate Philostratus’ Tableaux, were global illustrations of the Suitte.139 This work of visual transposition, from the moment of its creation, became indissociable from the reception of Philostratus’ text, and the force of its impact upon the public was shown by the success of the new illustrated edition: seven subsequent editions were issued in just over twenty years.140 Let us proceed with Philostratus’ description of the painting of Narcissus at the Neapolitan gallery, with a look at the engraving which, from the 1614 edition on, would attempt to reconstruct, or at least revive that painting (fig. 11).141 Then we will examine the overall strategy of creating an image from Philostratus’ text, as performed by the 17th century draftsman/engraver—bearing

This recalls Ovid’s warnings to Narcissus (Met., III, 432-436). For an analysis of the play of rhetorical illusions between reality and representation Philostratus has displayed here, see J. Elsner, 1995, pp. 31-36. For a comparative discussion of Ovid’s and Philostratus’ berating words, cf. P. Hardie, 2002, p. 147; H. Valladares, 2006, pp. 141-146. 137 Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995. For more detailed information on this subject, cf. the introduction, vol. 1, pp. i-lxviii, here pp. xxxi-xxxiv. 138 The Suitte consists of a second series of Imagines (Eikones). In his introduction to this second series, the author specifies “that a certain description of works was written by [his] homonym, his maternal grandfather.” Thus it became habitual to attribute the first Imagines to Philostratus the Elder, and the second series to Philostratus the Younger. Cf. Philostrate, La galerie, p. 1. 139 Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995, vol. 1, p. xxxiv and in particular vol. 2, p. 977. 140 Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995, vol. 1, p. xxxiv; vol. 2, p. 978. 141 The image represented here is a reproduction of the engraving from the 1615 edition, rigorously identical to that of 1614, as the prints were made from the same plates. Cf. Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995, vol. 2, pp. 977-979. 136

58 in mind all the while that the engraving may also be related to Blaise de Vigenère’s written commentary. The plate is not signed, and according to Mac Allister Johnson it seems characteristic of a “Franco-Flemish” manner. Therefore it must have been made by one of the anonymous draftsmen and engravers who, like Antoine Caron or Jaspar Isac, to name but a few, contributed to this enterprise.142 To go back to Philostratus’ ekphrasis, this is how he describes the way in which the painter depicted Narcissus: “The youth, standing erect, is at rest; he has his legs crossed and supports one hand on the spear which is planted on his left, while his right hand is pressed against his hip so as to support his body and to produce the type of figure in which the buttocks are pushed out because of the inward bend on the left side. The arm shows an open space at the point where the elbow bends, a wrinkle where the wrist is twisted, and it casts a shadow as it ends in the palm of the hand, and he lines of the shadow are slanting because the fingers are bent in. Whether the panting of his breast remains from his hunting or is already the painting of love I do not know. The eye, surely, is that of a man deeply in love, for its natural brightness and intensity are softened by a longing that settles upon it, and he perhaps thinks that he is loved in return, since the reflection [skia]143 gazes at him in just the way that he looks at it.” (I, 23, 4).

W. Mac Allister Johnson, 1969, pp. 277-304; Philostratus, Les images, (1578) 1995, vol. 2, pp. 979-981. 143 Cf. also supra n. 41. 142

If we examine the engraving (which precedes the text in the 1614 edition), it does indeed seem to correspond in a number of ways to Philostratus’ ekphrasis. The position of Narcissus’ arms is reversed, however, in comparison to the text, which may be the result of the fact that the engraver portrayed his subject “the right way round” on the original plate, therefore the print comes out “backwards,” as a “negative.” However, in keeping with the text, it is his right hip which is prominent, and this immediately invalidates the notion of a simple inversion of the posture described by Philostratus. In addition, this prominence is more the result of an accentuated, mannered contrapposto than a mere lowering of the left leg. His face is twisted to the left as he stares at his reflection, and we can read the vibrancy of his gaze, “softened” by a “longing that settles upon it.” The spring and its immediate environment also correspond in a general manner, to the description the orator has left us. The building on the left of the painting might be seen as similar to the den of Acheloüs and the nymphs. The visible façade is adorned with a niche containing a statue of Diana—we see she is wearing a crescent moon on her head—holding an amphora from which a stream of water is flowing. The fountain/spring in the representa-

59 11. Anonymous (“Franco-Flem-

ish”manner), Narcissus, 1615, engraving.

tion seems, consequently, to be tributary to the worship of Diana the huntress rather than that of Dionysus. Beneath the base supporting the statue we can see two “dolphins,” their tails mingling. From their mouths, which are facing in opposite directions, two even more powerful streams of water are flowing; we cannot see where the left-hand stream lands, while the

60 right-hand one troubles the surface not far from where the flow from the goddess’s amphora lands. A richly blooming vine stock clings to the lower right-hand part of the alcove; it blends with the frieze of foliage and sculpted bunches which decorate the arch above the niche. As in the text, we are aware of the presence of birds. The fact that their frolicking occurs between the statue and the frieze of artificial vines, rather than among the real vines, reinforces the feeling of a mimetic play of illusions, a subtle variation on the grape theme in Zeuxis, with the aim of permeating the illustration, in turn, with the significant concept that shapes the ekphrasis in Philostratus’ painting: realism so painstakingly executed that it can deceive. This phenomenon, in a way, replaces the contribution to the truth of the painting of Philostratus’ bee, which can be found within the text but which the draftsman/engraver chose not to represent—unless he decided on the first option which Philostratus put forth? Might a real bee also have been deceived by the engraving—only this time it did not wait for us, it had already flown away and left the scene? The flowers on the other bank—narcissi?—on the right, in the foreground, also show their corollas to the viewer, an invitation to come closer to the picture, the better to breathe in their perfume. Finally, the reflection of the scene is shown to us almost completely, hidden here and there by the grasses growing at the front of the picture, or by some ruin emerging from the water. Narcissus’ reflection, and that of one of the two hunting dogs accompanying him, are shown in their entirety, occupying, along with their models, the center of the representation. No dogs are mentioned in Philostratus’ description, but we may better grasp the reason for their presence here if we observe the behavior of the dog that is closest in the foreground with respect to his reflected image. His two front paws are in the water and he is already assuaging his “physical” thirst, not the least bit preoccupied by his reflection—it is most unlikely that he would be delighting in his own image, or trying to “kiss” it, or lick his chops at it! The animal’s thirst, therefore, acts as a clever counterpart to that “other thirst,” the thirst for the other, which is starting to overwhelm Narcissus.144 The young man does not touch the surface of the water. He stands there motionless, ecstatic, lovingly contemplating his specular double, clearly happy to see on the other’s face that same fascination that he is feeling:

144 Met., III, 415-416: “While he desires to quench his thirst, a different thirst grows.”

“[…]Both the Narcissi are exactly alike in form and each repeats the traits of the other, except that one stands out in the open air while the other is immersed in the pool. For the youth stands over the youth who stands in the water, or rather who gazes intently at him and seems to be athirst for his beauty” (I, 23, 5)

61

Nicolas Poussin, The Birth of Bacchus This painting from 1657, now at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, depicts not so much Bacchus’ actual birth as the event that followed closely upon his birth (fig. 12). After his mother Semele had perished, struck by the lightning of her lover’s embrace, and after the child was born from his father’s own thigh, he would be entrusted for his education, through the offices of Mercury, to the nymphs of Nysa.145 The central scene unfolds outside a grotto covered in ivy, vine branches and bunches of grapes, decorated with baskets of fruit and flowers or amphoras of wine placed on a table covered with a large tablecloth. Behind the bathing nymphs, on the left-hand side of the painting, a spring emerges from the rocks and comes to fill the pond that occupies the foreground of the scene. Here we can follow the description that the painter and biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori—continuing in the line of Giorgio Vasari—had already given of this painting in 1672, in his Life of Poussin (who was his friend), a description which was included in the Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architecti moderni. Mercury is wearing a

12. Nicolas Poussin, The Birth of Bacchus, 1657, oil on canvas, 122 cm x 179 cm, Cambridge (MA), Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Museum.

145

Met., III, 253-315.

62 red cloak and pointing with his right hand at the place he has come from; with his other hand he is passing the child Bacchus to the nymph Dirce, the daughter of the river god Acheloüs. Another Naiad, kneeling behind Dirce, is turning to her bathing companions and pointing to the child. The nymphs have turned toward the god and are gazing admiringly at him. On the upper right-hand side of the painting, following Mercury’s raised arm, we can see Jupiter lying in bed, recovering from the birth, receiving the care of his daughter Hebe. Leaning against a tree on the hillock overlooking the grotto is the god Pan, celebrating Bacchus’ birth with a refrain on his flute. Bellori himself considered that the luxuriant foliage around the grotto and the presence of Pan connected Poussin’s work to the description which Philostratus, in Imagines I, 14 (Semele) made of a painting that also described the birth of Bacchus:146 G.P. Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti moderni, pp. 460-461. See also D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 112 and p. 117 n. 24. 147 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 14, 3, pp. 58-59. 148 D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 117. 149 See supra n. 78. 150 See supra n. 75. 151 My thanks to V.I. Stoichita to whom I owe the inspiration for this expression. I would also like to refer to the description of The Rape of the Sabine Women (1637, Musée du Louvre, Paris. This painting was analyzed in particular alongside a first version dating from 1634, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) by Daniel Arasse, who already pointed out the presence of eventual derogations to the rule in Poussin’s work. Although The Rape of the Sabine Women provides the global description of a single historia, Arasse shows us that it rests in fact on the conjunction of two temporalities and two different “anachronisms,” in D. Arasse, 2000, p. 343. 146

“The flame, dividing, dimly outlines a cave for Dionysus more charming than any in Assyria and Lydia; for sprays of ivy grow luxuriantly about it and clusters of ivy berries and now grape-vines and stalks of thyrsus which spring up from the willing earth, so that some grow in the very fire. […]Listen to Pan, how he seems to be hymning Dionysus on the crests of Cithaeron, as he dances an Evian fling.”147

On the lower right-hand side of the picture, Bellori recognizes Echo and Narcissus. The ephebe is lying surrounded by the flowers into which he was transformed, while Echo has collapsed against the rock. According to the biographer, from her extreme pallor she would seem to have already been changed to stone. Bellori explains Poussin’s decision to combine the birth of Bacchus and the death of Narcissus into a single painting by the fact that the two scenes are told one after the other in Book III of Ovid’s Metamorphoses—even though they are actually separated by the tale of Tiresias, as Dora Panofsky reminds us.148 We are confronted here with something of a breach of Alberti’s historia,149 of its requirement for unity and narrative clarity: the work is not harnessed to a faithful and exhaustive representation of a story, but rather to two stories. Poussin’s injunction to Fréart de Chantelou in his letter accompanying Manna would no longer be applicable.150 Here we cannot read the story and the painting; much more than that, we must “read the stories and the painting.”151 Anthony Blunt retains the idea that Philostratus’ text exerted a general influence, but he finds weaknesses in Bellori’s explanation regarding Narcissus’ integration into the painting. He suggests viewing it, rather, with the support of Natale Conti’s

63 Mythologiae (first published in Venice in 1551), as an expression of the antithesis between vitality/fertility and death/sterility.152 Dora Panofsky is also critical with regard to Bellori’s simplistic solution, and is in search of a more “visual” source for this thematic combination. She is leaning therefore toward the influence of Philostratus’ text right up to the very “invention” of Poussin’s composition, beyond the individual “motifs.” Thus, when she comes to Philostratus’ description of the painting of Narcissus, she marvels at the similarity in the environment in which the two scenes are set: The Birth of Bacchus [(I, 14) Semele] and the death of Narcissus [(I, 23) Narcissus]. Dora Panofsky speaks of “Philostratus’s description of the death of Narcissus,” which does not, however, truly correspond to the theme of the painting (I, 23) described by Philostratus, even if he himself says that the painting depicts “the whole story of Narcissus.”153 It is, rather, that of Narcissus fascinated by his image. But, regardless, if we reread the description of the environment surrounding Narcissus, the direct comparison made by Dora Panofsky seems perfectly justifiable:154 “The cave is sacred to Acheloüs and the Nymphs, […] Nor is the pool without some connection with the Bacchic rites of Dionysus, since he had made it known to the Nymphs of the wine-press; at any rate it is roofed over with vine and ivy and beautiful creeping plants, and it abounds in clusters of grapes and the trees that furnish the thyrsi […].”155

In direct accordance with Philostratus’ Imagines, who indeed attributes to the two myths two very similar settings, Poussin has joined them here in one space, developing the contrast between the two themes of life and death and making them “an antithetical symbol of human destiny.”156 In this late work the figures of Narcissus and Echo have also been elaborated in the presence of their respective metamorphoses in order to unveil the whole story. The figure of Narcissus seems to contain resonances of a statue that was very well known at the time in Rome, the Barberini Faun (fig. 13).157 This Greek statue of the Hellenistic era was discovered between 1624 and 1628, during the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623-1644), at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.158 It was immediately incorporated into the collection of the Pope’s family, the Barberini. The only things missing from the statue were the right leg, the right hand, and a few details of the face, elements which were later restored. The inventory of the Barberini estate, between 1692 and 1704, refers to the restoration of the statue, specifically the right leg,159 the left arm and leg, and

152 A. Blunt, 1944, pp. 154168; here pp. 164-167. See also on this subject a later text of Blunt’s, already mentioned earlier: A. Blunt, 1967, pp. 316-319. 153 See also supra n. 122. 154 D. Panofsky, 1949, pp. 118120. 155 Philostratus, Imagines, I, 23, 2, pp. 88-89. 156 D. Panofsky, 1949, p. 120. For the connection between Bacchus and Narcissus in this painting, see also H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, pp. 198-201; P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 137 and p. 497 n. 62. 157 My thanks to Valentin Nussbaum for pointing this out to me. 158 It is also possible that the Barberini Faun is an excellent marble copy of a bronze original. Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway presumes that the execution of this copy is Roman, in: B. Sismondo Ridgway, 1990, pp. 313-316, here p. 314. 159 The exact angle of the right knee has been debated by specialists. Perhaps the calf was vertical, and not oblique? Cf. H. Walter, 1993, pp. 7-32, here p. 24; B. Holtzmann/A. Pasquier, 1998, pp. 254-255, here p. 255 n. 2.

64 the base; this restoration was undertaken in 1679 by the sculptors Giuseppe Giorgetti and Lorenzo Ottoni, Bernini’s Enkelschüler.160 A small-scale maquette (bozzetto), which has been attributed to Bernini, seems to have been used at this stage of the restoration.161 According to tradition Bernini has been directly implicated in the restoration, and it has even been suggested that he accentuated the homoerotic aspect of the statue. The work depicts a satyr, but his pointed ears, the tail emerging from the lower back, the crown of ivy and the panther’s hide are not initially apparent. At first glance he appears to be no more than a dormant young man, probably sleeping off his wine, his mouth half open. He has slumped against a rock, in a lascivious pose; his legs are spread, his head thrown back, and he is using his right arm as a pillow.162 Narcissus, on the other hand, sleeps by the water in an endless sleep. The fact that his position has been strongly permeated by that of a sculpture from Antiquity representing a member of the Dionysian retinue might point to an additional, and subtle, desire to implement—in purely visual terms—the myth within a painting marked so entirely by the presence of Bacchus. Lastly, the fingers of Narcissus’ right hand seem to be grazing the surface of the water, while only his right knee, along with a short strip of cloth, is reflected in that surface. The way this reflection focuses solely on the knee offers a curious reminder of Caravaggio’s “pivot.”163 In the Mirror of Zagreus/Dionysus

The student of a student. F. Haskell/N. Penny, 1988, pp. 202-205. See also H. Walter, 1993, p. 15. 162 See, among others, B. Sismondo Ridgway, 1990, pp. 313316; R.R.R. Smith, 1996, p. 135; B. Holtzmann/A. Pasquier, 1998, pp. 254-255. 163 See also H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 208. 164 A. Delatte, 1932, pp. 153154; H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 206. 160 161

We have already had cause to notice how both Ovid and Philostratus place the myth of Narcissus firmly within the Dionysian cycle. But there is yet another link between the figures of Bacchus and Narcissus, as conveyed by the Orphic tradition, whose origins go back to the sixth century before Christ: the mirror. In Dionysian worship, certain objects were considered sacred, and played a role either as objects of worship, or as symbols. The authors to whom Armand Delatte refers in his study mention the mirror, the spinning top, the pine cone, apples, knucklebones, etc. According to Orphic legend, these were the toys with which Hera and the Titans had entertained the child god Zagreus/Dionysus to distract him, the better to murder him and tear him to pieces.164 According to Delatte, the role of the mirror in this episode was given particular emphasis by Nonnos of Panopolis, a Greek poet of late Antiquity and the author of the Dionysiaca (Διονυσιακά/Dionusiaká; 450-470 A.D.), an epic collection of the legends featuring

65 13. Barberini Faun, ca. 220 B.C., marble, h: 215 cm, Munich, Glyptothek.

Dionysus.165 The brief Book VI166 includes the legend of the first Dionysus, Zagreus. Demeter, warned by the old astrologist Astraios of the imminent rape of her daughter Persephone, fled with her to hide in a cave in Sicily. There Persephone lived as a recluse, spending her time weaving and spinning. But Zeus, her father, came into the cave in the form of a snake and lay with her, and she gave birth to the first Dionysus, Zagreus, the “horned infant.” The child immediately shared his father’s throne; Zeus also presented him with the gift of lightning. Hera was jealous, however, so she called upon the Titans to avenge her. Their faces covered in plaster, they went up to the god while he was looking in a mirror and stabbed him:

165 A. Delatte, 1932, p. 153. Delatte also mentions another author of late Antiquity who highlighted the role of the mirror in Zagreus’ murder, Firmicus Maternus. Cf. Firmicus Maternus, The Error of the Pagan Religions, VI, 2, pp. 54-55. 166 Nonnos of Panopolis, Dionysiaca, VI, pp. 214-243.

66 “By the fierce resentment of implacable Hera, the Titans cunningly smeared their round faces with disguising chalk, and while he contemplated his changeling countenance reflected in a mirror they destroyed him with an infernal knife. (“Hrhj Tartar…V TitÁnej ™dhl»santo maca…rV ¢ntitÚpJ nÒqon eŒdoj ÑpipeÚonta katÒptrJ).”167

While his limbs were being severed beneath their blades, Zagreus, struggling for his life, went through an entire series of metamorphoses. When he changed into a bull, Hera herself began to bellow into space, causing the gates of Olympus to shudder. The bull finally succumbed to the many blows. He was slain and cut to pieces by his murderers. But when Zeus saw that his son had been dismembered, after being caught in the trap of a mirror, he punished the mother of the Titans, Earth (Gaia), by striking her with lightning. He also punished the Titans, locking them away in Tartaros. Then he washed the scorched earth with a flood. This was the beginning of a new era; subsequent to the pleas of the old shepherd Aion, this era would be marked (from the beginning of Book VII) by the arrival of the new Dionysus, Bacchos, who would come to console humankind and enable them to triumph over their sadness with the help of wine. At this point in the story Nonnos has omitted to tell us what became of Zagreus/Dionysus after his death. In Book XXIV, he alludes to the preserved heart of the god, from which the second Dionysus, Bacchos, was born. Pierre Chuvin has recorded the various different versions of the story, from the most ancient to the most recent, relating the events that followed the god’s death, of which this is an excerpt:

167 Nonnos of Panopolis, Dionysiaca, VI, 169-174, pp. 226227. 168 Nonnos of Panopolis, Les Dionysiaques, pp. 31-32, Introduction. [Translation: A. Anderson].

“According to Euphorion, the Titans ‘put Bacchos in the fire, on a round tray’; it was Rhea who gathered up the pieces and revived the god. According to Callimachus, they placed Dionysus’ limbs in a cauldron and entrusted it to his brother Apollo, who left it in Delphi, at the foot of the priestess’s tripod seat. Athena stole the heart from it and took it, still beating, to Zeus (who is said to have ground it, mixed it into a beverage, and given it to Semele). […] According to Plutarch, the Titans tasted all or part of the slain god; Clement of Alexandria specifies that the Titans tore Dionysus to pieces, boiled him, then roasted him on a spit. Zeus was drawn by the smell of grilling meat and discovered their crime, then struck them with lightning and gave the remains of their meal to Apollo. Among the authors of late Antiquity, the feast is explicitly mentioned by Firmicus Maternus; Proclus and Nonnos merely tell us that the victim was cut to pieces (they use the ‘technical’ verb μιστύλλομαι, and Nonnos mentions the kitchen knife, the μάχαιρα).”168

The Neoplatonist authors in particular seized upon this Orphic legend and, naturally, reinterpreted it symbolically. Proclus (412-

67 485 A.D.), for example, in Book III of his Commentary on Plato’s “Timaeus,” deals with the physical question of the extreme surface of the Universe, and the fact that it is smooth. The “smoothness” of its surface means that the Universe is so disposed that it can receive illuminations from the Intellect and the Soul, just as mirrors, by virtue of their smoothness, can receive the reflections of objects. Proclus takes this opportunity to remind us that theologians also used the mirror as a symbol of the Universe’s ability to be filled with Intellect: “Formerly also by theologists, a mirror was assumed as a symbol of aptitude, to the intellectual completion of the universe. Hence they say, Vulcan made a mirror for Dionysius, or Bacchus, into which the God looking, and beholding the image of himself, proceeded into the whole partible fabrication of things.”169

Thus the myth was “rethought” within the Neoplatonist doctrine of emanation; here it is used to explain the creation of the world through the phenomenon of exteriorization of the god, as caused by the contemplation of his own image.170 From the god’s contemplation of himself in the mirror—Dionysus/Intellect gazing at himself—comes the plurality of things. He emerges from himself and “spreads” himself. Lastly, to return to the Orphic legend, it tells us of the god’s dismembering, a division subsequent to its interaction with the mirror. This concept of the story could well be based upon the idea that gazing in the mirror may be at the origin of a sort of disintegration of personality.171 The mirror was an agent of distraction in the murder that led the Titans to tear the god to shreds. This duplicitous role of the mirror [Le dédoublement au miroir], used as an instrument to capture Dionysus’ attention, set the stage for the dismembering, for the fantasy of the fragmented body.172 Although one should maintain a distinction between Narcissus and Zagreus/Dionysus, and the drama of their relation with the mirror, the fact remains that both of them were in thrall to the power of fascination exerted by the intermediary of the mirror, or any other reflective surface. A power of fascination which in both cases led to a fatal conclusion, and in others as well.173 All of which reinforced the Greek belief which held that prolonged gazing into a mirror was harmful to the health of the soul and body.174

169 Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, Book III, p. 453. Delatte also quotes this passage.“ The mirror, said Proclus, was treated by the theologians

as an emblem of the world’s aptitude for spiritual achievement. This is why Hephaestus, it is said, made a mirror for Dionysus: the god had gazed at his image in it and came out (of himself) and spread through all the divisible creation.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. He also tells us of a parallel doctrine to be found in Olympiodorus (In Phaed. B, rk»).“ Dionysus had put his image into the mirror and followed it; thus he was divided and formed the elements of the universe.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. Finally, Delatte refers to Plotinus (Enneads, IV, 3, 12) who compares the souls who were drawn down to earth through the contemplation of their own images to Dionysus, as he saw his reflection in the mirror and was drawn in the same way. Cf. A. Delatte, 1932, p. 153. 170 A. Delatte, 1932, p. 154. 171 A. Delatte, 1932, p. 154. 172 See also H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 208. 173 In his Table-Talk, Plutarch quotes the fragment of a poem—presumed to have been written by Euphorion—which tells of Eutelidas, who was fascinated by his own image in the water of the river, and died as a result. Cf. Plutarch, Table-Talk, Book V, 7, 4, 682 B, pp. 428-429. See also A. Delatte, 1932, p. 152; P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, pp. 132138; J-P. Vernant, (1990) 2007, pp. 1606-1609; D. Knoepfler, 2010, pp. 159-189. 174 A. Delatte, 1932, pp. 149152.

68 Leon Battista Alberti Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), lived in Florence from 1434 to 1443, and sometime between the years 1435 and 1436 he wrote De Pictura, in Latin, and dedicated it to the marquis of Mantua, Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga; he also wrote a version in the local dialect of Tuscany, Della Pittura, which was intended for artists, and dedicated, this time, to his friend Brunelleschi—although he did not neglect the other great Florentine artists of the time, in particular Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio.175 At the beginning of the second book of De Pictura, which develops the concept of historia, in particular, Alberti retraces the origins of painting:

175 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, pp. 3-14 (Introduction) and pp. 17-21. The usual opinion is that Alberti wrote the text in Latin first and then translated it into the vernacular for the benefit of working-class painters who lacked a classical education. In his introduction, Rocco Sinisgalli proposes to demonstrate that the author wrote his treatise first in the vernacular and then, later, in Latin. See also Leon Battista. Alberti, De Pictura/De la Peinture, pp. 25-29. 176 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 26, p. 46. 177 See the commentary by Oskar Bätschmann, who lists the most important studies dealing with this issue, in: L.B. Alberti, 2000, pp. 31-32 and p. 120 n. 93; pp. 325-326; cf. also the publications, among others, by G. Wolf, 2002, p. 215; C. Kruse, 2003, p. 314. Finally, for a history of the possible stories and commentaries that might have contributed to this statement by Alberti, see G. Barbieri, 2000.

“But painting had been honored by the ancients above all with this distinction: that whereas almost all other craftsmen were called artisans, only the painter was not included in the number of the artisans. Things being so, I have taken the habit of saying, among friends, that the inventor of painting was, according to the opinion of the poets, that [famous] Narcissus who was transformed into a flower. As the painting is in fact the flower of all the arts, thus the whole tale of Narcissus perfectly adapts to the topic itself. To paint, in fact, is what else if not to catch with art that surface of the spring? (Quid est enim aliud pingere quam arte superficiem illam fontis amplecti?) Quintilian maintained that the ancient painters had the habit of drawing the edges of the shadows generated by the sun and that eventually art improved through a process of addictions. Some report that among the first inventors of this art there was a certain Egyptian Philocles and a Cleanthes; I do not know which one. The Egyptians affirm that painting was already practiced among six thousand years before it was introduced to Greece. In particular, our [writers] say that painting came from Greece to Italy after the victories of Marcellus in Sicily.”176

There is, however, no mention to be found in the texts of Antiquity designating Narcissus as the inventor of painting, unlike the other founding myths which Alberti evokes here. It would seem, in fact, that Alberti himself was the source of this myth regarding the origins of painting.177 After reading Ovid and Philostratus, it is easy to see how the figure of Narcissus, among others, could be enthroned as an archetype of the spectator who becomes fascinated by what he sees, prey to the illusion of a three-dimensional reality that is represented, in fact, in a two-dimensional surface. But it is also possible to see that by virtue of the fact that he is absorbed by his reflection, his own projection onto the surface of the water, he also “creates” the illusion to which he has fallen victim. In this way

69 he is also the artist and the creator of a situation where an extraordinarily beautiful thing is rendered mimetically,178 and applied on the surface of the water, thus corresponding to the codification of painting which Alberti proposes throughout his treatise.179 The author dwells at length on the notion of surface (superficies), endeavoring first of all to define it in geometrical terms, as in the first book of his treatise: “If more lines stick together like close threads in a cloth, they will make a surface. The surface, in fact, is the extreme part of a body, which is not recognizable throug a certain depth but only by length and width, as well as by its qualities.”180

Slightly further along in the first book, Alberti returns to the notion of surface, and now takes the time to enumerate several types of surface depending upon their qualities. Regarding the flat surface he writes: “The plane surface is the one that a ruler, placed on any part of it, adheres to it in a uniform way; the surface of perfectly clear and calm water will be most similar to this.”181

The plane surface, upon which the painter will execute his work, is thus likely to share certain qualities of the watery surface. If we attempt a medial analysis of Alberti’s exemplum of Narcissus,182 the surface that Narcissus is “catching” at this point is no longer a watery surface—which will only reflect reality, however beautiful it might be, for the length of time he stands above it— but a pictorial surface. Narcissus, thus, “invents” painting in order to compensate, it would seem, for the ephemeral and evanescent character which is that of the mirror.183 The mirror image is fleeting, the painted image is perennial: “In fact, painting certainly has in itself a truly divine power, not only because, as they say of friendship, a painting lets the absent present but also because it shows [to] the living, after long centuries, the dead, so that [these] become recognized with the artist’s great admiration and the viewer’s pleasure. […] Therefore, the faces of the dead, thanks to painting, have in a certain way a very long life.”184

Narcissus’ invention—painting—enables him to neutralize the spatio-temporal dependency from which his reflected image is suffering in relation to his own self. By consigning his reflection to a representational space that is no longer temporally or spatially dependent upon the model it is reproducing, he has managed, in a way, to fulfill his wish that “him I love might live on.”185 But in fact

178 Although imitation, for Alberti, is of prime importance in a painter’s education, this imitation must first and foremost consist of a choice to imitate the most beautiful things to be found in nature (and which are often scattered). Cf. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book III, 55, p. 78: “Well, among all components, let him [the scholar of painting] not only prefer the resemblance of things but also, and above all, beauty itself. In a painting, in fact, beauty pleases beyond measure no more than is required. Demetrius, that famous ancient painter, did not reach the maximum level of praise, because he [was] more careful in expressing resemblance than beauty. All approved parts, therefore, must be chosen from the most beautiful bodies.” 179 See Also H. Valladares, 2006, p. 122. 180 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book I, 2, p. 23. 181 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book I, 4, p. 25. 182 This is precisely what Christiane Kruse has undertaken, and we are following her reasoning here: C. Kruse, 2003, pp. 314-318. 183 C. Kruse, 2003, p. 317. See also G. Wolf, 2002, pp. 222-223; H. Belting, 2008, pp. 246-250 184 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 25, pp. 44-45. 185 Met., III, 469-473: “Now sadness takes away my strength, not much time is left for me to live, and I am cut off in the prime of youth. Nor is dying painful to me, laying down my sadness in death. I wish that him I love might live on, but now we shall die united, two in one spirit.”

70 See also C. Kruse, 2003, p. 318. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book I, 19, p, 39: “First I trace as large a quadrangle as I wish, with right angles, on the surface to be painted; in this place, it [the rectangular quadrangle] certainly functions for me as an open window through which the historia is observed […].” For an explanation of the concept of historia in Alberti, cf. supra n. 78, which follows the explanatory note by Jean-Louis Schefer, in: L.B. Alberti, De Pictura/De la Peinture, p. 115 n. 1. 186

187

it is also through this “self-portrait” that Narcissus will “outlive himself”—although only in two-dimensional terms: he does not see himself being metamorphosed into the flower that will bear his name, but transformed, rather, into a painting, “the flower of all the arts.”186 Under Alberti’s firm rule, the pictorial surface would move beyond the status of a simple fixed mirror of reality, to be defined— thanks in particular to the painter’s inventio and his execution of the historia—as a constructed, codified space, “an open window through which the historia is observed.”187

3

Narcissus Encountering Narcissism: the Mirror Image

Borne along by the nascent science of psychoanalysis, the figure of Narcissus would make a spectacular entrance into the 20th century.188 Already in 1898 Havelock Ellis would speak of the Narcissus-like tendency when describing a form of excessive auto-eroticism.189 In 1899, Paul Näcke forged the word Narcismus to designate, in psychiatric terms, the behavior where an individual treats his or her own body in a fashion similar to that with which one treats a sexual object, with a view to complete self-satisfaction.190 Finally, J. Sadger introduced the concept into the psychoanalytic arena, on the basis of his observations of particular features of narcissistic behavior in a number of people suffering from other disorders, such as, in his opinion, among homosexuals.191 It was precisely in this context that Sigmund Freud, following in Otto Rank’s footsteps,192 would contribute to consolidating the hypothesis of narcissism in psychoanalysis in order to explain an individual’s sexual development, and the existence of a “normal” narcissism that was not a perversion but the “libidinal correlative of the egoism of the self-preservation [drive], an element of which is rightly attributed to every living creature”193: “We thus find the notion taking shape in our mind that it was the ego that originally underwent libido-cathexis; some of this libido is later transferred to objects, but essentially it stays put, and relates to the object-cathexes rather as the body of an amoeba relates to the pseudopodia that it sends forth.”194 Subsequently Jacques Lacan would re-examine Freudian narcissism through the image and, basing himself on the theses of the psychologist Henri Wallon, published in 1934,195 he would develop the theory of the mirror stage, thus sending us back to the scene of the ephebe gazing at his specular image.196 My thanks to Professor Nicolas Duruz for replying to my questions on the Freudian and Lacanian themes that are dealt with in this chapter. I would 188

like, moreover, to warn the reader that the chapter which follows contains numerous quotations, with an aim to keeping as closely as possible to the text and thought of the authors studied herein. 189 H. Ellis, 1898, pp. 260-299. See also H. Ellis, (1933) 1948, pp. 114-116. 190 P. Näcke, 1899, pp. 374-375. 191 J. Sadger, 1908, pp. 45-47/5357; J. Sadger, 1910, pp. 59-133. See also N. Duruz, 1985, p. 17. 192 O. Rank, 1911, pp. 401- 426. P. Näcke and J. Sadger are mentioned—Otto Rank is referred to in a footnote—by Freud himself, and their approach is made explicit in the terms which I have followed here, within the first two paragraphs of S. Freud (1914) 2003, p. 3. 193 S. Freud, (1914) 2003, p. 3. 194 S. Freud, (1914) 2003, p. 5. 195 H. Wallon, (1934) 1949, pp. 171-177. Wallon deals in particular with the case of the infant faced with its own mirror image. See also E. Jalley, 1998, pp. 21-33. 196 G. Wajcman, 2001, pp. 231232.

72 Jacques Lacan: the Mirror Stage Lacan defines the mirror stage as a phase in the development of a human child, situated between six and eighteen months, lasting up to the age of two or even two and a half years.197 From this period on, the child will recognize its image in the mirror as such. And this moment of recognition is signaled by an illuminative mimicry, evoking the Aha-Erlebnis which Köhler describes in relation to a chimpanzee discovering the solution to a problem. But unlike the chimpanzee, the human child displays a “jubilant assumption” when it recognizes its mirror image: “Indeed this act, far from exhausting itself, as in the case of a monkey, in eventually acquired control over the uselessness of the image, immediately gives rise in a child to a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences the relationship between the movements made in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it duplicates—namely, the child’s own body, and the persons and even things around him.“198 197 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, pp. 1921; J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, pp. 7576. Cf. also E. Jalley, 1998, pp. 35-39, whose commentary on Lacan’s mirror stage I have followed very closely. 198 J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, pp. 75-76. 199 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 19. See also E. Jalley, 1998, p. 35. 200 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 20: “In man the discordance at this stage of both drives and functions is only a consequence of the prolonged incoordination of these systems. This results in a stage that is affectively and mentally constructed on the basis of a proprioceptivity that presents the body as fragmented […].” See also J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, pp. 151-152; J. Dor (1985) 2002, p. 99. 201 E. Jalley, 1998, p. 36. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 202 J. Lacan, (1948) 2006, p. 92; see also J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 78.

The mirror stage comes about at the end of the period where the child is being weaned, that is at the end of the first six months, which are dominated by a state of vital helplessness, of physiological misery and a lack of motor coordination—all of which are afflictions which reflect what Lacan calls the “prematurity at birth” peculiar to human beings.199 Before the mirror stage, an infant does not experience its own body as a unified whole but as something dispersed, a “body as fragmented.”200 Now the mirror stage will lead, precisely, to “sticking one’s body back together again [recollement du corps propre].” It does indeed neutralize this distressing fragmentation of the body in favor of the unity of the subject’s own body. Before the infant learns to walk, or even stand up, “the maturation of visual perception endows the subject with the imaginary anticipation, for a lack of motor maturity, of its corporal entity”:201 “What I have called the ‘mirror stage’ is of interest because it manifests the affective dynamism by which the subject primordially identifies with the visual gestalt of his own body. In comparison with the still very profound lack of coordination in his own motor functioning, that gestalt is an ideal unity, a salutary imago. Its value is heightened by all the early distress resulting from the child’s intra-organic and relational discordance during the first six months of life, when he bears the neurological and humoral signs of a physiological prematurity at birth.”202

73 On recognizing its image in the mirror the infant is able to repossess its fragmented body in a unified whole that is the representation of its own body. Thus the subject, through the structuring perception of the image of the body, achieves its primordial identification.203 The perception of the shape of one’s semblable indeed constitutes “the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, prior to being objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject.”204 But the fact remains that this conquest of identity, in this primordial stage, occurs within the register of the imaginary.205 Indeed, the human child identifies itself on the basis of a component that is marked with virtuality, something that is not the child as such, but in which it nevertheless recognizes itself: its image in the mirror. Thus it is an imaginary recognition, and therefore the child’s maturation at this stage does not grant it the specific recognition of its own body. The mirror stage actually occurs before the advent of the body image [avènement du schéma corporel].206 Moreover, the specular image exposes us to a figure that is outside us and that is symmetrically reversed from our own selves.207 This being the case, the process of infant’s identification with its image in the mirror will, right from the start, be burdened with alienation:208 “The mirror stage is a drama whose internal pressure pushes precipitously from insufficiency to anticipation—and, for the subject caught up in the lure of spatial identification, turns out fantasies that proceed from a fragmented image of the body to what I will call an ‘orthopedic’ form of its totality—and to the finally donned armor of an alienating identity that will mark his entire mental development with its rigid structure.”209

Thus, if this image of self which the infant “picks up” is the source of the formation of the I, it will indisputably alienate the infant insofar as it is external to it, and is “struck with the seal of the other.”210 The mirror stage is primordial in the formation of the I, but it also presupposes that it is fated to be alienated in the imaginary.211 The subject perceives the unity of its own body in the form of an object that is external and other, its reflected image. It is therefore,

203 J. Dor, (1985) 2002, p. 101; G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 233 and p. 235. The child is born, indeed, “prematurely,” without any corporal unity other than the objective one of its organism. For Lacan the body is not a given (natural, biological and anatomical), but the result of the identification of a naturally discordant organism with a virtual image, which constitutes (unifies) and individuates that body: “1 body = 1 organism + 1 image.”

J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 76. Lacan specifies moreover that this primordial form of the I really ought to be known as the “ideal-I” in: J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 76. But in the version of the article which was published in his Ecrits I in 1966, Lacan elaborates on the notion of the ideal-I in note 1, p. 81: “I have let stand the peculiar translation I adopted in this article for Freud’s Ideal-Ich [je-idéal], without further comment except to say that I have not maintained it since.” Lacan is speaking here of the Freudian Ideal-Ich— which has been translated henceforth as the ideal ego [Moi idéal]—and considers it as a narcissistic formation belonging to the register of the imaginary. Cf. J. Laplanche/J.-B. Pontalis, (1967) 2007, pp. 255-256. 206 J. Lacan, (1948) 2006, p. 91: “[…] Furthermore, I believed I myself could highlight the fact that, on such occasions, the child anticipates at the mental level the conquest of his own body’s functional unity, which is still incomplete at the level of volitional motricity at that point in time. What we have here is a first capture by the image in which the first moment of the dialectic of identifications is sketched out.” Cf. also J. Dor, (1985) 2002, p. 101. 207 For a closer look at the question, see M. Thévoz, 1996, pp. 19-35 (L’inversion spéculaire); J. Dor, (1985) 2002, p. 101. 208 See N. Duruz, 1985, p. 65. 209 J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 78. 210 N. Duruz, 1985 p. 66. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 211 See J. Dor, (1985) 2002, p. 101. 204 205

74 J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 148. Cf. E. Jalley, 1998, p. 37. 213 E. Jalley, 1998, p. 37. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 214 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 22. 215 E. Jalley, 1998, p. 37. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 216 This is the “drama” of the alienating identity of the mirror stage, which through its rigid structure will mark the child’s entire mental development. Cf. J. Lacan, (1966) 2006, pp. 54-57; J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 78. See also E. Jalley, 1998, p. 38: “The very fact of this identification opens the field to a relation of ‘dual fascination,’ from which is derived the fundamental connection between narcissism and aggressiveness, the libidinal capture and instincts of destruction, the ‘existential negativity.’ Similarly, ‘specular knowledge’ can be accompanied, in the relation of the subject to his own image, by a ‘semiology that ranges from the most subtle depersonalization to the hallucination of the double.’ In a complementary fashion, in his relation to his semblable, the subject’s alienation drifts ‘towards the prevailing totalitarian rivalry.’” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 217 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 21. 218 See supra n. 50. 219 From this point on in this chapter I shall refer to the Ovidian version of the myth of Narcissus, as it is the most elaborate and the most famous. Ovid, moreover, is the only author of Antiquity who imagined that Narcissus would eventually recognize himself in the reflection he initially took for someone else. 212

through the mediation of the reflected image of the body, “in the other that the subject first identifies himself and even experiences himself.”212 As a result, the subject, in this “imaginary space established by the vision in the mirror,”213 will live in the illusion that the other is identical to himself; he does not distinguish himself from the image itself, his ego “confuses itself with this image which forms it, but also subjects it to a primordial alienation.”214 This “auto-heteromorphic” identification215—connected to the specular perception of the shape of a human being—tends therefore to “mask the crux of a function of lack [masquer le vif d’une fonction de manque],” but this occurs at the cost of the introduction of a principle of “imaginary discordance” into the depths of the subject.216 In the final analysis, and in Lacan’s own terms, the world which belongs to the mirror stage is a narcissistic world. However, by referring to it in this way, Lacan does not mean to evoke only its “libidinal structure by the same term to which from 1908 on Freud and Abraham assigned the purely energetic meaning of investment of libido in the body.” He also wants to “penetrate its mental structure and give it the full meaning of the Narcissus myth. Whether this meaning is taken to indicate death—a vital insufficiency from which this narcissistic world grows; or the specular reflection—the imago of the double is central to it; or the illusion of the image— this world, as we shall see, has no place for others.”217 The mirror stage, therefore, is introduced as a re-elaboration of narcissism by means of an operation which is based, fundamentally, upon the image of oneself. As we have already seen, in the wake of numerous interpreters of the myth, the character of Narcissus—be it the one described by Ovid, or in any other version of the myth—does not at any point in the story show himself to be narcissistic.218 However, it is worth taking a closer look at Lacan’s claim that he is closing the gap [recoller] with the founding myth of Narcissus,219 particularly for the way in which it resorts to the image so absolutely, by introducing the notion of the “pregnance of the image of the body” for the human subject.220 Therefore, within the framework of this analysis, one must take into account what Lacan calls the “full meaning of the Narcissus myth,” a meaning which in his opinion penetrates the mental structure of the narcissistic world. Lacan describes three elements

However, I will be sure to mention in the text any events relating to other versions of the myth, if the Lacanian world seems closer to these instances than to the Ovidian version. 220 See G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 232.

75 to explain his understanding of the full meaning of the myth: the specular reflection, the illusion of the image, and death. The Specular Reflection The pattern of the confrontation with the mirror which runs through the myth of Narcissus is based upon a dialectic between the one and the other, between one’s own “body,” and another “body.”221 From the moment of the recognition as such of his image in the mirror, this dialectic will be irremediably deprived of its second component, which now merges with the first. And this event is not accompanied, for the young Boeotian, with a “jubilant confrontation,” but rather with ceaseless lamenting.222 For Narcissus the moment of identification is a veritable drama, where he undergoes the experience of his own body as it is reflected to him by this image of self, and which he had previously perceived as another body, a separate entity. In despair at the discovery of this unity, his wish is to be dissociated from his own body in order to love himself—and to love that body—as a separate thing. Hence the drama of one entity dreaming of splitting in two, dividing itself in half in order to give birth to another entity.223 Narcissus will die as a result of this tragic, ineluctable realization of a duplication that he has wished fervently for but which nevertheless remains impossible. In the Lacanian mirror stage, which focuses solely on the moment of recognition, there is only ever one single body involved, one’s own body. However, the experience of the mirror, here too, constitutes a unity, but it is an internal unity, insofar as it resolves the pattern of fragmentation that encompassed the various parts of this same body that was “in bits and pieces.” It proceeds to “stick [these various parts] back together [recollement],” offering the representation of a whole, a single corporeal entity. It is important, therefore, to distinguish the respective contributions of specular reflection, of the “imago of the double” in these two versions. In the myth, unity is the result of a reduction of the other to oneself, whereas for Lacan unity is what is obtained when a body that was fragmented is put back together, to be revealed to the infant in its wholeness. The unity to which Narcissus succumbs is, in a way, the unity of the one-body, to the detriment of another body, whereas the infant’s unity according to Lacan is the unity of a body-in-one, in opposition to its parts. It is only once one has grasped this important distinction that one can venture a comparison between Narcissus’ encounter in the mirror and that of the human child between the ages of six and eigh-

221 Met., III, 417: “[…] he is seized by the vision of his reflected form. He loves a bodiless illusion. He thinks it is a body, when it is only a wave [shadow]” Cf. supra n. 34. 222 See also H. Damisch, (1976) 2000, p. 175. 223 See also G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 242.

76 teen months. Therefore, we are justified in observing that Narcissus’ reaction to his reflected image points in the opposite direction from that of Lacan’s human child: Narcissus actually dies when faced with the unity revealed by his self-image in the mirror, whereas for the human child that image has a fundamental orthopedic value: it is a salutary imago. And while it may seem obvious that the specular reflection is as central to the theory of the mirror stage as it is to the myth, theory and myth seem, nevertheless, to be still very far apart. The Illusion of the Image

Met., III, 405-406. H. Belting, (2001) 2011, p. 18. Cf. supra n. 4 and n. 43. 226 M. Foucault, (1984) 2001, p. 1575. Cf. supra n. 58. 224 225

Let us recall the prayer of one of the numerous lovers rejected by our indifferent young ephebe: “‘So may he himself love, and so may he fail to possess what he loves!’ (Sic amet ipse licet, sic non potiatur amato.)”224 This just prayer will be heard, and the punishment reserved for Narcissus—never to be able to possess what he loves—will be obtained through the “strange passion” (novitasque furoris. Met., III, 350) that suddenly overcomes him. This passion means that he cannot recognize his reflection, cannot grasp that it is an image, an image of his own self in addition. Narcissus takes the image of a body for a body, which means that he fails to recognize the specific existential conditions for this image, incapable of understanding its relation of ontological dependency upon the host support that ensures its visibility:225 the watery surface. Narcissus takes the image of a body for that same body, because he cannot discern the “body of the image.” He cannot see the surface, it eludes him right from the start. In a second phase he detects it and becomes aware of its presence, but all he sees is a simple obstacle which, like a transparent pane of glass, is there to divide a single space of reality, depriving him of any physical access to the other body he sees. He fails utterly to understand the reflective quality of the surface with which he is confronted; he cannot conceive that he is staring into a mirror. And since Narcissus’ madness is characterized by this failure to recognize, the mirror becomes in fact, the most appropriate medium to give rise to the illusion of another body’s existence. The mirror is something which allows us to observe ourselves as if observing another, in a space where we are not.226 Insofar as we do not recognize this reverse image of ourselves, it will indeed take on the appearance of a creature belonging to the same species, of the same age and, at least as far as Narcissus is concerned, of unparalleled beauty. The credibility of this figure is accentuated by the fact

77 that not only is he capable of movement—he seems to be moving freely within his own environment—but very often he attempts to interact with the person gazing at him. This other person whom Narcissus perceives, for example, reaches out his arms, smiles, weeps, and speaks.227 While the mirror allows us to set off down a path leading from self back to self by way of an image stamped with the otherness which is the image of self, Narcissus lacks the image, more significantly the image of self, and thus he is totally engulfed by the illusion of the other; the path he takes goes from self to the other and stops there, never returning to self. Narcissus’ madness can thus be defined not only in cognitive terms, insofar as it generates the illusion of the other’s actual presence, but also in affective terms, since Narcissus, from the very first instant, will fall helplessly in love with this illusory figure of the other. And the two modalities of this madness feed each other. Once he perceives himself as another, he cannot help—almost inevitably—but fall victim in turn to his sublime beauty, like all the numerous young men and women who, before him, succumbed to his incomparable charm—all the more so in this case, since the creature in the water is returning his kisses in a rush of requited love. Simultaneously, the amorous fascination that takes hold of him on seeing this creature, given his ravishing beauty, so absorbs him that he is lost in the perceptive illusion of the other. Narcissus eventually recognizes himself in the reflection he thought was his beloved. To be sure, this identification of his own image does lift the veil of cognitive illusion, but his love does not diminish for all that. Narcissus’ madness endures in its amorous sense, because although he may have finally recognized his own mistake, he claims to go on loving his reflection the way one loves another being, for as long as the otherness visible in the mirror will allow it: although he may not be able to touch his own self the way one touches another, he can at least go on trying to gaze at himself like another, before dying from the impossibility of assuaging his passionate thirst. To recall Lacan’s words: “the illusion of the image—this world, as we shall see, has no place for others.” If we have properly understood Lacan’s occasionally cryptic statements, the mirror image here may likewise be considered as “another,” given the fact that the subject only perceives the unity of his own body in the form of an object from which he is separate, in a form which is similar to the image of another body. Therefore, while the image of his own body is formative for the identity of the subject, who realizes his primordial identification therein, it is profoundly alienating to him, given the fact that the subject identifies himself and experiences himself first and foremost in that “other.” And given the fact

227 Met., III, 457-462. See also P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, pp. 140141.

78

J. Lacan, (1938) 2003, p. 21. This “absence of the other” can be found during the same time period (between six months and two and a half years) in the behavior of a child toward another child of a nearly identical age: “It is this capture by the imago of the human form— rather than Einfühlung, the absence of which is abundantly clear in early childhood—that dominates the whole dialectic of the child’s behavior in the presence of his semblable between six months and two and half years of age. Throughout this period, one finds emotional reactions and articulated evidence of a normal transitivism. A child who beats another child says that he himself was beaten; a child who sees another child fall, cries. Similarly, it is by identifying with the other that he experiences the whole range of bearing and display reactions—whose structural ambivalence is clearly revealed in his behaviors, the slave identifying with the despot, the actor with the spectator, the seduced with the seducer.” In: J. Lacan, (1948) 2006, p. 92. For further discussion, cf. also E. Jalley, 1998, pp. 41-42. 229 Met., III, 440. 228

that he identifies himself primordially in this image, the subject does not distinguish himself from it; he confuses himself with it and thus succumbs to the illusion that the other is identical to himself. Thus, if in the perception which the subject has of this image of his semblable, the shape of the ego and that of the other remain undifferentiated, there is indeed no other.228 The infant, in this early stage, recognizes its mirror image but does not perceive the part of otherness inherent to this image of self. Equally notable is the great distance between the meaning of the illusion of the image in the myth of Narcissus and in the Lacanian mirror stage. The child is under the illusion of an “absence” of the other in the image of self, and consequently identifies with an image which, although unifying, is nevertheless alienated: it is not really the same child, it is another. For the infant, the image of self that it recognizes does not contain another. [It recognizes itself without seeing the other.] Whereas Narcissus’ madness drives him to the illusion of the other’s real presence; for Narcissus, there is only the other, absolutely real, and there is no image whatsoever. [He sees the other without recognizing himself.] And when he finally does recognize himself, he does indeed identify his specular image as such, but— unlike Lacan’s infant—he does not identify with it at all. Fully conscious now of what is self and what is other, both of which go to make up his image in the mirror, he is no longer prey to an illusion, but in his madness—his strange passion—he goes on loving his reflection the way one loves another. Death Before even narrating Narcissus’ tragic fate, Ovid underlines his fatal end: “Being consulted as to whether the child would live a long life, to a ripe old age, the seer with prophetic vision replied, ‘If he does not come to know himself’ (Si se non noverit). For a long time the augur’s pronouncement appeared empty words. But in the end it proved true: the outcome, and the cause of his death, and the strangeness of his passion (exitus illam/ Resque probat letique genus novitasque furoris).” (Met., III, 346-350)

And within the story, once Narcissus succumbs to the beauty of that deceitful image, neither hunger nor sleep can tear him from his gazing: “Narcissus is doomed, victim of his own eyes (Perque oculos perit ipse suos).”229

79 A statement like this is ample proof that, already at that point, the process of a wasting death had begun, even before the moment of recognition.230 In fact, Narcissus is doomed to an ineluctable death the moment he sees himself in the spring. This event, moreover, leads us to a two-fold interpretation of Tiresias’ cryptic words, at the threshold to the myth’s explication: “Yes, if he does not come to know himself (Si se non noverit)” (Met., III, 348), an ambiguous statement in Latin playing on the double meaning of novi, which should be understood as “if he does not see himself” before it is understood as “if he does not recognize—or know—himself [s’il ne (re)connaît pas].” However, before he recognizes himself in the reflection that he had taken for someone else, Narcissus is unaware of the death sentence already hanging over him, for he is nurturing the hope that he will soon be united with his beloved. It is only after the recognition, the Iste ego sum (Met., III, 463), that he will know he is lost, and with him the object of his love, from whom he can never be dissociated, in keeping with his insane vow. And although his strength is draining away and he can sense his imminent death, he cannot stop gazing at himself as if at another, since he cannot touch this reflection the way he would another body. At last he utters his final words, “as he looked into the familiar pool (Ultima vox solitam fuit haec spectantis in undam, Met., III, 499).” Then he lays his head on the green grass, and death comes to close those eyes that had so loved the beauty of their master (Lumina mors clausit domini mirantia formam, Met., III, 503). The myth of Narcissus, as we have seen, is a fundamentally visual myth. Death too corresponds to this “oculocentrist” pattern, by approaching Narcissus—in association with his punishment— through the agency of his eyes. Ensnared from the very first gaze by his own incomparable beauty, the ephebe suffers a punishment—never to possess the object of his love—the orchestration of which can only lead to death. A death which will certainly deliver him from his torment on earth but which will not serve to end his contemplation, since he goes on gazing at himself in the waters of the Styx. Lacan underlines: “Whether this meaning is taken to indicate death—a vital insufficiency from which this narcissistic world grows.” He is referring here to the prematurity at birth which is peculiar to human beings, in other words the incompleteness and delay in the development of the neuraxis during the first six months which leave the infant in a state of vital insufficiency and physiological misery as regards its lack of motor coordination and balance.231 Moreover, as a result of this prolonged lack of coordination in the

See also P. Hadot, (1976) 2000, p. 141 and p. 499 n. 86. 231 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 19; J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 152; E. Jalley, 1998, p. 35. 230

80 organism’s systems, there is “a stage that is affectively and mentally constructed on the basis of a proprioceptivity that presents the body as fragmented.”232 Initially the infant does not experience its body as a unified wholeness, but rather as something scattered. This psychological experience is referred to as the fantasy of the fragmented body.233 The human being, at its origin, is therefore nothing more than a ruin; the only unity it has is the objective one of a naturally discordant organism, a “not-yet-a-body.”234 Therefore it is far more death which the human being experiences at this stage of original misery. But within this primordial chaos, the maturation of visual perception occurs very early on:235

232 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, p. 20. Cf. supra n. 200. 233 See also J. Lacan, (1949) 2006, p. 78: “This fragmented body […] is regularly manifested in dreams when the movement of an analysis reaches a certain level of aggressive disintegration of the individual. It then appears in the form of disconnected limbs or of organs exoscopically represented, growing wings and taking up arms for internal persecutions that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch fixed for all time in painting, in their ascent in the fifteenth century to the imaginary zenith of modern man.”; J. Dor, (1985) 2002, p. 99. 234 G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 233. 235 J. Lacan (1938) 2003, pp. 7-8. 236 J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 152.

“It is owing to this delay in development that the early maturation of visual perception takes on the role of functional anticipation. This results, on the one hand, in the marked prevalence of visual structure in recognition of the human form, which begins so early, as I mentioned before. On the other hand, the odds of identifying with this form, if I may say so, receive decisive support from this, which comes to constitute the absolutely essential imaginary knot in man that psychoanalysis—obscurely and despite inextricable doctrinal contradictions—has admirably designated as ‘narcissism.’ Indeed, the relation of the image to the suicidal tendency essentially expressed in the myth of Narcissus lies in this knot. This suicidal tendency– which represents in my opinion what Freud sought to situate in his metapsychology with the term ‘death instinct’ and ‘primary masochism’—depends, in my view, on the fact that man’s death, long before it is reflected (in a way that is, moreover, always so ambiguous) in his thinking, is experienced by him in the earliest phase of misery that he goes through from the trauma of birth until the end of the first six months of physiological prematurity, and that echoes later in the trauma of weaning.”236

At an age that is still marked by the lack of motor coordination, the fact that visual perception comes so early in the human child enables it to recognize the human form. It is also a decisive contribution to the chances of identification with this form, and thus is constituent of this “imaginary knot,” designated in psychoanalysis by the term narcissism. In this knot lies the relation of image to the “suicidal tendency” which, according to Lacan, is, in essence, conveyed by the myth of Narcissus. This suicidal tendency is dependent in particular upon the fact that death is already experienced by humans in the early months of life; it represents, moreover, according to our author, what Freud sought to define by the term “death instinct” or “primary masochism.” It would therefore be useful to take a closer look at this Freudian concept in hopes of understanding just what Lacan means by the term suicidal tendency,

81 and thus get a better idea of to what extent this tendency is made explicit by the myth of Narcissus.

Der Todestrieb In “Presentation on Psychical Causality,” a paper given on September 28, 1946 at the psychiatric colloquy at Bonneval, but published only in 1966 in his Ecrits, Lacan speaks of the “death instinct,” referring to Freud’s concept of Todestrieb. And indeed, most of the initial translations into French of Freud’s work would translate Trieb by instinct, although already in 1927, during a meeting of the Linguistic Commission for the Unification of Psychoanalytic Vocabulary in French, Angelo Hesnard suggested that Trieb should be translated by pulsion [drive]. It was only later, due to Lacan’s own persistence and the publication in 1967 of the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, edited by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis,237 that the term pulsion [drive] would truly come to prevail as the translation in French of Trieb.238 Thus, we should speak henceforth of the “death drive.” The notion of death drive which Freud would introduce in his “structural model”239 was explicitly inspired by the notion of the destructive, sadistic drive developed by Sabina Spielrein in her 1912 article “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens.”240 Freud refers to it for the first time in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).241 It is a difficult text, where Freud explores extremely varied domains, hesitates, throws out hypotheses, tries to take them as far as they will go then backs off.242 He makes his way tentatively and, in a spirit of critical reflection, does not hide this at any time. He offers the words of the Poet as proof [Friedrich Rückert in his adaptation of al-Hariri’s maqamat], which come as a conclusion to his train of thought: “Whatever we cannot achieve on the wing, we have to achieve at a patient limp… Scripture [The Qur’an] tells clear enough: it never was a sin to limp.”243

237 J. Lacan, (1964) 2006, pp. 722-725; J. Laplanche/J.-B. Pontalis, (1967) 2007, pp. 359-362. 238 B. Cassin, 2004, pp. 1050-1055 [Pulsion]. 239 The topographical model was formally elaborated at the end of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899-1900). The aim was to provide an explanatory outline of the functioning of the human psyche, an outline which defines three “loci” reunited in two systems, capable of accounting for psychic conflict: Un-

conscious – Preconscious – Conscious. It is in The Ego and the Id (Das Ich und das Es) in 1923 that Freud introduced his structural model, containing the three psychic instances of personality: The Ego (Ich) – The Id (Es) – the Superego (Über-ich). The structural model suggests a new attempt at mapping the psychic apparatus, in an effort to re-elaborate the topographical model, while taking into consideration numerous theoretical notions in Freudian metapsychology, in particular narcissism and the pleasure principle. The structural model would not contradict the topographical one and can, in fact, be superimposed upon it. Cf. N. Duruz, 1985, pp. 34-35. 240 S. Spielrein, 1912, pp. 465502. 241 S. Freud (1920) 2003, pp. 43102. See also S. Freud (1920) 1955, pp. 7-64. 242 I have tried here to follow Freud’s text almost literally. For this passage, see the detailed comment by Nicolas Duruz on whom I have based myself in order to avoid getting lost in the complexities of Freudian speculation: N. Duruz, 1985, pp. 27-33. For an overview of the debate about the death drive, see also: J. Laplanche, 1970; A. Green, 1983; A. Green, 1986; A. Green, 2007; F. Ansermet/P. Magistretti, 2010. 243 “Was man nicht erfliegen kann, muss man erhinken […]/ Die Schrift sagt, es ist keine Sünde zu hinken.” In: S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 102.

82

S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 45. S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 47. 246 See N. Duruz, 1985, p. 30. 247 S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 61. 244

According to Freud, the course of psychic processes is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle, which means, in other words, that he believes that “these processes are invariably triggered by an unpleasurable tension and then follow a path such that their ultimate outcome represents a diminution of this tension, and hence a propensity to avoid unpleasure or to generate pleasure.”244 Here Freud is resolved to put pleasure and unpleasure in relation with the quantity of excitation present in the psyche, in such a way that unpleasure corresponds to an increase and pleasure to a decrease of that quantity. The facts that brought him to believe in the domination of the pleasure principle in the psyche are also to be found in the hypothesis whereby the psychic apparatus tend to keep the amount of excitation as low as possible, or at least constant. Thus, while the task of the psychic apparatus is to keep the level of excitation low, anything which is likely to increase this level is necessarily seen as being opposed to this function, and therefore as marked with the unpleasurable. In the psyche, therefore, there is a strong tendency toward the pleasure principle, something to which certain other forces or conditions are opposed, however, in such a way that the final outcome cannot always correspond to the tendency toward pleasure.245 Freud is interested in a series of situations where experiences of unpleasure are repeated in an impressive way—the anxious dreams in the traumatic neuroses of war or accident victims; the child playing with a wooden reel (with a piece of string tied to it) (the fort-da [gone/here] game) which reproduce the painful experience of the mother’s absence, etc.—to a point of where the recognition of a “compulsion to repeat” (Wiederholungszwang) becomes justified.246 Finally, he observes that this compulsion to repeat appears to be “more primal, more elemental, more deeply instinctual than the pleasure principle, which it simply thrusts aside.”247 But if there is such a compulsion to repeat in the psyche, for Freud the aim is to find out what functions it corresponds to, under what conditions it can be brought to light and what relation it bears to the pleasure principle, a principle to which he has hitherto imputed domination over the course of processes of excitation within the psyche. It turns out that in cases of trauma or excess excitation, the pleasure principle (reduction of tension) is put out of action and there is only one issue remaining to the organism, that of mastering excitation, of psychically binding the host of excitations which have penetrated it in order subsequently to discharge them:

245

“An event such as external trauma will doubtless provoke a massive disturbance in the organism’s energy system, and mobilize all available

83 defence mechanisms. In the process, however, the pleasure principle is put into abeyance. It is no longer possible to prevent the psychic apparatus from being flooded by large quanta of stimulation; instead a quite different challenge presents itself: to assert control over the stimuli; to psychically annex [binden] the quanta of stimulation that have burst in, and then proceed to dispose of them.”248

In the observations that follow this passage, Freud aims to show us that tendencies to repetition, which are a source of anxiety, serve to contribute to this work of binding. They open for us “a clear view of a function of the psyche which, without contradicting the pleasure principle, is none the less independent of it, and appears to be more primal than the objective of gaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure.”249 Finally, he seeks to give an account of the origin of this compulsion to repeat and finds it in what is most inherent in the psyche, in that which feeds all tendencies: the organism’s so-called drives.250 Drives represent all the active forces originating in the inner depths of the body and that are transmitted to the psychic apparatus; they are the most important, and the most obscure element in psychological research.251 Freud envisages within the drive an inclination to return to a prior state, to re-submerge oneself in the restfulness of an inorganic state which one was forced to renounce because of external disturbing forces: “A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in every living organism to restore a prior state, which prior state the organism was compelled to relinquish due to the disruptive influence of external forces; we can see it as a kind of organic elasticity, or, if we prefer, as a manifestation of inertia in organic life.”252

He puts forth the hypothesis that all drives seek to restore the subject to a former state, and therefore there are only conservative ones, compelling repetition—and there are no other drives urging progress and the production of new configurations. These conservative organic drives—which, according to the terms of the hypothesis, embrace the entire group of drives—are, precisely, “death drives”: “The conservative organic drives have assimilated every one of these externally imposed modifications of the organism’s life-cycle and duly preserved them in order to repeat them, and therefore inevitably give the misleading impression of being forces bent on change and progress, whereas they merely seek to achieve an old goal by new means as well as old. And this ultimate goal of all organic striving may be equally susceptible of definition. It would contradict the conservative nature of drives if it were

248

69.

S. Freud (1920) 2003, pp. 68-

S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 71. See N. Duruz, 1985, p. 31. 251 S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 74. Freud had already written in detail about the issue of drives in 1915 in “Drives and Their Fates”: S. Freud (1915) 2005, pp. 11-31; p. 16, where Freud defines the drive as a borderline concept between the psychic and the somatic: “If we now turn to considering psychic life from the biological perspective, the ‘drive’ emerges as a concept on the borderline between the mental and the physical—the psychic representative of stimuli flowing into the psyche from inside the body, or the degree of workload imposed on the psyche as a result of its relation to the body.” 249 250

84 the goal of life to achieve a state never previously attained to. Rather, it must aspire to an old state, a primordial state from which it once departed, and to which via all the circuitous byways of development it strives to return. If we may reasonably suppose, on the basis of all our experience without exception, that every living thing dies—reverts to the inorganic— for intrinsic reasons, then we can only say that the goal of all life is death, or express it retrospectively: the inanimate existed before the animate.”253

After pursuing his hypothesis to these ultimate consequences, Freud “bethinks himself,” and admits that it cannot be like this.254 He postulates, therefore, a new dualism between life drives and death drives, which re-examine and embrace the older theory of the drives that was already based, in his work, on a clear-cut opposition between sexual drives and the ego drives. In the framework of this dualism that is clearly now marked with life and death, the drive-energy within every human being is thus set to undergo a double process: a return to an inorganic state, the abolition of all tension, the Nirvana principle,255 and at the same time the libido of our sexual drives—coinciding with the poets’ Eros—which organizes increasingly complex forms of living substances and maintains them cohesively.256 Eros and death drives, although they are opposed, travel together toward the ultimate goal, and Eros is only able to delay it somewhat:257

S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 76. S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 78. 254 S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 79. 255 Freud has borrowed the expression of the Nirvana principle from Barbara Low, cf. S. Freud (1920) 2003, p. 95. 256 S. Freud (1920) 2003, pp. 8990. 257 N. Duruz, 1985, p. 32. 258 S. Freud (1920) 2003, pp. 8081 259 N. Duruz, 1985, p. 33. 260 S. Freud (1933) 2003, pp. 8687. 261 See J. Laplanche/J.-B. Pontalis, (1967) 2007, p. 362. 252 253

“[…] the fact that they [the true life-drives] act against the intent of the other drives, an intent that by its very nature conduces to death, points to a conflict between them and the rest, the importance of which was recognized very early on by neurosis theory. It amounts to a kind of fluctuating rhythm within the life of organisms: one group of drives goes storming ahead in order to attain the ultimate goal of life at the earliest possible moment, another goes rushing back at a certain point along the way in order to do part of it all over again and thus prolong the journey.”258

In conclusion, one must bear in mind that life drives and death drives are part of a mythological discourse witnessing the opposition of Eros and Thanatos, with a view to founding in its origins the functioning of the psychic apparatus:259 “The theory of the drives is, so to speak, our mythology. The drives are mythic in essence, magnificent in their elusiveness. We can’t ignore them for a moment in our work—yet at the same time, we are never sure that we are actually seeing them clearly.”260

These two major types of drives are, therefore, postulated as the fundamental principles governing the organism’s activity rather than as the concrete motivation of its functioning.261

85 Scopic Drive and Death Drive Subsequent to this brief excursion into Freudian metapsychology, in order to gain a better understanding of what Lacan means by suicidal tendency, let us return to our primary preoccupation: the pertinence of the relation as postulated by Lacan between the narcissistic world, which he re-elaborates through the image, and the myth of Narcissus. According to Lacan, the child, in its phase of physiological prematurity, already experiences human death. Given the extreme precocity of visual perception, the child, in this phase of original misery, soon identifies with the image of its semblable, thus constituting the imaginary knot that is narcissism.262 Within this imaginary knot is the relation of image to suicidal tendency, a suicidal tendency which we henceforth can understand as a drive whose assigned task is to reduce the living organism to a lifeless state. Narcissism, for humankind, is an instrument of illusion and servitude, and its mark is that of “existential negativity”: “Indeed, the child’s first identificatory choices which are ‘innocent’ choices, determine nothing, apart from the affective [pathétiques] ‘fixations’ of neurosis, but the madness by which man thinks he is a man. This paradoxical formulation nevertheless takes on its full value when we consider that man is far more than his body, even though he can know [savoir] nothing more about his being. Here we see the fundamental illusion to which man is a slave, much more so than to all the ‘passions of the body’ in the Cartesian sense: The passion of being a man. It is, I would say, the passion of the soul par excellence, narcissism, that imposes its structure on all desires, even the loftiest ones. In the encounter between body and mind, the soul appears as what it traditionally is, that is, as the limit of the monad. When man, seeking to empty himself of all thoughts, advances in the shadowless gleam of imaginary space, abstaining from even awaiting what will emerge from it, a dull mirror shows him a surface in which nothing is reflected.”263

Our task now is to consider whether the myth of Narcissus truly expresses the relation of the image to the suicidal tendency, in keeping with Lacan’s assertion. From the moment he sees his own image on the surface of the water Narcissus, before even recognizing it as such [and it is only in Ovid’s version that he does recognize himself] is condemned to death—a long, wasting death, given the fact that his insatiable desire to see compels him to neglect all other bodily necessities. Visual perception, image, and death—all elements that go to constitute the imaginary knot which in Lacanian psychoanalysis is nar-

J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 152. Cf. supra n. 236. 263 J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 153. See also J. Lacan, (1946) 2006, p. 79: “This moment at which the mirror stage comes to an end inaugurates, through identification with the imago of one’s semblable and the drama of primordial jealousy (so well brought out by the Charlotte Bühler school in cases of transitivism in children), the dialectic that will henceforth link the I to socially elaborated situations. […] In light of my conception, the term ‘primary narcissism,’ by which analytic doctrine designates the libidinal investment characteristic of this moment, reveals in those who invented it a profound awareness of semantic latencies. But it also sheds light on the dynamic opposition between this libido and sexual libido, an opposition they tried to define when they invoked destructive and even death instincts in order to explain the obvious relationship between narcissistic libido and the alienating I function, and the aggressiveness deriving therefrom in all relations with others, even in relations involving aid of the most goodSamaritan variety. The fact is that they encountered that existential negativity whose reality is so vigorously proclaimed by the contemporary philosophy of being and nothingness.” 262

86 Met., III, 440: “Perque oculos perit ipse suos.” 265 S. Freud (1905) 2006, pp. 142143 and pp. 168-169; S. Freud (1915) 2005, pp. 20-23. See also J. Laplanche/J.-B. Pontalis, (1967) 2007, pp. 367-368, here p. 367: “This term [partial drive] is used to designate the last elements which psychoanalysis reaches in the analysis of sexuality. Each of these elements has a specific origin (for example, oral drive, anal drive) and its purpose (for example the drive to see, the drive to possess). The term ‘partial’ does not only mean that partial drives are of a nature belonging to the class of sexual drive overall; it must be read, above all, as having a genetic and structural meaning: partial drives function independently first and foremost, and tend to come together in various libidinal organizations.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 266 Freud himself refers twice to the double meaning of the term Lust in German, which can refer both to a sensation of sexual tension (desire) and to that of satisfaction (pleasure) in: S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 146 note 2; p. 206 note 4: “It is highly telling that the German language gives an account of the role of the preparatory sexual excitement mentioned here, which simultaneously supply a proportion of satisfaction and a contribution to sexual tension, in the use of the word ‘Lust’. ‘Lust’ is ambiguous, and refers both to the sensation of sexual excitement (‘Ich habe Lust’: I would like to, I feel compelled to) and that of satisfaction.” 267 Philippe Koeppel, the translator of the French ver264

cissism—indeed permeating the myth insofar as they are the instruments chosen by the divinity with which to inflict their prescribed punishment on Narcissus. Furthermore, these three elements mark the myth through a process that is likely to be connected to the structure of the narcissistic world according to Lacan, without it being necessary here to envisage them in a general way or to have to resort to any number of reroutings. Indeed, if Narcissus is doomed from the moment he sees his image, the “victim of his own eyes,”264 one would be justified in interpreting this as the manifestation of a “drive” which, because of the punishment, can only be resolved in his own death. The visual perception of his image would, therefore, trigger this tendency in him which ultimately would lead to suicide only in the version of the myth as told by Konon, but which nevertheless leaves the imprint of a wasting death upon Ovid’s version; nor should one forget the other versions where the end is always fatal, on occasion without further ado. This desire to see will never leave Narcissus, and moreover I have not hesitated to describe it in terms of a scopic drive in my interpretation of the Ovidian myth, referring to Freud [Schautrieb], who defines it as a partial drive whose source is the process of excitement within an organ,265 a non-genital sexual drive determining the pleasure/desire266 to see and be seen [Schaulust], to look at and display oneself. This pair of contraries—pleasure/desire to look and pleasure/desire to display oneself267—is proof of the reversal a drive can be subjected to during development and in the course of a lifetime, but which concerns only its goals. In the place of the active goal—to look at—comes the passive goal—to be looked

sion, specifies in a footnote that “‘Schaulust’ designates all those pleasures (and/or desires) engendered in the sphere of seeing, regardless of whether the exhibition is passive or active. […] ‘Schaulust’ means, therefore, both: ‘pleasure and/or desire to look and/or to show.’ This is why we have opted to use the term ‘plaisir scopique [scopic pleasure],’ which has the advantage of not limiting the expression exclusively to its active meaning. These same motives have led us to translate ‘Schautrieb’ by ‘ pulsion scopique [scopic drive]’”: in S. Freud, (1905) 1987, p. 67 n. a. In the framework of this analysis I have again resorted to the notions of scopic pleasure and scopic drive, with the same meaning. It should be borne in mind however that Freud sometimes uses the terms Zeigelust or Exhibitionslust to describe the pleasure/desire of showing and displaying; see for example the original German of “Three Essays on Sexual Theory [Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie]” (1905), or “Drives and their Fates [Triebe und Triebschicksale]”) (1915): S. Freud (1905) 1981, p. 68; S. Freud (1915) 1981, p. 222.

87 at (voyeurism and exhibitionism in the language of perversion). Freud, moreover, identifies different stages which go to punctuate this process of reversal: “a) looking as an activity directed towards an [extraneous] object [fremdes Objekt]; b) relinquishing the object, turning the [scopic] drive towards a part of one’s own body and, with this, reversal into passivity and the setting up of a new aim—to be looked at; c) the introduction of a new subject to whom one displays oneself in order to be looked at. Again we can hardly doubt that the active aim occurs before the passive one, that looking precedes being looked at.”268

If we take into consideration the fate that could befall the scopic drive according to Freud, and if we try to compare it, up to a certain point, with the fate of our young ephebe’s “drive” within the myth, we may conclude that Narcissus, from the moment he sees then looks at this “other” [the image of self], is actually simultaneously displaying himself to that image. The “scopic drive” which inhabits him involves simultaneously and necessarily this double finality: to look at and to display oneself, activity and passivity. For indeed, the extraneous object—his face—269 which Narcissus looks at is only his specular projection, the reflection of his own body or one of its parts which cannot exist without the presence of the subject-model facing him. And even if the passive development of the drive does not seem to be so important within the myth, Narcissus displays himself of necessity to the reflection facing him, which he renders present and through which he is, inevitably, looked at.270 Narcissus, as a result of his “strange passion,” is not aware that in his capacity as an observing subject he is the cause of the existence of this “extraneous” object of an “extraneous” person, to whom he is bound to display himself, and who as a result responds to him by becoming in turn the subject through which he is gazed at. If we return to the text, we can read that for the scopic drive Freud has identified an earlier stage than the active one he designated above under a) [looking at]. This is a preliminary, auto-erotic stage, which does indeed have an object, to be found in the subject’s own body. A first stage—which is one of narcissistic formation—271 of the drive, consisting of a component that is active insofar as the person himself gazes at an object, and a passive component, where the object is a part of his own body: “In its initial activity the [scopic] drive is auto-erotic—it does have an object, but one found on the subject’s own body. Only later does it come (by way of comparison) to exchange this object for an analogous one on the

S. Freud (1915) 2005, p. 23. See Met., III, 418-424: “He is astonished by himself, and hangs there motionless, with a fixed expression, like a statue carved from Parian marble. Flat on the ground, he contemplates two stars, his eyes, and his hair, fit for Bacchus, fit for Apollo, his youthful cheeks and ivory neck, the beauty of his face, the rose-flush mingled in the whiteness of snow, admiring everything for which he is himself admired.” 270 We recall in particular the hope which Narcissus nourished before recognizing himself, since the “other” returned to him with equal passion and gratified him with each of his gestures and emotions. Cf. Met., III, 457-462. 271 S. Freud (1915) 2005, p. 24: “We have taken to calling the early phase of the ego’s development, during which the sexual drives find satisfaction auto-erotically, narcissism (avoiding, at first, any discussion about the relationship between auto-eroticism and narcissism). This would mean the preliminary stage of the [scopic] drive [Schautrieb] in which the object of the [pleasure/desire] to look [Schaulust] is the subject’s own body, would have to be classed under narcissism, as a narcissistic formation.” 268 269

88 body of another (stage a). This preliminary stage is interesting because the situations of each of the resulting pair of opposites arise from it, depending on which element is transformed. A diagram for the [scopic] drive might look as follows: a) O  neself looking at a sexual = Sexual organ being looked at by organ oneself

S. Freud (1915) 2005, p. 23; S. Freud (1915) 1957, p. 130. [Translation: A. Anderson]. 272

I

I

b) Oneself looking at an extraneous object (active pleasure/desire of looking)

g) O  ne’s own object being looked at by an extraneous person (pleasure/desire to display, exhibition).”272

This preliminary stage, insofar as it causes the active and passive situations to cohabit within a same subject, might seem like a diagram that would appropriately describe Narcissus’ drive. But this is not the case, for there are some fundamental differences: Narcissus’ scopic drive is focused onto his own body not directly but through his reflection in the mirror. At no time is this same drive of Narcissus’ auto-erotic, neither before nor even after the recognition of his mirror image. Indeed, Narcissus looks at his own body through a reflective surface without referring back to himself—he sees this as someone else’s body—for, because of his madness, he fails to recognize the reflective quality of the surface of the water. However, once the illusion is broken by his proper perception of the medium, and he recognizes the image of his own body, the eroticism of his drive nevertheless remains fixated on this image of himself as if it were an extraneous object. Similarly, and although the passive orientation of the drive does not play the leading role in the myth, Narcissus will necessarily display himself and be looked at by a person whom he posits as extraneous, both before and after the recognition. Thus, only the two stages of Freudian scopic drive in their final configuration, including on the one hand an extraneous object (active) and on the other hand an extraneous person (passive), seem to be able to explain Narcissus’ drive-activity. However, these two stages implying an extraneous presence—in the form of an object one looks at and a person through whom one’s own object is looked at respectively—can only cohabit within Narcissus’ scopic drive, for this extraneous object and this extraneous person are only the specular image of his own person, ontologically dependent upon their model. These two final stages, relative to an object and an extraneous person, will adopt, once they are applied to Narcissus’ drive, an ineluctable modality of cohabitation peculiar to the preliminary

89 stage which simultaneously embraces the subject’s own object and his own person. If our aim therefore is to interpret (remaining aware however of the limits of this interpretation) Narcissus’ “drive” by means of Freudian tools, we are obliged to conclude that this drive will oscillate, in a way, between the preliminary stage and the two final— active and passive—configurations of the scopic drive according to Freud, and will be part of each of them without being either of them: • P  reliminary, auto-erotic stage of the scopic drive according to Freud Simultaneously active and passive, but solely within the own person: Own person looks at own object/Own object is looked at by own person. • N  arcissus’ scopic drive Simultaneously active and passive because of the ontological dependence of the reflection upon the own person, but erotic perception of the reflection of the person and the object as extraneous: Narcissus looks at the reflection of a part of his own body [face]/a part of Narcissus’ own body [face] is displayed to the reflection of his own person, and is looked at by it. • Active direction of the scopic drive according to Freud: Own person looks at extraneous object. • Passive direction of the scopic drive according to Freud: Own object is looked at by extraneous person. Finally, for Freud the scopic drive is ultimately supposed to prepare, in a last stage of bringing together which also involves most of the other partial drives, the normal sexual goal (heterosexual act), and not to stop at the preparatory acts of this goal, which are in fact the goals to which the partial drives aspire independently of one another.273 If they were to stop, that would make them new sexual goals replacing the normal aims. In such a case the scopic pleasure would henceforth be qualified as perversion (voyeurismexhibitionism).274 Thus, Freud distinguishes two goals coinciding with two forms of pleasure: a pre-pleasure which is the pleasure of the organ: it is the goal to which each partial drive tends, emanating from a sexually excited organ [Erregung], an organ which thus corresponds to

S. Freud (1905) 2006, pp. 133134; S. Freud (1915) 2005, p. 20: “To characterize the sexual drives in general, we can say the following: they are many in number, they emanate from a great variety of organic sources, and initially they act independently of each other, achieving a more or less complete synthesis only at a late stage. The aim each one strives to attain is organ pleasure; only on completing synthesis do they enter the service of the reproductive function, at which point they become generally recognizable as sexual drives.” See also S. Freud (1923 [1922]) 1955, pp. 244-245 (The Development of the Libido). 274 S. Freud (1905) 2006, pp. 133134. 273

90

S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 142. S. Freud (1905) 2006, pp. 190191. 277 See S. Freud (1905) 1987 [i.e. French version], p. 83 n. d (Translator’s note): “The two terms ‘Reiz’ and ‘Erregung’ are generally rendered uniformly by translators into French as ‘excitation’ [excitement]. However, the Standard Edition aims to distinguish them by translating ‘Reiz’ as stimulus or stimulation, and ‘Erregung’ as excitement. This choice moreover corresponds to the usual meaning of these words in German, where ‘Reiz’ designates the stimulant, that which produces excitement from outside, and ‘Erregung’ the change of state that is produced. This is why we have reinstated the distinction, which seems to us to correspond on the whole to the meaning of these terms in Freud’s work, even if it can, at times, seem somewhat forced in relation to the text.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 278 S. Freud (1905) 2006, pp. 189190. 279 S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 190. 280 S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 190. 281 See supra n. 266. 282 See S. Freud (1905) 1987, p. 54 n. a (Translator’s note): “The term ‘Reiz’ means both attraction or charm and stimulus or stimulant, which would enable Freud on several occasions to play on the double meaning of the word.” 283 S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 189. 275 276

an “erogenous zone;”275 and a final pleasure, which is the pleasure of the satisfaction from sexual activity, and which becomes the goal of each partial drive once the synthesis has been obtained.276 It is of vital importance to note that if on the one hand the stimulation [Reizung]277 of the erogenous zones is already accompanied by pleasure, it does not on the other hand reduce the tension of the state of sexual excitement but on the contrary induces a further increase in this tension, which, moreover, “soon becomes the most distinct unpleasure if it is not permitted to bring about further pleasure.”278: “All the erogenous zones are used to provide a certain amount of pleasure through the stimulation suited to them, which generates the intensification of tension, which in turn has to summon up the necessary motor energy to bring the sexual act to its conclusion.”279

Only the pleasure of satisfaction of the sexual act, connected to the evacuation of sexual matter, can suppress all tension: “This final pleasure is the greatest, and it differs in its mechanism from those preceding it. It is provoked entirely through discharge, it is entirely pleasure of satisfaction, and with it the [tension] of the libido temporarily subsides.”280

If we take the case of the scopic drive, the eye corresponds to this erogenous zone. The duality of the notion of scopic pleasure/ desire [Schaulust], already referred to in a footnote above, and which points to the duality of the term Lust in German,281 now takes on its full meaning. The Schaulust provides both an element of satisfaction and a contribution to sexual tension: “[…] the eye is the one [erogenous zone] that most often has, within the context of the quest of the object, the potential to be stimulated by that particular quality of excitement whose cause is the sexual object we identify as beauty. For this reason too, the merits of the sexual objects are called ‘attractions’ [Reize].282 On the one hand, pleasure is associated with this [stimulation], while on the other its consequence is an intensification of sexual excitement, or a provocation of it where it is not already present.”283

As regards Narcissus’ scopic drive, while its preliminary goal [scopic pleasure/Schaulust] is attained, the ultimate sexual goal— the homosexual act in this case and therefore, according to Freud, not normal284—will never be attained. Indeed, the sexual object— his reflection not recognized as such because of his madness—toward which the drive propels with a view to fulfilling the ultimate sexual goal, cannot be attained, particularly in terms of touching and possessing. Narcissus, therefore, can never fulfill his sexual

91 goal, and is obliged—counter to his desire—to be content with the preparatory act, with the goal of the scopic drive in its quality of partial drive operating in the first instance independently, without ever being able to attain sexual union with the object of his love. Thus he remains in a state of permanent, heightened sexual tension—the cause of suffering [unpleasure] and of the negligence of his vital bodily needs—because of the non-satisfaction of the drive, not as regards its preliminary goal [scopic pleasure] but as its ultimate sexual goal. And when Narcissus has recognized this object [reflection] as inaccessible in any other terms than scopic, and he knows that the failure to attain the ultimate sexual goal is ineluctable, his suffering is increased tenfold. Yet still, because of his amorous madness, Narcissus goes on looking at this object as an extraneous sexual object, since he cannot touch/possess it.285 Thus Narcissus’ scopic drive, which through the fault of its object will never be satisfied with regard to its ultimate goal, will lead him to his death, the inevitable outcome of a slow process of wasting triggered by the very first glance he gave the surface of the water. To Narcissus death is not cruel, for it will deliver him from his sufferings.286 It is precisely within this context of deliverance and the ultimate suppression of all earthly torment, toward which his drive has led him, that we may speak here—in the framework of a Freudian interpretation of the myth of Narcissus—of a “scopic drive toward death [pulsion scopique de mort],” merging in one same drive-motion, the life drive [sexual drive] and the death drive: Narcissus’ scopic drive is a life drive which will never attain its ultimate satisfaction, through the fault of its object, which has been imposed on him and maintained even once it has been recognized, because of the madness inflicted upon Narcissus as punishment by the vengeful gods. Consequently this drive leads him to a restful inorganic state, the only way the drive has to offer release to such an accumulation of sexual tension. In Ovid’s myth, this drive leads to a death that is not meant to be understood as a return to a prior state, a lifelessness before life, but rather as an opening onto a life of the beyond, also inorganic. Narcissus is now solely a psyche deprived of his mortal coil, and he continues his journey into the underworld admiring himself in the waters of the Styx, still impelled by the same scopic drive, which in the afterlife—and the incorporeity of beings which characterizes it—seems nevertheless able to attain its pre-pleasure [scopic pleasure], but it would be hard to imagine it leading to the ultimate pleasure [sexual act]. Perhaps in the underworld Narcissus no longer experiences any other needs or tension relative to the failure to

S. Freud (1905) 2006, p. 119. Met., III, 478-479: “[…] Allow me at least to gaze at what I cannot touch, and so provide food for my miserable passion.” 284 285

92 obtain this final pleasure, and can thus immerse himself blissfully in the eternal vision of the beloved? One must imagine Narcissus happy.287

Met., III, 471. I would like to thank Etienne Parrat for this elegant witticism. 288 Furthermore, from psychoanalysis the ephebe has sunk into the worst sort of caricatures, to become, at best, the hollow character of a “psychological sitcom,” the “laughable lover of himself;” at worst the emblem of a disdainful insult. Cf. G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 230. 286 287

To conclude, it would seem that the re-elaboration of Freudian narcissism through Lacan’s mirror stage remains at a distance from the myth of Narcissus. The only true proximity comes to light in a broad outline or in the use of generic terms [specular reflection, illusion], which in reality are describing another function altogether. This “resticking [recollement]” to the myth of Narcissus would probably not, therefore, withstand any deeper analysis of the issue. If there is one point however where Lacan’s narcissistic world and the myth coincide, in my opinion it is to be found in the understanding of death, more specifically in the suicidal tendency which Lacan assimilates to the Freudian death drive; this suicidal tendency/death drive which, in its relation to the image, lies within the imaginary knot that is narcissism. This suicidal tendency/death drive which one can legitimately recognize in Narcissus’ urge, triggered by the perception of his own unrecognized image, leads him to his own death. This urge is a scopic drive, a life drive according to Freud. But within the myth, because of the madness instilled in Narcissus by the gods as punishment, it leads to his death. Narcissus never undergoes the ordeal of narcissism. However, in the perception of his specular image—just like the child, according to Lacan, but in another register—there are echoes of madness and death. So while the psychoanalytic instrumentalization of the myth has skewed the character of Narcissus irreversibly,288 the merit of Lacan’s mirror stage, by re-formulating the myth according to its own anthropological interests, has been to reflect the drama at the heart of the story: the drama of the body in its relation to its image, the omnipresence of its death.

4

Francis Bacon “De-Faced” Self-Portraits

“Death at Work” Francis Bacon, indisputably, is the 20th-century artist who has most strikingly portrayed the share of death that could reside in an image of the body and/or of the face.289 Our task here will be to observe this share of death as illustrated by his self-portraits—images of his own body and/or face—in order to better understand its role and the way it is expressed, in the perspective of the inquiry of identification undertaken by the artist throughout much of his life. In a 1975 talk, Bacon’s favorite interviewer, the art critic David Sylvester, attempted to direct the conversation onto the subject of self-portraits: “SYLVESTER. You’ve painted a great many self-portraits lately, haven’t you, many more than before? BACON. I’ve done a lot of self-portraits, really because people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself. Well, now I’m glad to say that two people, very goodlooking, have turned up, both of whom I’ve known in the past. They’re both very good subjects. I loathe my own face, and I’ve done self-portraits because I’ve had nobody else to do. But now I shall give up doing self-portraits.”290

289 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), pp. 78-79: “BACON. I think you once said to me that people always have a feeling of mortality about my paintings. SYLVESTER. Yes. BACON. But then, perhaps, I have a feeling of mortality all the time. Because, if life excites you, its opposite, like a shadow, death, must excite you. Perhaps not excite you, but you are aware of it in the same way as you are aware of life, you’re aware of it like the turn of a coin between life and death. And I’m very aware of that about people, and about myself too, after all. I’m always surprised when I wake up in the morning. SYLVESTER. Doesn’t that belie your view that you’re essentially an optimistic person? BACON. Ah well, you can be optimistic and totally without hope. One’s basic nature is totally without hope, and yet one’s

nervous system is made out of optimistic stuff. It doesn’t make any difference to my awareness of the shortness of the moment of existence between birth and death. And that’s one thing I’m conscious of all the time. And I suppose it does come through in my paintings. SYLVESTER. It does come through. BACON. But does it more than in other people’s paintings today? SYLVESTER. Well, of course, there is not all that number who are painting the figure today. But I think it does more. And people seem to feel in looking at your figures that they are seen in moments of crisis, moments of acute awareness of their mortality, moments of acute awareness of their animal nature— moments of recognition of what might be called elemental truth about themselves.” 290 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 5 (1975), p. 129. One of these two handsome men might have been the American photographer Peter Beard. See in particular M. Harrison, (2005) 2006, p. 177; M. Harrison, 2009, pp. 80-84; R. Daniels, 2009, pp. 142-148.

94 With all the caution one must reserve with regard to Bacon’s assertions—which are sometimes more inclined to set one down the wrong path than to enlighten—and with the knowledge that he would never truly cease to portray himself, we can, however, certify the effective reality of a production of self-portraits that was far more considerable during the periods leading up to and closely following the 1975 interview, and thus turn our close attention to the deeper motivations of the artist’s endeavors. According to Bacon, it took the death of people around him for him to truly address—he was forced to, in a way—the “last” human model who could make himself available to his brush: his own self. The self-portrait as the ultimate term of representation through portraiture can be explained by the fact that Bacon said he loathed his own “face.” The artist here is specifically singling out his face—not the rest of his body or his entire personage—as the reason for his dislike of self-representation; his face to which he found himself obliged to turn as a last resort, for a lack of other human subjects. But this targeted repulsion, naturally, spread to any form of self-representation that likewise included other areas of his body—a self-portrait that was not limited solely to the face— for the face remains the “main center” of the human being, the hypostasis, the sanctuary of emotions and expressions.291 The face is often represented as the only naked part of the body, capable of revealing the ego of the individual. All on its own, or for the most part, the face assumes a human being’s identity, at the threshold between the visible (body) and the invisible (soul). This is why from here on I will speak of the body/face syntagma, the better to explain this relation when it may arise. But Bacon would go further into the reasons for his rejection when Sylvester asked him about his approach to the self-portrait: “SYLVESTER. In painting self-portraits, is there a radical difference in approach from the one used when painting other people? BACON. No. Except that I like painting good-looking people because I like good bone structure. I loathe my own face, but I go on painting it only because I haven’t got any other people to do. It’s true to say…One of the nicest things that Cocteau said was ‘Each day in the mirror I watch death at work’. This is what one does oneself.”292 Short of imagining a faceless self-portrait, something Bacon does not do. 292 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 5 (1975), pp. 130-133. 291

Bacon liked to paint beautiful people whose beauty he qualified here as having “good bone structure.” Thus he immediately excluded himself from this category of people, by reiterating the disgust he felt for his own face. As the face was the reason for this exclusion, we might infer that it was the “bone structure of the face”

95 which concerned Bacon first and foremost. Moreover, his words reveal an authentic architectonic reflection of the face, discerning its structural composition, a “skeleton” onto which a complex organic tissue will be placed, creating a surface where several signs will be added, signs that one will have to read and interpret correctly in order to gain access to the person’s identity. This brief commentary with regard to the issue of facial bone structure would then give way to another form of response to Sylvester’s question, only lightly sketched in the form of a quotation: “It’s true to say...One of the nicest things that Cocteau said was: ‘Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.’ This is what one does oneself.” While the discussion was about his self-portraits— self-projections onto the pictorial surface—Bacon introduced the presence of another form of projection of his own features onto a surface which, this time, was reflective: his image in the mirror. This perception of self by means of the specular image revealed to him that part of death which was creeping daily into his features— “death at work,” as Cocteau had said, before him. If, therefore, at the heart of a discussion about self-portraiture, Bacon introduced the image of self in the mirror, the better to reveal the advance of the void which ineluctably accompanies us and works on us every day of our life, one might naturally conclude that for him the point would be to reformulate this presence/progression of death within the body/face on the canvas. In addition, the mirror can easily intervene in the process of making the image. Indeed when an artist creates his own image in a painting, he frequently makes use of the perception of his image—reversed—in the mirror; the artist executes the self-portrait with the help of the specular image and often conveys the reversed capture of his own features upon the canvas (fig. 14).293 Moreover, this device of transcribing one’s mirror image to the pictorial surface, with a view to capturing a figure that is constantly changing, belongs to a tradition of self-representation which, quite naturally, harks back to Alberti’s myth of Narcissus as the inventor of painting, anxious to immortalize his own features. In 1998 Perry Ogden was given permission to photograph Bacon’s house, before the archeologists charged with archiving and dismantling all the elements in the studio piece by piece began relocating it to a place where it would be totally rebuilt, in the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.294 In these photographs we can see the huge circular mirror (figs. 15-16)—mat, opaque, scratched, and splattered with drops of black paint and lead mold—which the artist encountered every day in his little studio (eight meters by four) on 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, London, where he worked from the

293 For more details on the overview by the painter Johannes Gumpp on the use of the mirror in the production of the image, see V.I. Stoichita, (1993) 1997, pp. 245-247. For further reading on the subject, see M. Thévoz, 1996, pp. 32-35. 294 B. Dawson, 2005, pp. 11-21.

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14. Johannes Gumpp, Self-Portrait, 1646, oil on canvas, 88.5 cm x 89 cm, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

295 296

P. Ogden/J. Edwards, 2001. See B. Dawson, 2005, p. 17.

autumn of 1961—the date he moved into the adjoining apartment— until his death in 1992 (figs. 17-19).295 The mirror was situated at the far west side of the studio, and acted as a counterpoint to a first easel that was set up in the center of the room to the east, beneath an opening in the ceiling which allowed the overhead natural light to filter in, albeit from a certain distance. One of the survey plans of the studio floor, which was chaotic, to be sure, but nevertheless divided into very specific zones,296 shows that the same easel [F20] was set up in such a way

97 that the work in progress could be reflected in the mirror (fig. 2021). If one looks carefully, moreover, at the previously mentioned photograph, one can just barely make out the reflection of the outline of the easel, between that of two ropes hanging from the ceiling, to the right-hand side of the mirror (fig. 15). Another of Ogden’s photographs shows virtually the same view of the studio, but this time the easel contains Bacon’s last unfinished canvas—on this very easel at the time of his death—and the reflection in the mirror is very clear (fig. 22). A second easel [F5] was in the studio to the left of the entrance, situated where the south and west walls of the studio jutted out (fig. 15, 20-22). This position allowed the artist to paint and at the same time see himself more easily in the mirror. Given this layout, we can entertain the hypothesis that the spatial organization of the studio—in particular the two areas of pictorial activity—was conceived entirely around the location of the mirror. Thus the first installation meant that a reflection of the image in process could be obtained, and the second allowed for the perception of the reflected self-image, which was clearly ideal for making a self-portrait. In all likelihood it was Bacon himself who designed this huge round mirror in the 1930s, one of the last relics of his brief career as a furniture designer (fig. 23). It rested mid-height on a shelf (fig. 15-16, 22). On the shelf, in particular around the mirror, were accumulations of dirty brushes in all sorts of containers—tin cans, jars, cups—along with paint-splattered plates, rags, and bottles of pure pigment. To the left-hand side of the mirror: a deluge of books, buckets, tubes, rags, plates and papers spilling from the shelf onto a nearby table. Thus, all the painter’s accessories surrounded the mirror, whose reflective qualities were diminished, however, given its age and the splashes of black paint on its surface. Even the patch of wall against which the mirror was leaning seemed to be part of a strategy of pictorial representation: unlike the colorful south wall and doors which Bacon used for tests and mixtures—“my only abstract paintings” he liked to say, sarcastically (figs. 15, 19, 24)297— and which served as a palette, the west wall contained practically nothing other than great black brushstrokes on either side of the mirror. To the right, thick vertical lines were located not far from the round mirror; to the left, a mass of black paint scattered with flecks of color, following the curve of the circle in such a way that it spilled over the edge and even covered the mirror here and there.298 Thus the artist’s face on this blurred, contaminated mirror-surface contained—as witnessed already on a photograph taken in the studio in 1963—the clear traces and stigmata of a distorting pictorial activity, anticipating the self-portrait to be created on canvas (fig. 25).

297 See the interview with M. Bragg for the South Bank Show, London Weekend Television, 1985, as quoted in: M. Cappock, 2005, p. 206. 298 See M. Cappock, 2005, pp. 206-209, in particular p. 206: “It would appear that Bacon first painted around the mirror and on the now heavily encrusted corner wall nearest to it. He had developed the habit of painting on the studio walls some time before he moved into Reece Mews, as a photograph of the artist in his Battersea studio, taken by Cecil Beaton, attests.”

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15. Perry Ogden, Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews [South Kensington/London], 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

299 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 251; M. Peppiatt, 2008, p. 186. See also Michael Wishart, who has left us a brilliant description of Bacon’s craft at applying makeup to his face, in: M. Wishart, 1977, p. 63: “Seated on the edge of his bath I enjoyed watching Francis make up his

Significantly, the living room in Bacon’s flat, which also served as a bedroom, also had on one of the walls a huge mirror shattered in concentric circles and held together by pieces of scotch tape, an untouched testimony to an argument between Bacon and his lover George Dyer (fig. 26). Michael Peppiatt further relates that Bacon, who was constantly examining himself in the mirror, frequently took a pocket mirror with him when he went out. This dependency was also due to the fact that when he was a young man and fully aware of his youthful allure, Bacon became expert at creating unusual and striking makeup effects. He wore makeup his entire life, thus nurturing a perfect acquaintance with his own appearance. Peppiatt does not fail, moreover, to point out that this virtuoso use of face paint, with a view to self-transformation, must have helped Bacon considerably in his later efforts to “paint faces.”299 If the artist displayed such an interest in appearance, it was in particular because he maintained it allowed an individual’s in-

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trinsic qualities to show through, most notably one’s behavior and personality.300 The artist in person, moreover, connected this fascination with appearance—his own first and foremost—with his sexual orientation. He emphasized the precise, ruthless gaze of a homosexual with regard to a person’s physique: “Bacon was obsessed by his appearance, his own most of all, and he believed that homosexuals possessed an unusually keen eye for the way people looked. ‘Homosexuals become more and more impossible with age,’ he remarked, ‘because they are obsessed with the physique. They simply

face. He applied the basic foundation with lightning dexterity born of long practice. He was more careful, even sparing, with the rouge. For his hair he had a selection of Kiwi boot polishes in various browns. He blended these on

16. Perry Ogden, Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

the back of his hand, selecting a tone appropriate for the particular evening, and brushed them through his abundant hair with a shoe brush. He polished his teeth with Vim. He looked remarkably young even before this alchemy.” 300 D. Sylvester, 2000, p. 234; M. Peppiatt, 2008, p. 181.

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17. Perry Ogden, View of the front of 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

18. Perry Ogden, View of the staircase at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

19. Perry Ogden, Outer face of the door to Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

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20. Archeologists’ survey plans of the floor of Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

21. Archaeologists’ survey plans of the floor of Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, detail, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

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22. Perry Ogden, Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, Photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

never stop looking at the body, all of it, the whole time, and pulling it to pieces [my Italics]. That’s why if ever I’ve wanted to know what someone really looks like, I’ve always asked a queer. They’re ruthless and precise.’ Bacon’s portraits—which unlike Giacometti’s, often uncannily resemble their subjects—prove his point abundantly.”301

301 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 208; see also M. Peppiatt, 2008, p. 181. 302 Cf. M. Peppiatt, 2008, p. 186. Bacon also confesses to this in: D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), pp. 40-43.

The reality of an implacable homosexual judgment regarding appearance materializes, in Bacon, in the intransigency and pictorial precision that inform his portraits, and even more so, his selfportraits. Peppiatt further emphasizes Bacon’s absolute freedom in manipulating and reassembling his own physical features, as opposed to the feeling of inflicting a certain “injury” to the appearance of his friends when he painted them.302 Bacon’s formula, pulling it to pieces, used within the context of a critical homosexual gaze deconstructing another person’s appearance, could just as easily be applied to his practice of dislocating physical shapes in his portraits and self-portraits. But if Bacon distorts the object and distances it from appearance, it is because he intends “in the distortion to bring it back to a recording of the ap-

103 23. Furniture designed by Francis Ba­con, photograph of his studio at Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington, London, published in “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” The Studio, August 1930, p. 141.

pearance.”303 The point, above all, is to capture the sensation and the feeling of life, to seize the vital energy that can be drawn from the appearance of the sitter, and distortion, for Bacon, was the appropriate technique to be used in order to render ”all the pulsations of a person.” And it was principally to the face that one must turn in order to “trap” a person’s energy.304

D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), p. 40. D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), p. 43 and Interview 8 (19821984), pp. 174-175: “BACON. The living quality is what you have to get. In 303 304

painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person. It’s why portrait painting is so fascinating and so difficult. Most people go to the most academic painters when they want to have their portraits made because for some reason they prefer a kind of colour photograph of themselves instead of thinking of having themselves really trapped and caught. The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation. I’m not talking in a spiritual way or anything like that—that is the last thing I believe in. But there are always emanations from people whoever they are, though some people’s are stronger than other’s. […] Energy is better. There is the appearance and there is the energy within the appearance. And that is an extremely difficult thing to trap. Of course, a person’s appearance is closely linked with their energy. […] So far it seems that if you are doing a portrait you have to record the face. But with their face you have to try and trap the energy that emanates from them.”

104 24. John Kellet, Outer face and

inner face of the door to Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews, 2001 (Reconstructed studio), photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

See also M. Peppiatt, 2008, p. 182. 305

Moreover, by observing Bacon’s portraits and self-portraits it is easy to see that this capturing through distortion never completely annihilates the identity of the person represented; the person is, in fact, instantly recognizable. The body, and more often the face alone, is the focus of a tension between distortion and recognizability which results not in the destruction of the identity but in a constant transformation of the appearance.305 To go back to the 1975 interview, Sylvester steps into the breach and hazards the notion that the expressive power of the self-portrait is superior to that of a simple portrait, due to the more acute awareness of encroaching death when that awareness is one’s own. Bacon retorts that it can also be seen in others. To which Sylvester replies by maintaining that if the death of friends is indeed a terrible thing, the idea of one’s own death is simply unbearable. Then, neither denying

105 25. Jorge Lewinski, Francis Bacon in the mirror of his studio at 7 Reece Mews, 1963, photograph, The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth.

D. Sylvester, (1976) 1996, Interview 5 (1975), pp. 138-139: “SYLVESTER. In that case, perhaps you are able to say something particularly poignant in self-portraits because of this awareness of the approach of death, an awareness that is all the more powerful when it concerns you personally, rather than when you are painting someone else. BACON. But you can also observe this in others, don’t you think? SYLVESTER. Yes, but it’s more dreadful when it’s about oneself. BACON. Do you think our death is more horrible than the death of friends? SYLVESTER. Well, the death of friends is terrible, but the idea of our own death is intolerable. Aren’t you filled with rancor at the thought that you won’t live until you’re 150 years old? BACON. I am filled with rancor at the idea that I will not go on living. I wouldn’t even limit my age to 150.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. This passage appeared only in the French translation by M. Leiris and M. Peppiatt; it was found neither in the original English version I used for this study, nor even in the German translation I consulted for information, in: D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, p. 133; D. Sylvester, 1982, p. 135. 307 See supra n. 289. 306

nor confirming Sylvester’s take on the matter, Bacon goes on replying to questions dealing with the age at which such an awareness appears, as well as his own view of life.306 There is, therefore, no contradiction in Bacon’s use of distortion in his portraits and self-portraits with a view to capturing the feeling of life, the energy emanating from that appearance and, at the same time, apprehending the daily presence/progression of death. Appearance, here, can be conceived as “the turn of a coin between life and death.”307 But what we must remember, above all, is that while Bacon said he did not like painting his own face, the selfportrait did nevertheless draw his attention, not so much because he was obliged to paint himself by default as for the fact that the self-portrait is the privileged place where he can continually reformulate the expression of his own mortality.

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26. Perry Ogden, View of the living-room/bedroom at 7 Reece Mews, 1998, photograph, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

J. Russell, 1993, p. 65. See M. Cappock, 2005, pp. 62-86. 310 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 6 (1979), p. 142: “SYLVESTER. In doing them [self-portraits] do you use photographs? Do you look in the mirror? BACON. I look at myself in the mirror and I look at photographs of myself as well.” 308 309

Finally, although we must bear in mind that his work can never be reduced to a single visual source, but is similar to an incompressible product resulting from the “mastication” of a mass of disparate visual documents, literally papering the floor of his studio (figs. 15, 20-22),308 and although we must not forget that Bacon was also the subject of innumerable photographs309—projections of his body/face onto another medial surface—we are left with a legitimate understanding of the importance of the relation between Bacon and his mirror image in the process of creating his self-portraits.310 To be sure, the relation between Francis Bacon and his image in the mirror is not that of Ovid’s Narcissus or Lacan’s child. Still, his process may conceivably share their specular experience, within the perspective of the dramatic relation of body to image—not that Bacon’s mirror image might be the vector of an illusion leading him to death as the result of a mad passion [Ovid], or that it could be an instrument of alienation [Lacan]—but because his reflection renders visible the very thing that he has systematically sought to emphasize in his painting of self-portraits: the omnipresence of death in his own body/face.

107 Late 60s Bacon began painting self-portraits relatively late; the first one we can recognize as such seems to be the one he produced in 1958— Bacon was born in 1909, so was 49 at the time—not to forget a much earlier portrait, made in 1932-33, which might qualify as a self-portrait (fig. 27). Bacon’s virtual obsession with the great dramatic themes (witness the series of popes and crucifixions, and the presence of dictators and other furies in his work) might go some way toward providing a reasonable explanation for the absence of his own image during the first half of his career. As he began to approach old age, this interest seemed to decline and gave way to another world that allowed for research into subject matter that was just as intense, if not more so: the microcosm of his daily life and of his immediate entourage, his friends, his lovers, and naturally his own self. It was in the early 1960s that the art of the portrait began to occupy a central place in Bacon’s work, leading him, logically, to examine his own features and inflict the same treatment on them, on canvas.311 It is above all Bacon’s self-portraits of the head, and more specifically the face, which are of the greatest interest to us here. The photographs where Bacon features are in this respect extremely significant, insofar as one can detect the traces of seminal experiments carried out on the face, in particular a formal decomposition due to the play of shadow and light projected on the subject. Take the magnificent portrait photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1951 (fig. 28), for example. Bacon is posing on the right in front of the curtain at the side of the window. The left-hand side of his face is interposed between the source of natural light and the inner space of the room, in such a way that the shadow falls upon the righthand side of the face, which is hidden from any incidental rays of light. Similarly, the half-light fills a museum-like space: we can see a Madonna with Child and its frame directly above another painting, of which only the top of the frame is faintly visible. Bacon’s face and upper body are neatly divided by this extremely violent contrast. In this play of shadow and light there is a still-perceptible remanence of the right-hand side: it has not completely disappeared, the eye emerges from the void, a faint gleam of light in its pupil. The forehead and hair are similarly hidden in a shadow that is only slightly less dense, and we might even be able to reconstruct the corner of Bacon’s mouth. This posed, studied photograph is something of a manifesto, when we take into account the representational strategies of Bacon’s future self-portraits.312

311 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 207; M. Peppiatt, 2008, pp. 184185. 312 Bacon was always fascinated by shadow. Peppiatt, in his biography of the artist, mentions twice a dream that Bacon had shared with him, in which Bacon tore his own shadow from the wall, thinking he could use it for his painting, in: M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 238 and p. 296; here p. 238: “Shadows never ceased to fascinate Bacon: they first appear in his very earliest work of the 1930s and recur regularly as one of the most constant motifs of his work. In his pictures, they serve as a constant reminder of death—the ever-lengthening darkness that ‘shadows’ every life. As a manipulator of form, Bacon was also fascinated by the plasticity of shadows, which— he told me once—he even dreamed about: ‘I was going down a street and my shadow was going along the wall with me, and I thought, Ah, perhaps this might help with my painting, and I reached out and tore the shadow off.’”

108 27. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait (?), 1931-32, pastel on paper, 40 cm x 32 cm, private collection.

M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 250. M. Cappock, 2005, p. 63. Cf. also B. Dawson, 2009, p. 62. 315 M. Cappock, 2005, p. 63. 313

314

Over the decades the procession of photographers would grow, from amateurs to professionals, all drawn to Bacon’s smooth, chubby face—“my old pudding face,” as the artist liked to say.313 Prints by Helmar Lerski, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, John Deakin, Peter Stark, Jorge Lewinski and Peter Beard, to name but a few, have been found.314 In this way Bacon acquired a sort of professional ease in front of the lens, and the repeated or varied poses he adopted could reflect not only the photographer’s intention but also his own. Among these many portraits, some of the later ones would show him again full-face, three quarters or in profile, with patches of shadow or in a fusion of face and profile, all of them proof of a great interest in a mise en scène of faces that are fragmented, deformed, or threatened with disappearance (figs. 2932). Finally, the pile of photographs of Bacon which accumulated

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year after year in his studio was, without a doubt, a major breeding ground for his own self-portraits.315 But Bacon had no artistic respect for photography; these were documents, work tools. Given the number of torn, folded, trampled photographs that were scattered across the floor of his studio, in the middle of a sea of other visual documents, they were clearly not granted any preferential treatment.316 Bacon said his interest in photography was based on the assault it made on one’s sense of appearance, “So that, when one looks at something, one’s not only looking at it directly, but one’s also looking at it through the assault that has already been made on one by photography and film.”317 The artist was also haunted by photography, fascinated by the slight remove from fact, which brings him even more violently in

28. Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon, 1951, photograph, 20.4 cm x 19.6 cm, The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s.

F. Bacon, (1992) 1996, pp. 1216; see also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 29. 317 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), p. 30. 316

110 29. Jorge

Lewinski, Bacon standing at the top of the stairs at 7 Reece Mews, mid1960s, photograph, 24.3 cm x 19.5 cm, The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth.

30.Jorge Lewinski, Francis Bacon, 1967, photograph, 36 cm x 29.5 cm, The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth.

D. Sylvester,, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), p. 30: “SYLVESTER. Do you know what it is especially that haunts you about them [photographs]? Is it their immediacy? Is it the surprising shapes that happen in them? BACON. I think it’s the slight remove from fact, which returns me onto fact more violently. Through the photographic image I find myself beginning to wander into the image and unlock what I think of as its reality more than I can by looking at it. And photographs are not only points of reference; they’re often triggers of ideas.” 319 M. Harrison/R. Daniels, 2008, p. 13: “It has been contended that the crease marks on the photographs and printed reproductions found in Bacon’s studio were incidental, the result of careless handling and damage that had occurred (as he himself disingenuously suggested) as a consequence of ‘people walking over them and crumpling them and every318

contact with fact. By observing the photographic image of a thing, the artist discovers what he believes to be the reality of that thing far more than if he looks at it directly. Finally, he explains that photographs are often “triggers of ideas.”318 Bacon did not always seem satisfied with the mere assault of photography on the thing itself. Indeed, given the destructive treatment he inflicted on photographs and other visual documents—whether they were bent, torn, splattered with paint or left on the floor to be trampled underfoot—he seemed to want to remodel the initial assault in order to subject it to his own aggressiveness with regard to fact, perhaps with the intention of uncovering its greatest drive-energy reality. This is even more striking when he is himself the subject of the photograph. For example, the photograph of Bacon taken by Cartier-Bresson, and the creation of a facsimile which reproduces the folds Bacon made in the picture, are proof that this was no coincidence (figs. 32-33). The folds make a sort of cone which allows the picture to stand on its own while the artist is working at the easel, and at the same time they cut into the back of the head three quarters of the way round and into the hand which is leaning on the face. All that remains is the face, the fingers touching it, and their shadow over the eye and the right cheek.319 Thus, when examining

thing else.’ The ‘everything else’ is significant. No doubt the paint marks often were accidental, although Bacon was also alert to the creative potential of these random blots (and hence entered an axis that spans Leonardo, Alexander Cozens and Rorschach). But the notion that their distressed condition

111 31. Arnold Newman, Francis Bacon, 1975, photograph, 46.8 cm x 31.5 cm, Getty Images.

the use Bacon made of photographs in preparing his self-portraits, we must not only take into account those photographs where he is featured, but also bear in mind the way in which he might subsequently have physically altered them. In this respect, the artist’s specular double and his photographic double meet, and stand out from the mass of innumerable visual sources buried in the final work, particularly given the fact that they were the object of diverse experimental strategies at work in the different types of self-portraits Bacon would produce.

was invariably accidental embodies a fundamental misconception. A photograph of Bacon taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1971 provides a compelling example of the directedness of Bacon’s manipulations. Comparison with many other images with similar creases confirms that the diagonal folds, unlike the paint spatterings, did not occur by chance. By replicating the folds it can be demonstrated that Bacon manipulated the flat material into a cone-like shape—a three dimensional form that could stand, next to his easel, independently.” For a deeper look at the issue, see J. O’Donnell, 2009, pp. 88-121; M. Finke, 2009, pp. 122-133.

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32. Henri

The Face in Shreds

The great majority of Bacon’s self-portraits have been collected in: F. Bacon, 1996. 321 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), pp. 84-86. 322 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), p. 86. Moreover Bacon liked for his paintings to be under glass, particularly because of the distance that glass establishes between the work and the viewer.

Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (fig. 34),320 from 1967, forms a triptych: each of the separate panels, of identical size, displays a different view of the artist’s head: three-quarters, full-face, and profile. In an interview from 1971-1973, when Sylvester pointed out to Bacon that he had been using the triptych more and more frequently over the last ten years, and he wondered why the artist was so drawn to this form, Bacon replied that he saw images in series and that, although he supposed he could go further and make five or six images one after the other, the triptych seemed to offer a more balanced solution. There might also have been his desire to “go all round” the face by connecting various individual sequences and make them work together. Regarding these “triptychs of heads,” where one sees profile, face, then the other profile, Bacon voiced a comparison with the mug shots taken by the police—although it should not be forgotten that such photos generally make up a diptych, showing only the face and one of the two profiles.321 Moreover, the artist insisted that each of the canvases of a triptych be individually framed, and not put all together in one frame.322

Cartier-Bresson, Francis Bacon Leaning on a Table, 1971, photograph, 15.9 cm x 24.1 cm, Paris, Fondation Henri CartierBresson/Magnum Photos— Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

320

113 33. Facsimile of the Cartier-Bres-

son photograph, following the folds made by Bacon.

Details like these clearly illustrate that the images constituting a triptych were conceived to remain separate from each other. To be sure, there must be some relationship between the discrete parts of the triptych but—as Gilles Deleuze has pointed out, emphasizing the importance of the triptych in Bacon’s oeuvre (he mentions mainly triptychs with several figures, but this remark also seem to apply to triptychs featuring studies for portraits and self-portraits)—this relationship must be neither logical nor narrative. For the triptych implies neither a progression nor a story.323 It is, rather, the equivalent of the movements or parts in a score of music: “the triptych would be the distribution of the three basic rhythms. There is a circular organization in the triptych, rather than a linear one.”324 In this respect, the three canvasses remain truly separate, but are not isolated. Their frames refer no longer “to the limitative unity of each, but to the distributive unity of the three.”325 The three panels are further connected by the same green-brown flat tint [aplat] serving as a background. This shared background, moreover, is covered with light and dark spots which reveal the grid pattern of the weave and emphasize the rough texture of the

323 This interpretation goes along with Bacon’s overall desire not to resort to “story-telling aspect,” but rather to “give the sensation, without the boredom of its conveyance.” Cf. D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 1 (1962), p. 23/ Interview 2 (1966), pp. 63-65/ Interview 3 (1971-1973), p. 82. For an indepth discussion, see also E. v. Alphen, 1992, pp. 21-57. 324 G. Deleuze, (1981) 2005, pp. 49-51. 325 G. Deleuze, (1981) 2005, p. 60; see also p. 76: “In the triptych, as we have seen, the borders of each of the three panels cease to isolate, though they continue to separate and divide. This uniting-separating is Bacon’s technical solution, which brings his entire set of techniques into play, and distinguishes them from the techniques of abstract and informal painting, indeed implicates all of his processes in their difference from those of abstraction and informal.” For a general discussion of Bacon’s use of the triptych, see also A.R. Lee, 2009, pp. 176-186; R. Arya, 2012, pp. 101-117.

114

34. Francis Bacon, Three Studies

for a Self-Portrait, 1967, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm (each), private collection.

326 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 9 (1984-1986), pp. 195-196. 327 A. Durham, 1985, p. 231: “It was by accident, having run out of canvas, and painting on the back of an already used canvas in 1947-8, that he discovered the absorbent, unprimed surface which has since become his standard support. He says ‘this suited the South of France’ where he was working at that time. (He wants his technique ‘as raw as possible’ and presumably the rawness of unprimed canvas suited his way of working, of dragging the paint across the weave.) Having found a surface sympathetic to his aims and to the effect it has upon the image, he was content to look no further and he has used readyprimed canvases stretched back to front from the same artist’s colourman for the last twenty or thirty years”; cf. also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 225; J. Shepard, 2009, pp. 152-175.

canvas. This coarseness of the cloth—even more explicit when the canvas absorbs the paint left by large brushstrokes tracing the human face—is due to the deliberate use of the unprimed side of the canvas. However, Bacon did not always used the unprepared side; this turning point in his technique came about at the end of the 1940s, in the south of France: “SYLVESTER. Do you often find that you have to change the original colour of the ground at some stage? BACON. I generally stay with the ground because it is extremely difficult to change it when you are using unprimed canvas. And also you have got to realize that a number of the backgrounds that I use on this unprimed canvas are pastel, because I find that with pastel you can get a much more intense colour and it holds very well on the unprimed canvas. It’s like using very rough paper, like pastel paper. This thing of using unprimed canvas came about when I was living in Monte Carlo in the late 1940s. I had no money—probably I had lost it in the casino—but I had some canvases there which I had already used, so I turned them and discovered that the unprimed side was much easier to work on. And since then I have always worked on the unprimed side of the canvas.”326

Bacon was very fond of this rough side of the canvas, which caught the paint more bitingly, absorbing it better and improving the texture. Moreover, in this rebellious support Bacon found a creative surface that chimed perfectly with his personality: the slightest line became indelible, thus multiplying the risks he took, increasing the odds with every one of his gestures. And in spite of the decreased latitude that such a technique gave him if he wanted to modify or retouch a work that had not come out the way he liked, he went on using the unprimed side of his canvases (even though the other side was always already primed) right to the end of his life.327

115 The study on the left shows a three-quarters head on an oblique axis, generating a certain depth of field—the top of the head is leaning against the canvas in the foreground, and the lower half, by virtue of this leaning effect, is distanced from the screen that separates the space of representation and the viewer’s space. The zone of contact, located at the level of the temple, is not, strictly speaking, visible: we have to gauge where it would be, outside the frame, beyond the vertical break cutting off the back of the head. This oblique layout gives the head, moreover, an egg-shaped form which, subsequent to a point of contact with a straight surface, goes along the surface in a convex effusion. Additionally, an effect like this is accentuated by forces of gyration, orchestrated by the wide stripes of black, white and red from Bacon’s brush, that surround the closed eyes and outline his flayed face. This arrangement goes some way toward reminding one of the experiment anyone can perform with the perception of one’s own face by placing the top of one’s head on a flat mirror then looking into it. If we are to suppose that at some point in the genesis of this image Bacon himself indulged in this experiment with the reflection of his own head, we can infer that the phenomenon of inversion of the mirror image was maintained within the image-painting, and therefore that the right-hand side of the head which we can see on the canvas corresponds in reality to the left-hand side of the artist’s face. This uncertainty could in fact be found in all the self-portraits the artist produced, but it is not our intention to question each one of Bacon’s works to find out. The point here is simply to note a certain proclivity for the phenomenon of inversion which seems to characterize Bacon’s oeuvre down to its material conditions, above all if we take into account the systematic use he makes of the unprimed side of the canvas. The right-hand panel is that of a profile which, on first glance, seems to have been mostly hollowed out. The bare forehead curves sharply inward, deepening the eye socket between two patches of white skin. Then several wide, abrupt, palely flesh-colored brushstrokes round off the jagged structure of the profile—natural marks that were peculiar to Bacon’s practice of the “controlled accident” in painting.328 Two dominant lines signal the cheekbone and lower jaw. These two key lines are marked by impasto, and the ridges formed in the thick coat of paint give the impression that the flesh is pressing against the surface, against the canvas-screen. And while this profile at right angles seems to have been deprived of its median part, it is precisely in the middle of this gaping zone [béance] that we can see a deflated tubular excrescence folded in such a way as to fit perfectly into the profile’s jagged edge: the upper

328 See D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 1 (1962), pp. 1112, pp. 16-17/ Interview 3 (19711973) pp. 92-96; cf. also G. Deleuze, (1981) 2005, pp. 66-67; A. Durham, 1985, p. 233; J. Shepard, 2009, pp. 152-175.

116 part of this tube constitutes the nose and the lower part the mouth, which ends in red-tinted lips. The central panel is a full-face portrait. The jacket from which the neck emerges is sketched here even more summarily than in the two other panels of the triptych; nothing must distract us from this face-to-face. Apart from the fact that the flesh of the face in question is turning almost liquid, flowing dangerously over to the left and taking the sense organs (eyes, nose, mouth, ears) with it. Following the same movement, a wide elliptical black line draws a cavity which, far from being a space for the right eye, remains desperately empty. The socket shows through to the back of the canvas, as if a bullet had gone through it, tearing everything away. Finally, the two dominant flows come together in a teardrop of paint, a shred of green-black flesh dropping away from the face. The Face on a Strip Four Studies for a Self-Portrait (fig. 35), also from 1967, presents a succession of four views of the head, one above the other on a single canvas, which goes against the separation rhetoric peculiar to the triptych according to Bacon. But the canvas does remain segmented into four compartments of varying sizes, featuring four distinct facial poses. Here we can easily identify a construction of images borrowed from the series of four prints as produced by photo booths, something Bacon was very fond of. Numerous samples show us the way in which he exploited this economical, anonymous, banal solution, far removed from the usual intrusion of the act of photography as performed by a third party. In the tiny space of the cabin Bacon alternated poses and facial expressions, frequently glancing beyond the frame or carefully avoiding looking into the lens (figs. 36-37).329 The successive shots of his changing positions denote a major interest in the question of recording human movement. The artist himself refers to the sequential photographs of humans and animals which Eadward Muybridge took at the end of the 19th century (fig. 38) as having triggered ideas and been a fundamental source of inspiration for his decision to make paintings in series:

329 See also M. Cappock, 2005, pp. 71-81; M. Harrison, (2005) 2006, pp. 170-173.

“SYLVESTER. I suppose that Muybridge’s are the photographs you’ve made use of most continually. BACON. Well, of course, they were an attempt to make a recording of human motion—a dictionary in a sense. And the thing of doing series may possibly have come from looking at those books of Muybridge’s with the stages of a movement shown in separate

117 photographs. I’ve always had a book that’s influenced me very much called Positioning in Radiography, with a lot of photographs showing the positioning of the body for the X-ray photographs to be taken, and also the X-rays themselves.”330

Bacon added that the practice of painting in series was due in particular to the fact that he himself saw “every image all the time in a shifting way and almost in shifting sequences.”331 Elsewhere he spoke of the principle of slides to explain the way in which the pictures—which would not necessarily have anything to do with his finished paintings—came to his mind as he was daydreaming.332 Then, when Sylvester pointed out that contemporary painters (in 1979) lacked images and consequently did not really know what to paint, Bacon evoked the way in which ideas for pictorial creation came to him in a process that was not that far removed from the reception of a strip of developed photographs, still damp, falling from the automatic photo booth: “[…] Images just drop in as if they were handed down to me.”333 Underlying these words is an evocation of the power of the unconscious, something to which Bacon, as an avid reader of Sigmund Freud, often referred, and which he liked to describe as a sea, or a source from which his most powerful images emerged, fresh and still wrapped with foam.334 We can detect here a combining intermingling of sources, daydreams, feelings and perceptions of reality, all of which plead in favor of a gaze onto the world and creation consisting of an innumerable series of sequential images, exhibiting the various constitutive stages of movement. And this is equally true of Four Studies for a Self-Portrait: the work executed on a single canvas transcribes in pictorial terms the technical device [dispositif technique] of the photo booth as it delivers its series of images on a strip of light sensitive paper, each of which captures the successive stages—but not narrative for all that—of a movement brought about by Bacon’s shifting poses. This is why Sylvester did not hesitate to compare this canvas to a strip of film.335 But the work goes beyond the structure of the representation of movement that is peculiar to the film medium, insofar as each face transgresses the segment attributed to it

330 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), pp. 30-32. Cf. also J. Russell, 1993, pp. 60-65; M. Harrison, (2005) 2006, pp. 10-11/54-56; M. Harrison/R. Daniels, 2008, p. 8; M. Harrison, 2009, pp. 74-77; B. Dawson, 2009, pp. 59-66; M. Harrison, 2012, p. 59. 331 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 1 (1962), p. 21. 332 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 5 (1975), pp. 134-136.

D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 7 (1979), pp. 164-166, here p. 166. See also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 81. 334 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 297: “He [Bacon] did refer a great deal to the power of the unconscious. He pictured the latter as a great ‘sea’ or ‘well’ out of which his own most potent images arose, with ‘all the foam of their freshness wrapped round them,’ as he put it.” Moreover, when M. Archimbaud noticed the presence of Freud’s works in Bacon’s library, the artist replied that he liked reading Freud a great deal, and appreciated his way of explaining things, although he had never undergone psychoanalysis. He referred in particular to the fertility of the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, in: F. Bacon, (1992) 1993, pp. 84-87. Wieland Schmied also relates that Bacon was familiar with Freud’s method for the interpretation of dreams, in: W. Schmied, 2006, p. 10. See also, among other things, the references to Freud and the unconscious in: M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998 p. 306; D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 8 (1982-1984), p. 170. 335 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), pp. 8486: “SYLVESTER. […] But in the triptychs of heads you just have a row of heads, and one can easily imagine the row’s being extended—especially as you’ve sometimes done a series of four heads on separate canvases and you also put once four like a strip of film, on a single canvas. […]. Cf. also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 81. 333

118 35. Francis Bacon, Four Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1967, oil on canvas, 91.5 cm x 33 cm, Carlo Ponti collection.

119 36. S trip of black and white passport photographs of Francis Bacon, c.1960s, 20 cm x 4 cm, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

37. S trip of black and white

passport photographs of Francis Bacon attached to paper fragments, date unknown, 21.5 cm x 5.7 cm, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

120

38. Loose leaf of men wrestling,

torn from: Eadweard Muybridge, The Human Figure in Motion (Philadelphia 1887, London 1901), Date of this edition unknown, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

336 Bacon himself uses the term graph—in the context of the functional presence of involuntary marks during the execution of a portrait—in a complex passage in his interviews with Sylvester: D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 2 (1966), p. 56. Cf. also Deleuze, who devotes an entire chapter to the question of the diagram in Bacon’s oeuvre, in: G. Deleuze, (1981) 2005, pp. 70-77.

and literally spreads into the next face, thus generating a dynamic of movement within the canvas itself. For the faces indeed overlap and are superimposed upon each other in such a way that the boundaries between each of the vignettes no longer appear except on the right of the image. Thus the horizontal barriers—enhanced by the curved lines of the shoulder—are counterbalanced by the vertical body of composite colors constituted by the four interwoven self-portraits. The painting is a graph [diagramme]336 made of static horizontal lines of force traversed by a vertical spiral of faces.

Early 70s In late October, 1971, just before the major retrospective of Bacon’s work that was to open at the Grand Palais in Paris—with the inauguration by the President of the Republic, Georges Pompidou— George Dyer, who had been Bacon’s lover and inseparable model since they met in 1964 (fig. 39), was found dead in the bathroom of

121

their hotel room, apparently from an overdose of medication and alcohol.337 Bacon’s emotional and sexual relationship with Dyer had always been stormy and masochistic. Dyer was an insecure young man, his background that of a petty delinquent from the East End, and unlike Bacon he was very vulnerable with regard to alcohol. He had already threatened several times to commit suicide and had even attempted it on occasion, particularly with overdoses of sleeping tablets. But Bacon had always arrived in time to have his stomach pumped.338 Not long after his return from Paris and George Dyer’s funeral, his friend the photographer John

39.John Deakin, Francis Bacon and George Dyer, Soho, c. 1964, photograph, private collection.

M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 235. M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, pp. 211-217. See also D. Farson, (1993) 1994, pp. 172-187. 337

338

122

339 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, pp. 243-252. 340 See supra n. 290. 341 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 1 (1962), p. 21. 342 See G. Deleuze, (1981) 2005, p. 83: “The depth where the planes are joined is no longer the strong depth of Cézanne but a ‘shallow’ or ‘superficial’ depth, inherited from the post-cubism of Picasso and Braque (and which one finds elsewhere in abstract expressionism). It is this type of depth Bacon achieves, sometimes by joining the vertical and horizontal planes, as in his works of radical precision, and sometimes by merging them, as in the malerisch period where, for example, the verticals of the curtain cut through the horizontal of the blinds. In the same way, the treatment of color not only passes through the modulated flat patches of color (smooth planes [méplats]) that envelops the bodies, but also through the large surfaces or field which implies axes, structures, or armatures that are perpendicular to the bodies: it is the whole modulation that changes nature.”

Deakin—known in particular for the photographs of Bacon and his set commissioned by the artist, and himself a heavy drinker—also died. Bacon was overcome by a powerful sense of guilt, and became obsessed by Dyer’s death. His suffering was palpable, and impregnated his face with a bleary pallor. Several months after the funeral, haunted by the memory of his lover, he began working on posthumous and commemorative images, a series of three large triptychs which were later called the “black triptychs.” At the same period, Bacon embarked on the composition of parallel series of self-portraits, so that during these years of grief that were the early 1970s he painted almost exclusively images of Dyer and himself.339 When we recall that in 1975 Sylvester broached the topic of a recent focus on self-portraits, he was referring to this very period, marked by the deaths of Bacon’s loved ones, which left him alone with his own face.340 Let us take a closer look at the series of paintings which from this point on would establish the self-portrait as the predominant form in Bacon’s oeuvre. The Black Hole-Face The Self-Portrait of 1972 (fig. 40) figures on a single canvas, of a size equal to all the canvases featuring a head, either alone or as part of a triptych of heads. The size was systematically 35.5 by 30.5 centimeters. Moreover, Bacon was known to paint to a very constant scale, close to life size. In the majority of cases his smaller canvases are paintings of heads, and his larger paintings encompass fulllength figures. In his large paintings the dimension of the head is, moreover, practically the same size as in the smaller ones.341 In this self-portrait, a long vertical breach—following the left edge of the canvas—abruptly interrupts the representation of Bacon’s face and bust. This breach has the effect of dividing the flat tint of black paint that covers the canvas into two different planes, and between these planes are the face, and the bust, which is also black. This graduation of the planes confers a “shallow depth” to the image.342 The face, extremely melancholy, is somewhat recessed and effaced behind this sort of curtain; it is not subjected to the harsh distortion habitually inflicted by Bacon’s brush and it seems about to disappear rather than contort. This face is a moon. The purplish-white, pale blue semi-circle which, in harsh contrast, “makes up” (in the theatrical sense) the other part of the face, and is scattered with dark pools and craters that form the nostril, eye, edge of the mouth and ear, reinforces this impression of a declining star plunging into obscurity. In addition, the technique of “impres-

123

40. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1972, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm, private collection.

124

343 All through their chapter on “faciality [visagéité],” Deleuze and Guattari underline the multiple correlations between face and landscape, in particular between the face and the lunar landscape, in: G. Deleuze/F. Guattari, (1980) 2004, pp. 185-211, here p. 211: “The face, what a horror. It is naturally a lunar landscape, with its pores, planes, matts, bright colors, whiteness, and holes: there is no need for a close-up to make it inhuman; it is naturally a close-up, and naturally inhuman, a monstrous hood.” 344 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), p. 90: “SYLVESTER. And what about the use of scrubbing brushes and rags and so on? Do you tend to use a rag fairly continually? BACON. Yes. SYLVESTER. To rub out what you’ve put? BACON. No, not to rub out. I impregnate rags with colour, and they leave this kind of network of colour across the image. I use them nearly always.” See also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 208; A. Durham, 1985, pp. 232-233.

sion” on the canvas by the use of a cloth—here, for example, we can see the red lattice work that shapes the lips—confers on the face a granular skin texture reminiscent of the lunar surface.343 As a self-taught painter, and depending on the effect of impression he sought, Bacon used rags, patches of old corduroy trousers, ribbed socks, cotton washcloths, cashmere sweaters and even terrycloth bathrobes.344 The end result is the sad gaze of a moon-dweller [sélénite], resigned and inconsolable. Any light in his half-closed eyes is about to go out and cease all resistance, allowing the darkness to overwhelm him and take possession of the entire canvas. In another Self-Portrait painted the same year (fig. 41), the head has almost the same disenchanted tilt to it, and is also split vertically on the same side. But unlike the vertical strip which could, in the previous work, seem like a sort of frame masking part of his face, here the black flat tint has managed to pierce the boundary of the face: it slides and spreads into its channels. This infiltration of the flat tint into the face disrupts any relation of planes and depth within the image. The black wave has already poured across the entire right cheek and, following the curve of a circle, it surrounds one of the eyes, now closed. On the other side, the dark lines that set off the cheek in the previously examined “lunar” self-portrait are now brought together in a single flow, making their way toward the interior and composing the face in turn. The black flow comes up against the corner of the mouth then inscribes a right angle to go up to the base of the nose. These two strokes of black paint project a force from either side of the face, literally gripping it in a vice. Yet the two zones being gripped are irregular: on the left, the pressure is exerted all along the bridge of the nose to the upper part of the eye socket; on the right, the cheek is compressed against the corner of the mouth and the upper lip, forming a fold of flesh. Such pressure exerted from either side of the face has the effect of forming a central line—from the forehead to the chin by way of the nose and the mouth—made of curves and countercurves, of concave and convex interpenetrating areas. The face is prey to contortion, caught in the black flowing movement which, not satisfied with encircling it to the neck, invades its fault lines. It is the object of a dynamic struggle between the colors that put it together organically—a majority of white, blue, and lilac—and the black that penetrates it and is used, it would seem, to erase it, and reduce it to nothing. Another 1972 Self-Portrait (fig. 42) is once again the focus of a dialectical tension between an organic presence and the eradication of this presence. The cheek and left jaw are already annexed, whereas to the right long black curves have begun to pierce their

125

41. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1972, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm, private collection.

126 way in. The surface of the face is a pale beige tone, making the skin look as if it is wearing make-up, covered with face powder. This is particularly obvious in the upper left-hand side of the painting, around the eye socket. Here, as in the majority of self-portraits from this period, the colors used for the surface of the face, given their chalky texture, seem to represent an embellishment much more than a skin; they depict an outer skin, rather than the actual skin. The eyes, nose, and lips are tinged violet. Broad, furtive brushstrokes of white and sky blue cross the surface, following the black lines as if to mark or defend the still-preserved territory of the face. These hues are also used for the colorful shirt the subject is wearing, in such a way that the fabric of the clothing and the fabric of the face seem to be one and the same. But the face, an entire fragment of which has already given way, is literally being sucked away by a “black hole.” Gilles Deleuze speaks of this very “black hole” in his reflections on the face in A Thousand Plateaus, a book co-authored with Félix Guattari and published in 1980. Bacon’s art, and more specifically his portraits and self-portraits, may well have had something to do with Deleuze’s ideas, all the more so in that they seem to date from the same period as Deleuze’s in-depth research into the artist, the book entitled Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, published in 1981, (first published in English in 2003): “Oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system. A broad face with white cheeks, a chalk face with eyes cut in for a black hole. Clown head, white clown, moon-white mime [pierrot lunaire], angel of death, Holy Shroud.”345

The face, therefore, is part of a white wall-black hole system. But the black hole need not be limited to the eye sockets. One must imagine that the “dimensionless” black hole and the “formless” white wall are there initially and that, from now on, there will be numerous possible combinations within this system:

345 G. Deleuze/F. Guattari, (1980) 2004, p. 186. 346 G. Deleuze/F. Guattari, (1980) 2004, p. 187.

“[…]Either black holes distribute themselves on the white wall, or the white wall unravels and moves towards a black hole combining all black holes, hurtling them together or making some ‘crest.’ Sometimes faces appear on the wall, with their holes; sometimes they appear in the hole, with their linearized, rolled-up wall. A horror story, the face is a horror story. It is certain that the signifier does not construct the wall that it needs all by itself; it is certain that subjectivity does not dig its hole all alone.” […]346

That same year of bereavement Bacon created a series of three “black hole self-portraits” that form a triptych: Three Studies for a

127

42. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1972, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm, private collection.

128

43. Francis Bacon, Three Stud-

ies for a Self-Portrait, 1972, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm (each), private collection.

347 See M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 294: “[…] the gorgeous, rainbow hued shirts that he began wearing in the early 1970s (and in which he appears in several self-portraits painted in those years).” 348 G. Deleuze/F. Guattari, (1980) 2004, p. 188.

Self-Portrait, 1972 (fig. 43). The three heads again use the topography of the “battlefield,” the face of the study that has just been analyzed. Also present is the same sort of multi-colored shirt, each in similar tones as its respective face in the series, with an emphasis nevertheless on yellow and red.347 But beyond the dual tension to which each of these three self-portraits corresponds—as is the previous self-portrait—we must also consider them in light of the fact that they are assembled in a triptych, observe them in this regime of participative unity, in order to detect an additional dynamic to the scenography of self-representation within a black hole. There is, indeed, an evolution in this triptych that can be observed in a linear fashion—from left to right—but this does not mean one must invalidate any other form of interpretation or any other form of rhythm. The three self-portraits are arranged as if on a strip of film, spread over three close sequences of the black hole’s movement of expansion. It advances, penetrating ever further into the “lines” of the face. It is gaining territory, and with each stage its outline becomes sharper. For example, we can clearly make out the progressive erasure of the eyelid and the absorption of the cheek as the nose and mouth are attacked. Bacon’s self-portraits from the early 1970s can indeed be defined as belonging to a system of “surface-holes, holey surface [surface-trous, surface trouée].”348 The faces are “walls,” not white but pale colors mixed with white, caught up in the play of combinatorial variations with a black hole. This dual tension characterizing the representation of Bacon’s face in the period following Dyer’s death could also, in my opinion, be a visual account of the confrontation between life drive and death drive which, according to Freud, is to be found in every human being. For if the life of an organism undergoes a sort of

129 “fluctuating rhythm”349 between two groups of drives, where one urges for a return to the inorganic and the abolition of all tension [Thanatos; death] and the other is responsible for the formation of complex living substances and their cohesive maintenance [Eros; life], we might conclude that the same could be said of these selfportraits by Bacon. The part of darkness is trying to submerge the chromatic organism that is the face, to annihilate its boundaries, to deconstruct it for good and return to that state prior to representation, to the void of the monochrome flat tint and the non-figure. The tension persists, however, and it would seem that, in the same way that Eros and the death drive are making their way together toward the ultimate goal, since Eros can do nothing but merely postpone it somewhat,350 the colors and black contribute to the representation of a face dominated by the feeling that the colors can do nothing more than struggle to curb that indelible mark of mortality until its expansion becomes complete. Thus the faces preserve their presence and their “faciality [visagéité]”,351 but at the same time they carry within the permanent threat of total dissolution.352

The End While the death of loved ones occurred at all stages of Francis Bacon’s life, this naturally gained momentum as he entered old age.353 In 1979, the year the artist turned seventy, he lost his friend Muriel Belcher, the owner of the Colony Room, a private club in Soho. They had met there in 1948, and at the time Belcher “adopted” Bacon, providing him with free drinks and ten pounds a week on condition he introduce his well-off friends and benefactors to the club. In 1980 his friend Sonia Orwell died of a brain tumor (née Brownwell, George Orwell’s widow); for many years she hosted a Franco-English literary and artistic salon in her house in South Kensington, frequented by some of the greats of the era, including Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Leiris, and his wife Louise. Another friend and distinguished hostess of London’s political and artistic society, Ann Fleming, died in 1981. And that same year Bacon lost his little sister Winnie. With this succession of deaths a large part of the comfortable, invigorating world which Bacon had known from his mad youth to his early old age vanished. Obviously Bacon, with age, did not abandon his nocturnal roaming for all that, a roaming which implied extravagant dinners and an immoderate consumption of alcohol, but inexorably his thoughts and conversations turned ever more frequently to the subject of death. And Bacon’s witticisms regarding the bitter condi-

S. Freud (1920) 2003, pp. 8081. Cf. supra n. 258. 350 See N. Duruz, 1985, p. 32. Cf. supra n. 257. 351 Summarily, “faciality [visagéité]” can be defined as the ensemble of complex combinations which ensure a face of significance and subjectivation. For an in-depth discussion, see G. Deleuze/F. Guattari, (1980) 2004, pp. 185-211 (chap. 7: Year Zero: Faciality [Année zéro - Visagéité]”). 352 See also G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 250. 353 F. Bacon, (1992) 1993, p. 161: “Yes. Oh, there are people who appreciate my painting, yes… but it’s difficult to make friends at my age. What’s more, a lot of my friends have died. I’ve not been very lucky in that respect; many people I loved have died, not only more recently, but before that…” 349

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44. Francis Bacon, Three Stud-

ies for a Self-Portrait, 1979, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm (each), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Jacques and Natasha Gelman collection].

tion of old age and death, which not so long before had been a part of his elegantly formulated nihilism, now described a fully tangible reality.354 Sylvester, in an interview in 1979—four years after the interview where Bacon had claimed he would be doing no more self-portraits in the future355—pointed out, quite rightfully, that contrary to his previous statements, Bacon had not only produced a good number of self-portraits but had also painted more of them than ever. The artist conceded Sylvester was right, and once again stipulated that there was simply no one else to paint and that sometimes, in addition to painting from photographs, one felt the need to see the person while one was working. So painting oneself had turned out to be more practical. And when Sylvester again asked whether a self-portrait called for a deeper commitment, Bacon refused even to discuss it.356 The Face of Shadow and Light

354 M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, pp. 289-293. 355 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 5 (1975), p. 129. Cf. supra n. 290. 356 D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 6 (1979), p. 142. Cf. also supra n. 306. 357 See also M. Cappock, 2005, p. 81. 358 F. Bacon, (1992) 1993, pp. 146-147.

Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1979 (fig. 44). As always, Bacon’s selfportraits are simply titled Self-Portrait or Studies for a Self-Portrait, which emphasizes still further the provisional, unfinished nature of the author’s work,357 the frequent re-projection of his facial features onto the pictorial surface in order to capture something that is in constant transformation.358 The three figures of the triptych—half-face, full-face, another half-face—are represented here in a manner that is far less distorted, almost naturalist. Bacon’s palette for the expression of human emotions has undergone a sort of shift; the threat of dissolu-

131 tion is no longer expressed by a distortion of the facial features but through their ghostly allure, their almost diaphanous quality: their presence on the cloth seems uncomfortable, and it is as if they could disappear at any moment through the very “pores” of the canvas. It is clear that the faces on either side of the triptych have been cut in two, in a strong contrast of black and purplish-white. This does not seem to be a dynamic invasion, an absorption into a black hole, however, but rather a sudden rubbing-out, due predominantly to the use of a sharp shadow on the half of the face that is away from the ray of light, a reminder in particular of the experiment Bacon underwent in front of Cecil Beaton’s lens years earlier (fig. 28).359 Let us examine for a moment the way, off screen, that a luminous body starts a revolution—from left to right or right to left, it makes no difference—around Bacon’s face (fig. 44). On the lefthand panel, the source of light to the left projects its rays laterally onto the right-hand side of the face, and the shadow is located on the left, away from the ray of light. Then the body of light begins to revolve: on the central panel, the left-hand side of the face is exposed to the light but—because of the angle of incidence—it does not intercept all the beams of light, thus generating only a partial zone of shadow, a shadowy light on the right of the face. We can still make out those elements that constitute his physiognomy, in a darker light, however. The source of light moves all the way to the right and the last panel offers us practically the same outline of the face as the left one, with a radical chiaroscuro, but naturally reversed. Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1979), moreover, is representative of Bacon’s later self-portraits where he deconstructs the face, the better to capture the tumult of life as well as its shadow opposite,360 death, not by dissolving the form but by striving to “lose it in the darkness.”361 The Face to Dust Self-Portrait, 1987 (fig. 45), is among the last self-portraits of the face on a canvas of reduced format that Bacon left us before his death in 1992. The face here is depicted in an even more realistic manner, clearly in order to do away with anything inessential, and without resorting to any distortion.362 Slightly amputated on its right-hand extremities, the portrait is a cadaverous purplish white on which myriad red and white dots have, in all likelihood, been sprayed.363 The constellation of dots is thicker on the right-hand side of the

See also supra n. 312. D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 3 (1971-1973), pp. 7879. See supra n. 289. Cf. also F. Bacon, (1992) 1993, p. 153. 361 In an interview in 1962, when Sylvester refers to a period where Bacon’s paintings were growing darker, Bacon retorted that it was easier to lose form in darkness, in: D. Sylvester, (1987) 2008, Interview 1 (1962), p. 12. 362 See also M. Peppiatt, (1996) 1998, p. 286; M. Peppiatt, 2008, pp. 186-187: “The late self-portraits form a long elegy to the artist’s acute sense of mortality as well as to his desire to pare his image down with all the superfluity stripped away. In one of the last interviews he gave [from 1989, p. 197 in Peppiatt’s book], Bacon remarked that, with experience and age, painting becomes rather more difficult than less because: ‘you’re more conscious of the fact that nine-tenths of everything is inessential. What is called “reality” becomes so much acute. The few things that matter become so much more concentrated and can be summed up with so much less.’ Nowhere in Bacon’s work is this desire to capture the very core of appearance and identity more evident and more poignantly resolved than in his late self-portraits.” 363 According to Cappock, Bacon came to spray paint fairly late in his career, using a make called Humbrol, in: M. Cappock, 2005, p. 212. 359 360

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364 V.I. Stoichita, (1993) 1997, p. 227. 365 I am referring here to the idea put forward by Stoichita on the relation between selfportrait and autobiography, particularly in Rembrandt’s work, in: V.I. Stoichita, (1993) 1997, p. 227.

face, covering it like a “swarm” from the neck to the nose. In these various spots the texture of the face is dissolving into a cloud of particles. Its boundaries, particularly the forehead or the right temple, are crumbling away. The face is subjected to a process of pulverization: it is a molecule whose atoms have begun to separate, and it can be annihilated at any moment. Bacon’s many self-portraits are so many accounts, descriptions of “the state of the authorial self”364 that punctuated the artist’s life over a long period of more than thirty years. Thus, the programmatic apprehension of the series of self-portraits as they go through the different phases of his life can, in the final analysis, be said to constitute an autobiographical narration—as is the case with Rembrandt’s self-portraits.365 But this itinerary, which we can consider a posteriori as autobiographical, is not telling here “a story of the face” through a visual rendering of the tangible signs of aging or the person’s decline. To be sure, it was Bacon’s intention to capture his own face and its constant transformation, and to render that part of mortality inherent in his face, but his efforts in that vein are, precisely, a constant reformulation of the face: his intention is to grasp something that is in constant transformation by endlessly transforming it himself. The way in which he represents his own face is subjected to the various paradigms of representation which marked the different stages of his life. The figurative reconstitution of the artist’s path—and with it his awareness of his mortality, his suffering and decline—is not accomplished through the recognition in the painting of ever deeper wrinkles, or a loss of hair, or sagging cheeks, but through the experience of a series of onslaughts which, one after the other, tear his face to shreds, suck it into a black hole, lose it in the darkness and, finally, reduce it to dust.

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45. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1987, oil on canvas, 35.5 cm x 30.5 cm, private collection.

5

Bill Viola A Disturbed Mirror

The Reflecting Pool In Version, a videotape made in 1973, was clearly an experimental endeavor from the very start, containing two sequences of visual distortion in succession. The first one attacks the artist’s face: Viola presses his face against a transparent glass surface located between the artist and the slowly rotating camera eye (figs. 46-47).366 The result is a series of deformed features and facial contortions. As a mise en scène it is sometimes grotesque, sometimes painful, suggesting that the artist is being held captive inside an obstacle similar to a television screen and cannot reach the space where the viewers are. This “facial performance”—punctuated by freeze frames—is accompanied by an electronic buzzing of variable volume whose source is not revealed until the second part of the video. The second distortion refers to the “body of the image.” The sequence creates a mise en abîme of a television monitor, where the image on the screen, streaked with horizontal lines, ends up in a chaotic magma, and the loudspeaker squeals with abstract sound effects. Distortion is at the very heart of the technical parameters constituting the video medium. Indeed, it is present on the level of both the video and audio signals that the monitor is transmitting.367 While In Version delights in combining in a single work the distortion of the artist’s facial components and the mise en abîme of a disturbance in the image, Information, created the same year (1973), continues to experiment with dislocation, and its very essence is that of an alienated video image. The point here is no longer to refer to disturbance in one way or another, but to be the disturbance. The tape shows us an ill-assorted cocktail of lines and spots of color, smudged with wide rectangles that run across the screen every which way (figs. 48-51). As Viola explains, Information came about during an experiment and is the result of a faulty maneuver. As

The eye of the camera is similar to the eye of the viewer, and if Viola pressed up directly against the lens, it would give the impression that he was trying to penetrate the spectator’s eye rather than his or her space. 367 Regarding In Version (1973), cf. D. Ross/P. Sellars, 1997, p. 44 (text by B. Viola); M. Barchet, 1999, pp. 51-53. 366

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46-47. B ill Viola, In Version, 1973, videotape, black-and-white, mono sound; 4:24 minutes, produced at Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Photos: Kira Perov.

Viola’s story has been reproduced in several works and exhibition catalogues. Cf. for example: B. London, 1987, pp. 2425; B. Viola, 1995, p. 30; D. Ross /P. Sellars, 1997, p. 45 (text by B. Viola). See also J.-P. Fargier, 2005, p. 39. 368

he was working one night at the university studio, Viola made an involuntary error and connected the tape deck’s output—through the video controls—to the input jack of the same recorder. When he pressed the record button, the machine tried to record itself. The electronic disturbance thus created repercussed throughout the entire studio. Color appeared where there was no color signal, sound emerged where no audio connection had been set up, and every control button pressed created a different effect. Once he had discovered his error and traced it back to the beginning, he was then able to sit at the video controls as if they were a musical instrument, and he began to “play this nonsignal.” As soon as he had grasped the basic parameters, he used a second videotape recorder to record the result, and that is how Information came into being.368 There is an amusing anecdote, also dating from the time when Viola was working at night on his own projects at the studio at Syracuse University (NY), which highlights the artist’s taste for borderline experimentation with the theme of distortion. He relates a spontaneous undertaking, how he was both frightened and fascinated by the possibility that his facial features might be affected, subsequent to an equally plausible alteration of his central nervous system. One night when he was having color shift problems with one of the monitors, Viola opened a closet and took out a degausser. This powerful electromagnet, shaped like a flat circular doughnut, is used to neutralize magnetic accumulations on a television screen.

137

Viola decided to try to put it around his head and switch it on to see what might happen. Mindful of the consciousness-altering effects such a gesture might have, Viola picked up the magnet and began to put his head inside it. Then he stopped, aware of the fact that he was alone, that something could go wrong and he might even end up paralyzed, or that his central nervous system might go haywire, and he would be found the next day on the floor “like an overcooked French fry.” Then the most terrifying thought went through his mind: what if his consciousness was permanently altered? If his neurons recombined in completely new patterns? How would he know

48-51. Bill Viola, Information,

1973, videotape, color, mono sound; 29:35 minutes, produced at Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Photos: Kira Perov.

138 whether a change had taken place? Would he remember who he was? Finally, after waiting for a very long time with the magnet in his hands, and without ever understanding the reason behind his gesture, he decided to press the switch; the magnet gave off its familiar buzz. For a split-second he thought he felt extremely disoriented but perhaps it was only the fruit of his imagination: “I turned it off. Nothing happened. I looked around the room, still the same. I rushed off to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Everything looked OK, no weird permanently frozen facial contortions. I walked back to the studio, and soon began feeling the tiredness of the hour. I had forgotten what I wanted to do there anyway. I went back home and went to sleep. Everything has been normal ever since.”369

The passage is an excerpt from this article: B. Viola, 1982 (1995), pp. 94-95. The excerpt can also be found in the original version in: B. London, 1987, p. 24. See also J.-P. Fargier, 2005, p. 40. 370 See R. Bellour, 1985, p. 94. 369

In the years that followed, Viola continued to create in the same experimental mode, focusing on the medium as such. Most of the problems and experiments he dealt with at the time fell within the framework of his studies on perception and experimental psychology, the importance of which he had discovered in the writings of Marshall McLuhan. But in the wake of this didactic approach, where the artist apprehends video technology as a material which one is obliged to master and through which one becomes familiar with the process, Viola decided to expand his field of inquiry and make contact with the other pole of the system, the spectator—or at least the spectator’s role. His later work would no longer be defined solely through the mastery of the video language and its recording but would also take into account the system of human perception—eyes, ears, and brain—and the way in which it processes information. Henceforth video would be seen as a living system, the fruit of a dynamic interaction between spectator and technology.370 Given this promising new perspective, Viola constantly produced ambitious videos and installations, some of which rapidly rose to the pantheon of video art. Between 1977 and 1979, Viola created The Reflecting Pool (1977-79). He subsequently decided to group together under the same title a collection of five videos—The Reflecting Pool being the first of these—created independently from one another between 1977 and 1980 but capable of functioning as a whole. The works which went to make up the collection entitled The Reflecting Pool – Collected Work 1977-1980 (Videotape collection) were, in succession, The Reflecting Pool (1977-79), Moonblood (1977-79), Silent Life (1979), Ancient of Days (1979-81) and Vegetable Memory (1978-80). The homogeneity of the collection was due to the fact that the constituent works deployed various styles and

139 techniques but referred, in the end, to the same dominant theme: a profound reflection on time, on the various phases which make up an individual’s life from birth to death. These “passages” were signified in particular by numerous images of transition: between day and night, an object and its reflection, movement and stillness, temporality and timelessness.371 The Reflecting Pool is a videotape lasting seven minutes. The camera is in a fixed position and remains motionless throughout the video. It opens on a pool, surrounded over its entire visible portion by a thick forest sparkling with shadow and light; the surface of the water, although not altogether calm, reflects the surrounding space. The camera angle takes us directly into the water in such a way that we do not see the lower side of this artificial pool, nor the lower third of the left- and right-hand sides of what seems to be a rectangle. We hear a plane flying overhead, along with the sound of water flowing, quickly, beyond our field of vision, to fill the basin. While the sound of the plane gradually fades and gives way to the solitary sound of the flowing water, a man—Bill Viola— emerges from the forest and heads from the right toward the pool, taking a winding path. For a moment he even disappears from the picture, before reappearing, making a hoarse sound, and finally reaching the pool by leaping lightly over an obstacle. Then he takes off his shoes, climbs up to the center of the parapet and stops a first time; he shakes his arms and glances into the water. He takes a step forward to reach the edge of the pool, looks up, takes a breath and stands up straight, facing the camera. His reflection on the wavy surface of the water has followed his every movement and now appears in its entirety, in a clear horizontal symmetry (fig. 52). Viola stays focused in this position for roughly 45 seconds, his body swaying from time to time, while again we hear the sound of a plane in the sky. Suddenly he leans forward, bends his knees, places his hands on his hips, then straightens up with a cry and jumps in the air, pulling his body into a fetal position (fig. 53). To our astonishment he doesn’t fall into the water but stays suspended in the air in the same position. The upper part of the work becomes a freeze frame, whereas it would seem that the space in the pool has not been affected in the same way. The water continues to move and to reflect the surrounding landscape, in a darker hue, however; the artist’s reflection, on the other hand, has suddenly disappeared from the surface (fig. 54). The humming of the plane has also suddenly been cut; only the rocking of the flowing water, accompanied by the sounds related to this ecosystem, now fills the sound space. The spectator’s gaze will naturally focus now on the events taking place within this rectangle, within this compartment

See D. Ross/P. Sellars, 1997, pp. 62-66 (texts by B. Viola). 371

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52

53

56

57 of the image that is still in motion, while remaining attentive to this paradox: the reflecting space is now postulated as a distinct, autonomous zone insofar as it no longer refers back to the upper part of the image, and is dissociated in its temporal dimension from the space-time of which it should normally be the reflected form. We are perfectly aware that the surface of the water is still a reflective space, but now it is reflecting situations to which we have access only through that same surface; situations which certainly do occur in the same space as at the beginning—the edge of the same pool surrounded by the same forest—but in other time frames. The image, still divided into two sections according to a model of axial horizontal symmetry, now features a “fake” reflective device, between spatial coincidence and temporal disparity. The dark surface becomes lighter and then completely absorbs the daylight. Finally it turns dark again, and through these fluctuations seems to delight in signaling the various hours of the day. Then it is lighter again, but the surface of the water which had

141

54

55

52-58. Bill Viola, The Reflecting Pool, 1977-79, videotape, color, mono sound; 7 minutes. Photos: Kira Perov.

58 been undulating, making for a somewhat opaque image, has now become completely clear. Suddenly the water begins to form concentric circles directly below the suspended body, as if an element had become detached from this motionless bloc to come and strike the surface, thus restoring the spatio-temporal homogeneity we encountered at the beginning of the video. But soon it becomes evident that this is not the case; apparently nothing has changed in the top part of the video. The circles gradually disperse and the surface of the water becomes clear and calm once again. This cycle—troubled surface, concentric circles forming beneath the artist’s folded body, then again a motionless surface—occurs twice before we are able to make out a form wandering across this watery tissue and nowhere else. It is, in all probability, the artist’s “emancipated reflection.” It appears on the edge, on the stone wall in the upper lefthand corner, moves into the center, makes a quarter-turn to face the water—or rather, what is beyond the water—then bends down to pick something up. Then he stands up and continues on his way to

142 the right before disappearing from the picture. Immediately after this apparition the surface is broken yet again, but this time the zone of impact is located in the right-hand center of the pool. It is only at this moment—if we glance at the entire image—that we are truly able to perceive the gradual disappearance of Viola’s figure, still suspended in the air. The process of absorption of the figure by the background seems to be well under way, but our attention has been constantly focused on the surface of the water. The figure is swallowed bit by bit and already the light is filtering through the artist’s dematerialized body. This scene is a turning point in the work: it evokes a passage, a migration from one space to another, from the artist frozen in a fetal position to his autonomous double on the surface of the water. However, we are immediately called back to the pool where a woman with a man in her wake have just appeared in the lower right-hand side of the reflecting zone. They walk slowly along the edge of the pool to its upper left-hand corner, then linger there. The woman is wearing a skirt; she turns back slightly to look straight at the man, who is bare-chested, before both of them turn to face the water (fig. 55). Both figures gradually fade away while the surface is covered with a pale green hue and becomes suddenly choppier. When we look up again, the diver frozen in the center of the image has completely faded into the background: not a trace of him remains. The surface has become even rougher, long furrows spread along the entire expanse of the water then progressively contract until they form nothing but a single point of collision at the top in the center of the pool, at the spot where the water has already been broken three times previously. We are led back to this center by a reverse display of concentric circles sweeping over the surface after something has hit it. Then the surface goes completely black, except for one spot of light. The upper body of the artist’s reflection is illuminated in the middle of the darkest night (fig. 56). It has reappeared where it stopped a few minutes previously, in the very place where it was located before the jump. This “body of light,” difficult to see because of the wavy surface of the water, remains immobile for a few seconds before heading calmly to the right and vanishing from the image. The surface gradually grows lighter until it is nothing but a well of light adorned with green. Finally, Viola emerges from the basin, naked, seen from behind (fig. 57). He leans against the edge, in the center of the side opposite us. He stands there for a few seconds, his naked body reflected on the water (fig. 58). The space of the forest and the space of the reflection are again brought together in one and the same temporal dimension. Bending forward to go down from the parapet, Viola disap-

143 pears then reappears a few yards further along, then calmly walks away, following more or less the same winding path on which he arrived. He leaves the image, and the video ends with a last shot of the scene devoid of any presence before it fades to obscurity.372 The Reflecting Pool was shot on the grounds of a country house in Saratoga Springs, in New York state, over the course of a summer’s afternoon and evening in 1977. Bill Viola—in interviews or through the intermediary of direct commentators—gave a lengthy description of the procedure he followed in creating this work. It was the result of the artist’s desire to combine different sections of time within a single static image: “Keeping the camera in the same place automatically means that any objects that have not moved between different recordings can be registered (aligned) again, broken up, and put together, and reconstructed to make a whole image. So the final image seems like a complete coherent space, although I’ve actually cut specific areas of the frame into different sections of time.”373

In fact, the video is made up of nineteen shots spread over four tapes which constitute so many recordings or series of recordings: first, a series of sixteen shots assembled on the tape, of the events unfolding on the surface of the pool; the recording of the opening scene where Viola comes out of the woods, jumps, and freezes in the middle of the image; another shot showing the scene in real time but where no one appears; and finally the episode where Viola emerges naked from the water and goes back into the forest.374 The final cut is the result of several stages, and naturally was subject to the technology of the era.375 The primary source was the combination of the various spontaneous actions around the pool and rendered visible by the surface of the water (objects thrown into the water; walking along the pool so that the reflection would become apparent, etc.). To connect these various events, Viola used very slow dissolves in order to create the appearance of a fluid, continuous activity.376 The second source consisted of his emergence from the forest, the jump, and freezing the frame at that precise moment. The spatial construction of the work then came about as follows: Viola noted from the screen of his monitor the exact measurements of the pool as it appeared in the frame. He then took a piece of cardboard on which he drew the outline of the pool and filled it with white, leaving the rest black; then he put the cardboard on a stand in the studio. He then trained the lens of his video camera onto the cardboard, and with the help of the zoom made the shapes drawn on the black and white card-

During our description we relied on the complete summary of the work by C. MadernaLauter, 1999, here pp. 155-156. Cf. also G. Youngblood, 19881989, pp. 80-114, and in particular pp. 95-96. 373 R. Bellour, 1985, p. 96. 374 G. Youngblood, 1988-1989, p. 95. 375 To describe the process I have followed Viola’s own words closely, as set down by R. Bellour during his interview, in: R. Bellour, 1985. 376 A fade, in cinematographic terms, designates a transition between two different images, obtained by a gradual darkening or lightening of the image. A dissolve designates a progressive transition between two shots, two different images. The two images are momentarily superimposed; the first one gradually disappears (it fades out), and is replaced by the second which progressively appears (it fades in). The dissolve of two shots provides a gentle, smooth transition, with a minimal interruption of the visual flow. 372

144

“A key can be determined either by the difference in luminosity between two parts of an image (luminance key) or by differences in color (chroma key)” in: R. Bellour, 1985, p. 96. 378 The time lapse refers to techniques which allow for the visualization in a few seconds or minutes of movement or scenes unfolding over several hours, days, months, or even years. Here it would seem to apply to the numerous reflected scenes that are interconnected by dissolves and which unfold on the surface of the water for the seven minutes of the video. 379 R. Bellour, 1985, p. 97. 380 See R. Bellour, 1985, p. 97: “I was trying to get at the original notion of baptism in a way—a process of cleansing or clearing away, and the idea of breaking through illusion. Water is such a powerful, obvious symbol of cleansing, and also of birth, rebirth and even death. We come from water and in a way slide back into its undifferentiated mass at death. There is the emergence of the solitary figure—the process of differentiation or individuation out of an undifferentiated, natural ground. […].” Further on, Viola undertakes a reflection on the illusory and ephemeral nature of events in this world, in that they are only visible as reflections on water. A world is never directly perceived, and reflections from the surface are connected here to the shadow of Plato’s cave. See also G. Youngblood, 1988-1989, pp. 9596. Finally, for an interpretation of the work that goes further into the symbolism of water in various traditions, see C. MadernaLauter, 1999, pp. 158-166. 377

board coincide with the image in the original shot as precisely as possible. Subsequently he made what is known in technical language as an “external key.” This is a process of superimposing external sources onto the two sections of the original image, a cut-out effect which allows for the combination of two distinct images within the image frame. All that remains of the original image is its shape. For The Reflecting Pool, the cardboard itself disappeared and all that remained were the two different levels of brightness, black and white, which were necessary for cutting the “external luminance key”;377 one corresponds to the pool and the other to the background. Viola thus inserted his first source—the submaster comprising the sequence of events reflected on the water—in the white zone, corresponding to the space of the pool. In addition he used a soft key (an insert with hazy edges) to cut out the outline. In this way the outline of the shape that would be used for the special effect is softened and blends into the background. Over the background of the image he inserted both the recording of the moment he emerges from the forest, jumps, then freezes in the middle of the frame, and the shot of empty space, in real time. The two merge in a slow fade which begins with the frozen figure against the background and ends with the empty background. At the end of the video Viola uses a final dissolve of the entire compound image to yield to the solitary image of the scene where he rises naked from the water and goes back into the forest. Thus for most of its length The Reflecting Pool delivers an image fragmented on “three distinct levels of time—real time, still, and time lapse”378 reconstructed in such a way as to appear as the image of a single space, since the dividing lines of the two sections follow the geometrical composition of the original scene. Viola refers to this work as “sculpting with time.”379 On more than one occasion Viola, in The Reflecting Pool, evokes his desire to return to the original notion of baptism, the work of cleansing, death, and rebirth through a water ritual.380 The man jumps in the air and freezes in a fetal position. This is a transformation based on his decision to let go, and is connected in this way to death or the abandoning of the things one knows. This jump is a jump into the abyss. The diver’s progressive disappearance—a baptism, which comes to us from the Ancient Greek baptizô, the frequentative of baptô, which means, “to plunge into a liquid”— becomes more and more obvious at the same time as he reappears under another form in this intermediary and uncertain zone, which supports the oxymoron of an autonomous space of reflection. The

145 broken surface of the water, moreover, also acts as a signal to this passage. Viola’s figure on the surface of the water appears alone and clothed, it would seem, in this moment of migration. Several seconds later he reappears bare-chested and in the company of a woman. After the contraction of concentric circles has brought us back to a single, boiling point, prefiguring his imminent emersion, he is again visible on the surface, his torso illuminated, as a “man of light.”381 Finally the new, naked man, reborn, emerges from the baptismal depths. Further enlightenment of this concept can be found in the studies on aquatic symbolism undertaken by Mircea Eliade, an author to whom Viola frequently refers:382

.

“The Waters symbolize the entire universe of the virtual; they are the fons et origo, the reservoir of all the potentialities of existence; they precede every form and sustain every creation. The exemplary image of the whole creation is the Island that suddenly ‘manifests’ itself amidst the waves. Conversely, immersion in the waters symbolizes a regression into the pre-formal, reintegration into the undifferentiated mode of pre-existence. Emergence repeats the cosmogonic act of formal manifestation; while immersion is equivalent to a dissolution of forms. That is why the symbolism of the Waters includes Death as well as Re-Birth. Contact with water always goes with a regeneration, on the one hand because dissolution is followed by a ‘new birth,’ and on the other hand because immersion fertilizes and multiplies the potentialities of life.”383

According to Eliade, moreover, “in whatever religious context we find them, the Waters invariably preserve their function: they dissolve or abolish the forms of things, ‘wash away sins,’ are at once purifying and regenerative.”384 The Reflecting Pool, therefore, aims to be a reflection on the notions of time and space, dissected in such a way as to punctuate the various phases of a rite of purification by water. Water, effectively, appears here as the prime element of the work; by virtue of its symbolic power it is consecrated in the exhibition of this cycle of rebirth. But in addition to this primary role there is a second essential feature, peculiar to liquids: its capacity literally to act as a surface, its quality as a natural mirror. Viola is constantly using the reflective properties of the watery surface in order to construct his visual narrative. The victim of various tribulations all through the video, the mirror of water is now translucent, now opaque, now even broken open. The articulation of this natural medium within the video medium inevitably leads us back to the ancient myth of Narcissus. The bucolic surroundings of the

381 According to the Hermetic documents which have come down to us thanks to Zozimus of Panopolis (3rd century A.D.), the man of light (Phôs) is the hidden spiritual man, at the opposite pole from the corporeal man. In particular we can detect the presence of this doctrine, which refers both to Christian Gnosticism and hermeticizing Platonism, in the works of a Sufi mystic dear to Bill Viola: Alâoddawleh Semnânî (1261-1336) sets forth the example of a “physiology of the man of light,” unveiling the seven subtle organs (latifâ) of the “resurrection body” which is hidden in the visible body. Cf. H. Corbin, (1961) 1994. Here in particular chapter I, Orientation, pp. 1-12; chapter II, The Man of Light and his Guide, pp. 13-37; chapter VI, the Seven Prophets of your Being, pp. 121-144. I would also like to thank Bill Viola for bringing this book to my attention during our meeting in Madrid in December, 2006. On the same theme, we also discussed one of his recent works, with a title that could hardly be more explicit: Bodies of Light, 2006. 382 See for example B. Viola/ L. Hyde, 1997, p. 146. 383 M. Eliade, (1952) 1991, p. 151. The passage we cite here has already been formulated—within a broader yet more complex structure—in an earlier work by Eliade; see M. Eliade, 1949, p. 168. 384 M. Eliade, (1952) 1991, p. 152.

146

Met., III, 407-415. Cf. also C. Maderna-Lauter, 1999, p. 163. 387 Migration (1976) and He Weeps for You (1976) are also briefly discussed further down in this chapter, cf. infra n. 465. 388 Among the numerous seminal works that Viola would create around this idea, we should also mention: The Passing (1991), Nantes Triptych (1992), The Messenger (1996), and The Crossing (1996). 389 See, among others, Vegetable Memory (1978-80), The Arc of Ascent (1992) and, later, within the framework of the “Passions“ series, Five Angels for the Millennium (2001). We should point out here that Bill Viola, as a child, nearly drowned. He himself describes this experience as fundamental. As he went straight down in the water, he says he was confronted with a magnificent spectacle that he contemplated without fear, in one of the most peaceful moments of his existence. Obsessed by this vision of paradise, at no time did he think he would actually drown, but wished rather never to go back to the surface— until a hand grabbed hold of him and tore him from this underwater world. Cf. also M. Kidel, 1996 (documentary film). 390 See in particular An Instrument of Simple Sensation (1983), Slowly Turning Narrative (1992), Heaven and Earth (1992), The Stations (1994), The World of Appearances (2000). See also, on the question of mirror-reflection in the medium of video, R. Krauss, 1976, pp. 50-64. 385 386

scene where the entire story of The Reflecting Pool unfolds—from the viewer’s angle one imagines a clearing surrounded by thick foliage, in the middle of which the pool has pride of place—does more than merely remind us of the clear source, hidden away in the forest, where Narcissus, tired by the effort of hunting, goes to quench his thirst.385 Moreover, we have had numerous opportunities to observe Viola’s specular double taking shape on the water. However, it is not our aim here to establish an analogy between the artist and his reflection, and Narcissus and his image impregnated on the surface of the water.386 Viola actually pays no particular attention to his reflection on the two occasions when the work reveals their simultaneous presence: when he is standing straight for a brief moment at the water’s edge before jumping, and when he emerges from the water at the end of the video (figs. 52, 58). This last time he literally turns his back on his reflection. Nor is there any point in insisting on the fact that the author is also the main actor of his work. At no time does The Reflecting Pool have as its theme the artist’s self-representation within his own creation. To devote too much attention to this rather circumstantial phenomenon of authorial insertion could even be detrimental to the universal comprehension of the rite the video describes. The figure of the man who has embarked upon this path does not require individualization. The aura of the myth resides far more in the medial structure of The Reflecting Pool, at the source of the disturbing image offered to the viewer. The video medium stages the illusion of a natural mirror that can be detached from what it is reflecting, and rid itself of its relation of dependency with regard to the space it is meant to reflect. This caesura, which in fact exacerbates the otherness of the reflection in relation to its model, can briefly fulfill the fantasy of the “stage of the other” within the myth of Narcissus; the reflection here is well and truly an autonomous being, coming and going as it pleases in the space beyond the surface. Henceforth, water would play a dominant role in Viola’s production. Among the works that are at the origin of this tendency, in addition to The Reflecting Pool we should mention Migration (1976, videotape); He Weeps for You (1976, video/sound installation),387 and Il Vapore (1975, video/sound installation). Water will become omnipresent in Viola’s work, insofar as it is a symbol of cleansing, birth, death, and rebirth.388 The motif of the “diver” in particular will reappear, to penetrate the surface with violence.389 Similarly, the reflecting surface will re-occur in multiple forms all through Viola’s artistic career.390

147 Narcissus in Tears The Passions In 2000, Bill Viola began a series of video pieces which he brought together under the title “The Passions”.391 His aim was to make a virtually exhaustive study of all the corporeal and above all facial expressions portraying human passions. The artist explained that already in 1998 he had been envisaging such a project, during a period where he was artist-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Viola said he was busy at the time with the organization of a retrospective exhibition commissioned by the Whitney Museum, to cover the last twenty-five years of his activity. The aim was to show above all his large-scale installation pieces in an itinerant exhibition in six different museums throughout the United States and Europe, over a period of two years.392 Viola inevitably found himself thinking about his work and the ideas he had had in the past, and was finding it difficult to make sense of the mass of video material.393 The Getty, therefore, offered a haven of tranquility. As he wandered through the rich collection of the Getty Museum he was able to nurture his lifelong interest in the history of painting, and he made the most of the opportunities to spend time on his own and find some peace and quiet in the office placed at his disposal. In his interview with Hans Belting Viola has said in particular that beyond his constant interest in the history of painting, he had recently become fascinated with the medieval and early Renaissance tradition of small-format devotional images. He was referring indirectly to the spectacular popularity (and consequently almost industrial production) of private devotional images, which in turn were a result of the current of modern devotion—the devotio moderna—which had spread through Europe at the time, both to the north and south of the Alps.394 Finally, evoking 15th century art when the image was in transition to the new optical techniques, he emphasized in particular the transportable nature of these small-scale images, which responded to the needs of an increasingly mobile population.395 Thus, in the time he spent on his own in his office, Viola focused his attention on the career of those artists who, “in a distant but parallel time,” were confronted with drastic changes due to the appearance of new needs and technologies, and who set about reducing their artistic support to a more individual, intimate format, more appropriate in size, while maintaining the images’ spiritual impact as well as their power of immersion.396

See J. Walsh, 2003. Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey,” organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (see catalogue: D. Ross/P. Sellars, 1997). The exhibition was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (1999); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (1999-2000). Cf. Artist’s Biography, One-Person Exhibitions, on Bill Viola’s official website. 393 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 198. 394 See S. Ringbom, (1965) 1984, pp. 30-39. 395 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 197. 396 B. Viola/H Belting, 2003, p. 198. 391 392

148 In addition to having his “cell” for reflection, and unlimited access to the masterworks in the museum, Bill Viola took part in a weekly seminar that brought together several experts on the theme of the representation of human passions. The intellectual and visual stimulation which the artist enjoyed during his “retreat” at the Getty Research Institute seems to have provided the context for the emergence of the “Passions” series: “VIOLA. During this period, as frustrated as I was, I had quite a lot of time. I visited the Museum’s collection often and ended up writing a lot and working out most of the ideas that would later become the Passions pieces. There was a weekly scholars’ seminar titled ‘Representing the Passions’—how to represent extreme emotional states when their nature defies representation, being about irrationality and loss of control. I was with an impressive group of people, many of whom had written major books and studied these issues deeply. There were outside lecturers, too— Garry Wills came once and talked about Luca Signorelli’s End of the World fresco cycle and various versions of The Last Judgment. BELTING. So you were surrounded by art historians. VIOLA. Exactly! Put the wagons in a circle! At times I was the only living specimen in the group! But seriously, I was very stimulated. The inner nature of these artworks really did open up for me during that year at the Getty Research Institute, but not strictly from the seminars or my intellectual pursuits.”397

Bill Viola’s work, however, is not fed solely by endeavors of an intellectual order, but also rests firmly on the events and emotional states which have punctuated the artist’s own existence. Far from being excluded from his artistic production, the events which have impacted the artist’s daily life in one way or another have been explicitly confirmed as a force for creative inspiration.398 Viola informs us that at the time of his stay at the Getty, his father was “slowly, inexorably” dying:

B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 198. See also S. Settis, (2008) 2012, pp. 54-59. 398 See in particular S. Grant, 2006, pp. 4-7. 397

“VIOLA. During the entire time I was at the Getty my father was dying slowly, inexorably. This was the whole experience with my mother happening again, but in a different way—extended in time but just as intense. I spent a lot of time crying that year. While he was still alive but fading, I was at the Art Institute of Chicago for a planning meeting about an upcoming show, and I walked into the gallery of fifteenth-century paintings. There was Dieric Bouts’s Crying Madonna all by herself, eyes swollen and red in the excruciating detail of Northern painters’ hard-core realism, with tears streaming down her face. I began sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop. Later I realized what had happened. A kind of feedback loop had formed, a visceral/emotional circuit had been completed, and like a mirror, we were both crying—the painting and me. I had fully realized the picture in

149 a way I never thought before, and the function of an artwork changed dramatically for me at that moment. My training in art school was all about responding to artworks from an intellectual, perceptual or cultural way— in other words, as a viewer, not a participant…. It certainly didn’t involve a bodily fluid coming uncontrollably out of my eyes! BELTING. Bill, you have, in fact, just described Leon Battista Alberti’s theory of art from the early fifteenth century, in which he said that the painter depicts tears in order to make the viewer weep… in short, that it is not your job to look but to participate. He was a good friend of Brunelleschi, by the way. And this topic has remained with us. There is a recent book by the art historian James Elkins titled Pictures and Tears, which asks, ‘Why do we weep in front of pictures?’”399

This passage from the interview is particularly striking, in that the artist shares the tragic experience of his father’s death with us. He compares it instantaneously to an existential experience of a similar order which occurred several years earlier, namely, his mother’s death. Earlier on in the same text Viola described the violent emotional states which confronted him in succession, with the birth of his second son and his mother’s death; she died after three months in a coma, a veritable nightmare for the artist. An additional effect of this terrible ordeal was that it triggered a period of intense creativity, and put an end to a first long period of artistic blockage which had darkened the artist’s existence for two whole years. Viola had been suffering from a lack of new ideas, the result of his inability, after three months of filming in the California desert, to finish a work with which he had been obsessed; now under the pressure of a commission he set to work, and created The Passing (1991, videotape) in only a few weeks. This was followed by other significant pieces, including Heaven and Earth (1992, video installation) and the Nantes Triptych (1992, video/sound installation). All of these works, each in its own way, evoke the borderline situations in life that are birth and death.400 By referring briefly to his mother in this passage, Bill Viola is also pointing to the complex environment surrounding the terrible blow of her death ten years earlier, in order to elucidate the context of personal crisis in which his father’s death occurred. Aware of this recurring and intense experience of death in his life, we can thus appreciate the emotional shock that came in the wake of his father’s death as the foundation stone of a phase where new artistic directions would come to light. The constant constraint of such powerful emotions would finally be most eloquently expressed by the tears which the artist shed. He relates that he wept abundantly that year, particularly during his encounter with the Weeping Madonna (1470-1475) by the

399 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 198-199. 400 See B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 190-191; P. Sellars, 2003, p. 160; M.R. Sossai, 2012, pp. 20-23.

150 For a better explanation of the feelings of sympathy and empathy, cf. C. Rogers/ G.M. Kinget, 1962, pp. 99-100: “The difference between empathy and sympathy is significant, but not easy to pin down. These feelings are closely linked in that both reflect a resonance with the feelings of other people. However, given the fact that sympathy is principally connected with emotions, its field is more restricted than that of empathy which, on the other hand, refers to the apprehension in other people’s experience of aspects that are both cognitive and emotional. Moreover, in the case of sympathy, the participation of the subject in other people’s emotions occurs in terms of the subject’s own experience. For example, a person can share another person’s sorrow because the manifestations of suffering evoke a sorrowful event in his or her own life. In the case of empathy, the individual endeavors to take part in other people’s experience, without being restricted solely to emotional aspects. Moreover, there is an effort of apprehension of the experience from the point of view of the person who is feeling those emotional aspects, and not from one’s own subjective point of view. It would be wrong to say that empathy is objective whereas sympathy is subjective. Both represent subjective forms of knowledge. But in the case of empathy it is the other person’s subjectivity which is implied.” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 402 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 198-199. 403 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 41, pp. 61-62. 401

Dutch painter Dieric Bouts (fig. 59), at the time when his father was dying: he was so profoundly moved by the Virgin’s face as he contemplated the detail of her eyes, puffy and bloodshot from so much crying, her tears still streaming down her cheeks, that he too was irresistibly overcome by sobs. Viola gives us a fine analysis of his reaction to the weeping Virgin. A circuit of sympathy401 was formed between the image and the viewer and, reminded of his own suffering, he too began to cry. Thus both were weeping, caught in a mirror effect. This encounter gave rise to a radical change of perception regarding the work of art and its purpose. The emotional quality of his reaction to Bouts’s Madonna seems to have made all the rest possible, regardless of any intellectual considerations. In other words, it is the artist’s own tears that are at the source of the “Passions”. Hans Belting closes the loop when he associates Viola’s comments with the authority of Leon Battista Alberti and the theory of the image he developed in his De Pictura (1435). He then refers to James Elkins’s work, Pictures and Tears. A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (2001), where with the help of numerous testimonies the author attempts to determine the reasons which might induce us to cry when looking at a painting.402 In the second book of De Pictura, Leon Battista Alberti explores in detail the representation of the characters’ movements in the painting, a representation he holds to be the most important aspect of the historia. He insists in particular on the precise rendering of the emotions which inhabit each character, out of a concern that the very soul of the viewer be touched: “[II. 41]. Then a historia will stimulate the observers’ hearts when men who were painted there will display, to the highest degree, their own activity of the mind. It derives from Nature, in fact—one can find nothing more covetous than her regarding [emotions] similar to ourselves—that we cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh, we grieve with those who suffer. But these motions of the mind are known from movements of the body. We see, in fact, that the downcast—since they are afflicted by thoughts and exhausted by malaise—become numb totally in the senses and in powers and they linger lazily among members, pale and more than anything else unstable. In the downcast, in fact, the forehead is pressed, the neck suffering; all things finally fall down as [if they were] exhausted and neglected. In the irate, instead, since they have hearts fired by wrath, both faces and eyes are turbid and red. And in general in the same [subjects], movements of all members are very harshly agitated also, according to the fury of anger. But when we are happy and cheerful then we have movements agile and free for any flexing.”403

151

59. Dieric Bouts, Mater Dolorosa, 1470-75, oil on oak, 38.8 cm x 30.4 cm, Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago.

152 But right from the start Alberti unfailingly emphasizes the difficulty such an undertaking represents for the painter. It is a complicated task to reproduce the full range of human emotions, and particularly to distinguish one emotion from another: “[II. 42] It is necessary, therefore, that the movements of the body are well known to the painter; I maintain that they must be obtained certainly, with great skill, from Nature. It is a very difficult [condition], in fact, to diversify, according to the almost infinite movements of the mind, also the body movements. Unless one is an expert, who will believe, then, when you want to represent smiling faces, that this [feature] is so difficult to avoid, that they do not appear crying rather than happy? And who will be able to express, then, without very great study and diligence, faces in which the mouth, and the chin, and the eyes, and the cheeks, and the forehead, and the eyebrows accord together in grief or joy? All [objects], therefore, must be scrutinized with the greatest diligence from Nature herself, and one must always imitate [those which are] more evident. And in particular one must paint the [features] that reveal more to the mind that they penetrate deeply, than [the features] which concern the eyes.”404

404 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 41, pp. 62-63. 405 See S. Ringbom, (1965) 1984, pp. 50-51; M. Barasch, 1987, p. 21. 406 K. van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, fol. 206v, pp. 84-85. This passage was quoted by Panofsky, in: E. Panofsky, 1953, p. 249. See also M. Barasch, 1987, p. 21. 407 On the subject of this tradition, see R. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul; C. Le Brun/J. Montagu, Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière; T. Kirchner, 1991; D. Le Breton, (1992) 2003; J.-J. Courtine/C. Haroche, 2007.

During the very same period when Alberti, in theoretical terms, was confronting the difficulty of representing human passions, certain artists living to the north of the Alps, in an environment far removed from Florentine humanism, were endeavoring to elaborate a practical solution to the very same problem.405 Most notably these artists included Rogier van der Weyden and a number of his Flemish contemporaries, known for their extremely detailed rendering of the different human passions, as well as their effort to enlarge the visual repertory of these passions. The northern European painter and historiographer Karel van Mander, in his Het Schilder Boeck (1604)—a precious collection of biographies of Dutch and German painters of the 15th and 16th centuries—praised van der Weyden for “he has improved our art greatly, demonstrating with his inventions and execution a more perfect appearance in postures as well as in composition, with the depiction of the inner desires or inclinations of people—be they sad, angry or happy—according to the demands of the subject.”406 The varying experimentation one could observe in van der Weyden’s work and in Flemish painting already in the first half of the 15th century would lead, logically, to the emergence of new motifs, new strategies which would have a particular impact on the representation of the face, as it is the focus par excellence of the sensible expression of human passions. These were the first stirrings of a veritable visual rhetoric of passions, which would develop rapidly, particularly within the academic tradition.407

153 Among these new pictorial types, of particular interest to us is what one might be tempted to refer to emphatically as “the invention of tears in painting.” Moshe Barasch, in his article entitled The Crying Face, provides a brief history of the representation of the tearful face. Using examples both from painting and sculpture, where weeping is presented as the sensible physical expression of sadness and suffering, Barasch distinguishes different formulas that aim to make explicit in visual terms the act of crying in and of itself.408 He mentions, among other things, the process of the distortion and deformation of facial features in order to accentuate the effect of pathos the subject is experiencing. Other representations which emerged or at least tended to become popular in painting in van der Weyden’s time included the act of wiping away tears with a cloth or one’s hand and, similarly, covering the weeping face or eyes or even turning one’s gaze away from the viewer. These different variations on the theme of weeping were rendered on occasion without the tears themselves actually being represented. The gestures of the characters in the image presuppose the existence of their tears, but they are not always visible. Nevertheless, Robert Campin’s Entombment (1410-1420), the central panel of the “Seilern” triptych, painted in the early years of the 15th century (fig. 60), already depicted teardrops on the faces of some of the witnesses to the scene, particularly on the left profile of the angel to the right of the tomb: he is wearing a white alb, while with the back of his free hand he wipes away the tears falling from his other eye (fig. 61). Traces of tears also appear on the cheek of Mary of Clopas as she prepares to cover the face of the deceased with a veil, according to Jewish tradition (fig. 62).409 Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross (ca. 1435) is also one of the first and most famous examples of works portraying the tearful faces of their protagonists (fig. 63).410 The Descent from the Cross—which may have been the central panel of a triptych whose other panels have been lost or have never been identified with certainty to this day—was in all likelihood created for the guild of crossbowmen of Louvain, and placed above the guild’s altar in their chapel of the church of Notre-Damehors-les-murs. Proof of this are the two small crossbows that appear on the gothic adornments in the corners of the panel (fig. 64).

408 M. Barasch, 1987, pp. 23-25. See also: D. Roth, 1997; J.-L. Charvet, 2000; A.-V. Buffault, 2001; B. Söntgen/G. Spiekermann, 2007. 409 Some commentators erroneously assimilated this character with Saint Veronica. Van Gelder reminds us that Saint Veronica does not belong to the

iconography of the Entombment or the Lamentation, and suggests rather that it is Mary of Clopas. Cf. J.G. van Gelder, 1967, pp. 1314 and n. 41. See also B.G. Lane, 1975, p. 27 n. 39. These two significant articles are mentioned in a footnote by F. Thürlemann in his analysis of the “Seilern” Triptych, in: F. Thürlemann, 2002, p. 35 and p. 218 n. 35. 410 Obviously during my research I came across earlier examples of the representation of tears in painting. But they never seemed to have been a source of enthusiasm equal to that displayed by the Flemish 15th century. In particular, we should note that one of the most significant discoveries during the recent restoration work (3.07.2001/18.03.2002) of Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303-1305) was the appearance of tears in The Massacre of the Innocents (scenes from the life of Christ). They resemble a fine edging of black water streaming down the left cheek of three of the mothers on the righthand side of the scene, before merging into a single teardrop. This, it would seem, is the only pictorial record of tears among the different cycles in the Scrovegni Chapel. For example, the Lamentation of Christ shows no trace of tears. Cf. D. Banzato, 2005; G. Basile, 2003. See also the Internet site devoted to the restoration. My thanks here to Bill Viola, who brought my attention to this detail which only became apparent once the chapel’s frescoes were restored.

154

60. Robert Campin (The Master of Flémalle), “Seilern” Triptych, 1410-1420, oil on wood, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery.

155

156 61. Robert Campin (The Mas-

ter of Flémalle), “Seilern” Triptych, detail, 1410-1420, oil on wood, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery.

411 See in this instance van Mander’s account of the panel’s travels in: K. van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, fol. 207r, pp. 86-87: “Also by Rogier in Louvain there was a Deposition, in a church called Onze Lieve Vrouw daar buiten [Our Lady Outside the Walls], in which two figures standing on two ladders lower the body with a linen cloth or shroud. Beneath, to receive it, stood Joseph of Arimathea and others. The Marys sat beneath weeping most affectingly; Mary, who appeared to be fainting, was supported by John who was behind her. This original by Master Rogier was sent to the King of Spain, and while en route it sank with the ship but was fished out and because it was very tightly and well packed it was not damaged too much, only the glue loosened a little.” 412 In actual fact, we do not know whether the retable originally consisted of wings; this remains a subject of debate among specialists. I would like to thank Hugo van der Velden for the interview he granted me on the subject. Cf. also E. Dhanens/ J. Dijkstra, 1999, p. 17 and p. 173; F. Thürlemann, 2002, pp. 116-130; A. Knight Powell, 2006, pp. 540-562; p. 558 note 15.

It was acquired in the 16th century by Mary of Austria, who governed the Netherlands at the time and who also had a copy made by the painter Michel Coxcie for the guild’s chapel. It then went from the regent’s collection to that of her nephew, Philip II king of Spain.411 When the king made a gift of it to the monastery in Escurial in 1574, according to the description provided in the inventory the retable should have been part of a triptych, but the lateral panels are generally not considered to be the original panels.412 The painting is the representation in oils of a sculpted, multicolored retable. No fewer than ten figures—almost life-sized—go to make up this “tableau vivant,” set in a shallow niche-shaped space enclosed by a golden background. With both hands, Joseph of Arimathea supports the body of the dead Christ, whose left arm is delicately held by the man who has just lowered him from the Cross, while Nicodemus carries his legs. The graceful curve of Christ’s mortal remains is directly echoed by the swooning figure

157 62. Robert Campin (The Mas-

ter of Flémalle), “Seilern” Triptych, detail, 1410-1420, oil on wood, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery.

of the Virgin, who is in turn supported by Saint John and one of the two Maries—Mary of Clopas or Mary Salome. At Christ’s feet Mary Magdalene is writhing in pain (fig. 65); behind her, a man is carrying a jar of ointment. Saint John and Mary Magdalene— two “lateral characters forming a parenthesis [personnages latéraux inclinés formant parenthèse],”413—encircle the representation and compel the viewer’s gaze toward the combined figures of Christ and the Virgin, who also takes part physically in her son’s sacrifice, in this instance displaying similar movement. This formal repetition serves to underline the Virgin’s co-redemptive role, by virtue of her compassion for Christ’s suffering. Thus a dialectic of a visual nature is established between the Passion of Christ and the Compassion of the Virgin, between passio and compassio.414 This same compassion is extended to all the witnesses of the scene, and all, with the exception of Joseph of Arimathea, the man with the jar, and the man on the ladder, are weeping abundantly.415 We can easily discern the tears that are welling, for example, in Nicodemus’s eyes, then follow the traces they leave upon his cheeks before they gradually become sparkling pearls (fig. 66). The tears of the Virgin’s sister-in-law, on the far left-hand side of the painting, are also clearly visible, although she is holding

413 E. Panofsky, 1953, p. 257. Panofsky is citing directly in French the elegant formula of Georges Hulin de Loo in: G. Hulin de Loo, 1938, p. 242. 414 O. von Simson, 1953, p. 11. 415 For a more complete description of the work, see, among a vast bibliography, E. Panofsky, 1953, pp. 256-258; H. Belting/C. Kruse, 1994, pp. 8384, pp. 177-178; A. Châtelet, 1999, pp. 107-111; E. Dhanens/ J. Dijkstra, 1999, pp. 17-18; A. Knight Powell, 2012, pp. 143165; F. Thürlemann, 2012, pp. 5378.

158

63. Rogier van der Weyden, Descent from the Cross, ca. 1435, oil on oak panel, 220 cm x 262 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado.

64-66. Rogier van der Wey-

den, Descent from the Cross, detail, ca. 1435, oil on oak panel, 220 cm x 262 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado.

416 E. Panofsky, 1953, p. 258: “In The Descent from the Cross, as in the lost composition described by Fazio, ‘dignity is preserved amidst a flow of tears’.” Panofsky is referring here to a commentary by the humanist Bartolomeo Fazio with regard to a work by van der Weyden—

her veil up to her eyes (fig. 67). As for the Virgin’s face, it is still streaming, even though she has just lost consciousness (fig. 68). The scene allots far more space to the expression of pain and mourning than to any form of action. The initial witnesses of the Passion of Christ suffer in their body and in their soul; they weep tears of compassion, and tears of compunction [larmes de componction]—feelings which the viewers are invited to feel in turn—and although they are subject to the most intense emotions, they remain dignified: “dignity is preserved amidst a flow of tears.”416 where the central panel represents a Descent from the Cross—which was in Ferrara at the time and has since been lost. Panofsky gives us the entire passage of Fazio’s De Viris Illustribus (1456) about van der Weyden on p. 361 (n. 7 of p. 2) of the work cited here. See also M. Baxandall on the topic, 1964, pp. 90-107, in particular pp. 104-107.

159

64

65

66

160

67-68. R ogier van der Weyden, Descent from the Cross, detail, ca. 1435, oil on oak panel, 220 cm x 262 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado.

See also M. Barasch, 1987, pp. 26-27. 417

Following these initial experiments, the motif of tears brimming from the eyes or streaming down one’s cheeks would become widespread, a common feature in the pictorial language of the representation of the passions among 15th-century Flemish painters. Combined with, and integrated with other features denoting pathos—covering or wiping one’s face, looking away not to be seen in a moment of great affliction—tears would occupy a place of privilege in major narrative scenes, which were subject to multiple effusions of sorrow, such as the Crucifixion or Lamentation of Christ. Similarly, tears feature prominently in images of private devotion, whose purpose is more intimate, far removed from emphatic gesture and with a greatly reduced, if not inexistent, narrative dimension.417 Devotional images traditionally belong to a context of private piety, where they are the object of prayers and blessings. They can even serve as an aid and encouragement to meditation, before leading to a level of higher contemplation which no longer necessitates the presence of images. Such images, although they might occasionally be found in church chapels, were distinct from images of public cult which—like the altarpiece—were used for the needs of the liturgy, or which—like

161 a monumental narrative composition—aimed to be the “letters of the unlettered.” The difference between the “image of devotion” and the “cult image” is above all a question of purpose and size, before being based on any formal or iconographic criteria.418 The devotional image generally consists of one or several figures portrayed down to the waist, captured in a close-up against a black or neutral background, in order to enter into an immediate dialogue with the viewer. The purpose is to generate a climate of profound intimacy and to accentuate the capacity of emotional absorption of the motif represented, by isolating it, for example, from its narrative context, thus arousing the viewer’s empathy.419 James Elkin’s work, Pictures and Tears, which Belting mentioned during his interview with Viola, actually devotes an entire chapter to devotional images, in which the author also tells us of his own empathetic experience with a given image. The chapter is entitled Weeping, watching the Madonna weep, and it focuses on the Weeping Madonna by Dieric Bouts at the Art Institute of Chicago, the same work which inspired Bill Viola’s tears.420 Belting goes no further than listing the title of the work and its object, without enabling us to discern just how conscious he himself is of the extreme pertinence of the link he has just established between the experience of the artist and that of the author. The Chicago Weeping Madonna (fig. 59) corresponds to a type of very popular half-length devotional image—the Mater Dolorosa— which Dieric Bouts and his workshop were called on to produce in very great numbers.421 The Lady of Sorrows (or Weeping Madonna) is frequently associated in the Flemish 15th century with other models of devotional images related to the Passion of Christ, such as the Man of Sorrows and the Christ Crowned with Thorns (fig. 69). Together they compose the two wings of a small hinged diptych, thus forming a sort of portable retable which can be easily opened and closed again. Ringbom even sees this as the ideal instrument of devotion, simple and practical, to which one can address both one’s Ave Marias and one’s Pater Nosters.422 An example of this is the very similar Our Lady of Sorrows at the National Gallery in London, also from Bouts’s workshop, this time accompanied by its matching piece, the Christ Crowned with Thorns (fig. 70). The arrangement of the two wings of the diptych in a same place is instructive regarding the modalities of their representation. The Virgin is represented in a three-quarters pose, her hands joined, and she is leaning slightly to the right, toward her Son. Her head is covered first with a veil draped over a wimple, goffered along the lower edge, then a large draped black mantle. But only the Chicago version (fig. 59)—of a quality superior to the other versions and, as such, the possible prototype which Bouts himself produced—depicts

418 S. Ringbom, (1965) 1984, pp. 52-53. 419 S. Ringbom, (1965) 1984, p. 48: “The intimate quality of the half-length icon made it particularly well suited for the private devotion and profound empathy of the individual. Its character of a ‘close-up’ gave to meditation the immediacy of a quiet conversation; it had the ‘nearness’ so dear to the God-seeking devout. All these qualities distinguish the closeup from the full-length narrative. By rendering the subject in isolation from the narrative context, the artist stressed the emotional element of the motif, giving predominance to expression instead of action.” 420 J. Elkins, 2001, pp. 150-165 (Weeping, watching the Madonna weep). James Elkins is professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Art History, Theory and Art Criticism. He has been teaching there since 1989. In his work he informs us in particular that his workplace is located opposite the Art Institute, in: J. Elkins, 2001, p. 155. 421 See M.J. Friedländer, 1968, p. 71; p. 88 n. 67; n° 83-83f, pl. 9293. Among the different versions studied by Friedländer, the Madonna now in Chicago corresponds to n° 83f.; see also M. Wolff, 1989, pp. 112-125. 422 S. Ringbom, (1965) 1984, pp. 61-67. This representation as a couple had already appeared in the circle of Simone Martini in ca. 1360, before it was spread through Bohemia by Tommaso da Modena. The formation of such a diptych was also documented in France at the same time: cf. p. 67 of the same book.

162 69. Dieric Bouts, Christ Crowned

with Thorns, c. 1462, oil on wood panel transferred onto canvas, 43.8 cm x 37.1 cm, London, National Gallery.

See M. Wolff, 1989, pp. 119125; p. 175 nn. 24-27. 423

her with swollen eyelids and bloodshot eyes; it also leaves apparent the fine line of her eyebrows and her hairline under the upper edge of the veil.423 The Virgin is in fact turning toward her Son, but their eyes do not meet (fig. 70). Christ, represented frontally with his hands crossed, almost serves as a counterpoint figure. There is a dialogue, however, between the two images, but an unspoken one: both are weeping. The Mother’s tears of compassion answer the Son’s tears of passion. The tears, replacing the gaze, act as a “hinge” between the two wings of the diptych. Their eyes do not meet but their eyes weep. And these are the same tears—not the eyes, which are distraught with grief and are not focused on any particular object, but their secretions—which strike the viewer observing the painting and urge him or her to meditate on the passion of Christ and feel compassion for the Virgin’s grief. Viola’s Dolorosa (2000), one of the first groups of the series of “Passions”, provides an intimate response to this typical pairing of

163 devotional images (fig. 71). It also corresponds to the structure of a small-format diptych, composed of two hinged LCD flat panels.424 By resorting to a screen technology peculiar to laptop computers, the work ingeniously links two distant but parallel eras,425 both of them witnesses to a revolution that impacted the material conditions of image-making. The video image here is also easily portable and can thus accompany the individual wherever he or she goes, losing nothing of its power of immersion.426 The left panel shows a woman. Her long red hair contrasts with the pallor of her face; at the same time it brings out the color of her lips and the redness of her eyelids. A gray-blue shawl is draped around her neck and over her burgundy outfit with a leafy pattern. On the right-hand panel there is a man. He is wearing a simple jeans shirt. His beard has been carefully trimmed, his shining black hair and his skin color are darker. Both are portrayed in half-length in front of a neutral brushed and patinaed gray-brown background. Their faces are slightly larger than life-size and are lit from the side by a golden light, in such a way that even their smallest features stand out clearly. Both of them are weeping, tears streaming down their cheeks. The two panels, in fact, are projecting a motion picture which follows the evolution of their sadness, in a loop. Their heads move slightly in extreme slow motion to adopt the different poses that are proof of their affliction.427 Just like the pair of Virgin and Christ from Bouts’s workshop, the man and woman do not interact directly but converse through their grief, while showing their tears to the viewer. The slow motion is obtained by filming the scene with a number of frames per second that is superior to the projection speed. The standard projection speed for 35mm film is 24 frames per second.428 Thus when screening the recording with a normal number of frames per second, the scene gives the impression of unfolding slowly, with no jerky effects or interruptions. Bill Viola filmed the scene using a high speed 35mm movie camera. As it was shot at speeds up to 300 frames/second, when it is projected at normal speed the film comes across in extreme slow motion but still flows. The recording is then transferred to high definition digital video format. Then the colors are retouched post-production, and traditional adjustments such as contrast, texture, and other details are taken care of.429

J. Walsh, 2003, p. 265. B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 198. Cf. also supra n. 396. 426 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 202-203. 427 See also C. Freeland, 2004; pp. 25-45, particularly pp. 30-31. 424 425

In analog������������������� ������������������������� video it is, however, 25 frames/second for the norms of SECAM and PAL coding, (PAL being the standard for European television, with the exception of France, which uses SECAM), and 29.97 frames/second for NTSC, used in the United States and Canada. 429 “The subject I was working with—the passage of an emotional wave through a human being—is fleeting and in constant motion. I realized that these pieces had to be shot as single takes with no editing, since the movement was created by the emotion itself, and the medium for this emotion, its constant base was the person. Any kind of editing would disrupt this relationship. However I also knew that the medium of video, master of the long take, was only capable of shooting the action at thirty frames per second, and I needed more visual increments of time to capture the subtlety of the transitions and transformations. Also, for some of the pieces (especially the flat-panel portraits), I wanted a photographic, not an electronic, quality of the image, along with a high level of detail and delicacy of light. So film became the only option. Most of the pieces in this series were shot on 35mm film, at frame rates of up to three hundred frames per second, and then transferred to digital video and edited,” in: B. Viola/ H. Belting, 2003, p. 200; see also L. Ward, 2005, online version. 428

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70. Dieric Bouts (workshop),

Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 14751500, oil on oak, 36.8 cm x 27.9 cm/36.8 cm x 27.8 cm, London, National Gallery.

“VIOLA. […] The old pictures were just the starting point. I was not interested in appropriation or restaging—I wanted to get inside the pictures…to embody them, to inhabit them, to feel them breathe. Ultimately, it became about their spiritual dimensions, not the visual forms. As to my concept in general, it was to get to the root source of my emotions and the nature of emotional expression itself. In 430

Dolorosa makes use of the empathetic approach of a 15thcentury image, but through a medium which delivers an image in motion in order to reconfigure the attributes of the devotional image, such as the dramatic close-up, the absence of a real narrative composition or even the inexistence of scenic accessories, revealing a spatial décor that has been reduced to a black or neutral background. Moreover, in Dolorosa, as throughout the entire series of the “Passions”, Viola is less intent on appropriating or reconstituting ancient works than on gaining access to the source of his emotions and the very nature of their expression.430 His work rests therefore first and foremost on a desire to probe the quality of transmission of an emotion from one individual to another, to explore the powerful flow of empathy that can connect human be-

my art training in the 1970s, that was a place you did not go, a forbidden zone. This is so even today. But from my own life experience I found myself completely taken over by this powerful emotional force, and it was so much deeper than the mere sentimentality I was taught to avoid. I felt that as an artist I needed to understand this better,” in: B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 199.

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ings, or even to examine the very human response to another’s suffering that is compassion. What was essentially at stake in this exploration became crystallized in Viola’s extremely direct and private work with the various actors involved in his creations. For him they opened the interior space of their most deeply-buried emotions and invited him to examine it, from one artist to another. And while there may have been elements of theatricality or artificiality, they were to be found not in the emotion itself but in the context in which the emotion came into being, in other words in the story or the intrigue. The actors themselves were expressing perfectly authentic emotions, which arose from a residual fabric of actual experience buried deep in their being. Whence, in particular, the artist’s desire to cast off any form of narration and thus to touch the emotions in their purest simplicity, without any sort of embroidery.431 Through Dolorosa, furthermore, Viola extends the devotional image from a sphere of strictly Christian spirituality to a field of compassion that belongs to an all-encompassing spirituality. This spirituality, by virtue of the very erudition of the artist, embraced

71. Bill Viola, Dolorosa, 2000, color video diptych on two freestanding hinged LCD flat panels, 40.6 cm x 62.2 cm x 14.6 cm. Performers: Natasha Basley, Shishir Kurup. Photo: Kira Perov.

431 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 200-201.

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432 Between 1976 and 1980 Bill Viola made several voyages to Asia. As of 1980 he stayed with Kira Perov in Japan for a year and a half, where he studied Buddhism with the Zen Master Daien Tanaka. He would, moreover, dedicate to him his work entitled Hatsu-Yume, First Dream (1981). 433 For a deeper exploration of the syncretic relationship between Bill Viola and these various mystical movements, both Eastern and Western, see among others B. Viola/L. Hyde, 1997, pp. 143-165, in particular pp. 143-150; J. Zutter, 1993, pp. 105-111; P. Sellars, 2003, pp. 158-185; D. Zbikowski, 2000, pp. 23-33, p. 30. For a more general debate on the role of mysticism in Viola’s work, cf. S. Bickel, 2002. 434 “I cry a lot,” he says. “Usually once a day. I think it’s one of the most profound forms of human expression,” in: J. Morgan, 2005, online version. 435 J. Walsh, 2003, p. 273. See also S.-I. Dufour, 2008, pp. 179182; D. Prudames, 2003, online version. 436 The framework for my interpretation of Surrender is founded on the exchange between Hans Belting and Bill Viola in their interview, in B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 206. 437 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, Book II, 41, pp. 61-62. Cf. supra n. 403.

Taoism, Zen Buddhism,432 Sufism and, naturally, Christian mysticism.433 The viewer, therefore, is called upon to contemplate and respond to the everyday drama of the suffering of one’s peers, without any need to understand the reason for their distress. To be sure, Dolorosa, given its title, structure (small-format diptych) and mise en scène—a man and a woman instead of the Virgin and Christ— still belongs to the Christian tradition of devotional images. But at the same time it has been stripped of the iconographic signs which enable us to individualize or identify the actors in the image in any way; it could be any one of us, sharing the sadness of all of us. In actual fact, almost all the works that go to make up the “Passions” series, although each one explores the representation of human passions according to a different perspective, can figure within this vast program to make the purpose of the devotional image a universal one. Similarly, through our attentive exploration of the sources of inspiration and the process of emergence of the “Passions”, we come to understand that in this series the theme of tears has truly entered Viola’s work for the first time. The artist actually sees tears as one of the deepest forms of human expression; he has admitted that he himself frequently succumbs to tears.434 Surrender (2001), in the series of the “Passions”, is a silent video diptych, consisting of two flat plasma displays mounted vertically on a wall.435 The work features two half-length figures obeying a model of horizontal axial symmetry, in order to suggest a process of reflection (fig. 72).436 But this mirroring device is disqualified by its obvious reference to the difference between the two protagonists, given the difference in their sex—a man and a woman—as well as the color of their clothes. The man is wearing red while the woman is in blue. Their emotional posture and the dejection which immediately emanates from their faces testify to a profound inner desolation. The “pathognomonic” investigation to which the artist devotes himself in Surrender is an attempt—as the title would suggest—to represent the affliction, profound sadness, and despair of the human condition. Let us recall what Alberti said above, when referring in particular to the physical expression of sadness, in his analysis of the emotional impact that the work must convey to the viewer: “[…] We see, in fact, that the downcast—since they are afflicted by thoughts and exhausted by malaise—become numb totally in the senses and in powers and they linger lazily among members, pale and more than anything else unstable. In the downcast, in fact, the forehead is pressed, the neck suffering; all things finally fall down as [if they were] exhausted and neglected. […].”437

167 By resorting to the intimacy that is characteristic of the devotional image, in order to elicit a deep emotional experience—a dramatic close-up of two individuals, from the waist up, against a black background—the artist emphasizes the work’s particularity. Surrender is a dual scenic composition; it belongs therefore to a specific tradition of the architecture of the image, attesting to a relation of symmetrical confrontation between two figures; one of the most vibrant examples of this is Caravaggio’s Narcissus (fig. 1). The master’s painting is split horizontally by a line of separation between earth and water, and is articulated vertically in the relation between Narcissus and his specular double. The scene is reduced to a close-up, showing the young man bathed in light against a dark background, fascinated by the vision of his own image. He caresses the wave in the same way, betraying his frenetic desire to touch the “other.” In Surrender’s vertical diptych, the two figures stand without making eye contact, then lean simultaneously toward each other, as if they wanted to touch or, more precisely, to kiss (fig. 73). When they have bent down completely, facing each other, we can make out their moving reflection on a narrow strip along the edge where the two images are linked. But their faces cannot meet and will soon be confronted with the existence of a watery surface along the edge of the two panels, the water confirming, as it were, the limit already put in place by the frames surrounding the two screens. At this point the two actors complete their descent and their faces touch the water. Finally they stand up straight, and of course as they pull away from the water this causes it to ripple. Water—like tears—pours from their faces, further disturbing the surface (fig. 74). Oddly enough, it is the very image of their “bodies” and not their “reflections” which undulates; this oscillation increases in intensity and progressively overwhelms both screens (figs. 75-76). The viewer gradually realizes that it is not their half-length bodies which are visible in nearly all of the image, but in fact the reflection of their bodies! Consequently, the thin strip which was supposed to represent their reflection along the edge of the image actually leads straight to their persons. The troubled water reveals a scopic device that engages not the actors’ image but the reflections of their image, their specular doubles. Viola has filmed not the characters directly but the watery surface. The spectacle of their movements as captured on video reaches us through a natural mirror. Thus, in a way, we find ourselves at a double medial distance from them.438 The artist is playing here with the degree of reality the image reveals to us: the image of a body which in reality turns out to be the image of

B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 206: “BELTING. […] The frame, which divides the upper from the lower picture, confirms a boundary, the water surface, which becomes a mirror for self-reflection. This also allows for a relationship with a second image, that of the other person, which responds in a symmetrical way to their actions. Only when the two figures are engaging the surface do they make us aware of the fact that there has been water there all the time. When they retreat from this liquid surface, drops of water stream off their faces and fall back into the pool. From then on, the whole picture explodes in undulating movements, producing anamorphic, distorted forms. VIOLA. A disturbed mirror. BELTING. Indeed, and it is so ambiguous that in one moment you have the impression of seeing a body, and then in the next moment, this body is reduced to a reflection of a body. So instead of a physical body, you see the water as a medium that makes the body visible. You experience the element of water, a medium of nature, as revealed through the element of video, a medium of technology. One mirror reflects the other, and the reflection mirrors the reflection.” 438

168 the reflection of a body. The “truth” of the image, so to speak, is revealed to us through the troubled water. Moreover, Surrender goes beyond the traditional representation of pathos by making use of the watery surface’s reflective properties, and above all by applying the troubled aspect to that surface. The distortion of the actors’ physical features, determined by the passion which inhabits them, is indeed accentuated by the troubled aspect of the medium; the growing disturbance of the surface sets about depicting even more intensely the emotion that has seized the two protagonists. Added to their performance, and enhancing the deformation of their features, is the distortion of the support of their own reflections, with a view to representing human passion—in this case sadness—as extremely as possible. The emotional mise en scène of the two characters acts as a reference to the Flemish tradition of the 15th century—the primary inspiration for the “Passions” series— and also corresponds perfectly to Alberti’s words. According to the artist, the phenomenon of the troubled medium harkens back to his experiments with video image distortion through electromagnetic interference in the 1970s, and of which In Version (1973) (figs. 46-47) and Information (1973) (figs. 48-51)—discussed in detail at the beginning of the chapter—are eloquent examples. But this phenomenon should also, according to Viola, be seen in relation to pictorial activity, insofar as through the manipulation and pouring of paint onto the canvas painting can express the most extreme emotions, particularly suffering. In this respect Viola is referring naturally and explicitly to Francis Bacon.439 With regard to the reflected image of the two actors, Surrender finally uses the troubled surface in order to increase even further the troubled expression on their faces. The thread which literally

72. Bill Viola, Surrender, 2001,

color video diptych on two plasma displays mounted vertically on wall, 204.2 cm x 61 cm x 8.9 cm. Performers: John Fleck, Weba Garretson. Photo: Kira Perov.

439 B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, pp. 207-208: “VIOLA. […] Hans, you talked about the earlier works where the face is a kind of surface that is transformed, and this is certainly something that interested me here. But when I made this piece, I realized that the medium reflecting the face was capable of visually transforming that face into the extreme emotion that it was experiencing at that instant. In an odd way, this brought me back to my early experimentation with electronic image processing in the 1970, distorting the video image through electromagnetic interference. It also connected me to painting in a new way, because this is exactly what painters do—manipulate and shape the fluid surface of the paint so it becomes the emotion. This is the unseen link between old master painting and twentieth-century so-called non-representational forms of Expressionism. Francis Bacon’s work, for example, is powerful for me in this way because he made the connection between the manipulation of paint and suffering [my Italics].”

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joins the natural mirror to the devastated facial expressions is a stream of “tears.” Traditionally the most explicit demonstration of sadness on an afflicted face, tears also act here as a “troublemaker” as they splatter onto the surface. Their faces delicately penetrate the water; as they emerge, the surface is violently disrupted and begins to undulate. Then the stream of water which pours off their faces also falls upon the surface. It is like a torrent of tears. In fact, the entire space is nothing but tears. Bill Viola, in his interview with Hans Belting, explains that he encouraged his two actors, Weba Garretson and John Fleck, to view this pool as if it were filled with the tears of all those who had ever wept. Therefore they had to lean down into the source of all sorrows.440 When they emerged, their faces were, in a way, impregnated with these universal tears, which they allowed to stream back onto the surface of this well of sadness.

73-76. Bill Viola, Surrender, 2001.

B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 207. 440

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441 See also B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 208: “BELTING. Bill, I can confirm your argument with the authority of Ovid, who concludes the story of Narcissus with this beautiful passage: ‘With his tears, he disturbed the water, and thus obscured the image he had seen before.’ [Metamorphoses, III, 475]. VIOLA. Hans, I didn’t know that part of the Ovid text! For me, you have finally resolved and completed the story of Narcissus. Thank you.” 442 For further proof of Viola’s marked interest in phenomena of reflections on the surface of the water, see in particular J. Morgan, 2005, online version: “While images of tears recur in Viola’s work so, too, do images of water and reflections, including in Five Angels for the Millennium (2001). ‘Water is connected to us in deep ways,’ he says. ‘The first time humanity ever saw its self-image way back in the recesses of pre-historic time would have been kneeling down by a stream,’ he says.” 443 J. Walsh, 2003, p. 134. For the same text available online, cf. B. Viola, 2006, online version.

As Belting points out, the distorting effect of the reflected image provoked by the protagonists’ “tears” does remind us of one of the last moments of the tragedy of Ovid’s Narcissus when he leans over the natural mirror and his own tears trouble the surface of the water and blur his image (Metamorphoses, III, 475-476).441 At this point in the story Narcissus has already recognized the other’s face as being his own reflection; the “drama” of identification has just taken place (Met., III, 463). The sudden opacity of the surface therefore serves principally to exacerbate Narcissus’ despair; he who can never embrace that “other” is trying to delight in the vision for as long as he can, to see himself as someone else, thus fuelling his pathetic amorous madness (Met., III, 477-480). While the tears and their dramatic accents in Surrender belong to an iconographic tradition of compassion and purification which flourished in northern Europe from the 15th century onwards, they are also related to Narcissus’ confrontation with his own image on the surface of the water through the pronounced interest in the medium which characterizes the work.442 The terms of the encounter between the individual and his mirror image have been clearly reformulated in Surrender, however, implicating in particular the presence of a third party in the person of the viewer. In this three-party system, which seems to be a distant visual echo of Philostratus’ rhetorical device, the viewer— while naturally not finding himself confronted with his own image, nor subjected like Narcissus to an autoscopic pulsion—is the witness to a fictional mise en scène in the mirror: two people whose movements correspond along an axis of horizontal symmetry, but two people who are nevertheless a man and a woman and who, moreover, are wearing different colors. The video repeats itself indefinitely, each time alternating the position of the actors, in such a way that the person represented upside down on the lower screen is now right side up on the upper screen.443 This reversibility of the two figures thus serves to invalidate any relation of dependency between the reflection and its model. As the work unfolds, we find ourselves confronted with different phases of decrypting the image and its medial properties. These stages seem to echo the various phases of Narcissus’ own progression toward a recognition of the medium, a progression that is necessarily joined to that of the recognition of the other as his reflection. As we have seen above, initially Narcissus is dazzled, and stares at the “other,” failing to recognize any element between himself and the other. The illusion is total. Then, following his unfortunate attempts to kiss or embrace this marvelous creature, Narcissus becomes aware of the existence of a

171 thin layer of water, a fine separation standing in the way of their union. Henceforth he will apprehend the presence of the medium but, naïvely, sees it only as an obstacle within a same space of reality. Finally he notices the reflective qualities of the fine film of water. He is facing a natural mirror, which sends his own features back to him. In Surrender the viewer only notices the presence of water once the two actors lean toward each other, in what appears to us to be a desire to make contact, and come up against the surface. Thus they face an obstacle between them and, since they can neither touch nor merge into one another, to all intents and purposes they encounter only their respective reflections. From this point on two reflective processes appear on each of the two screens, which have been set up in accordance with a fictive reflective game (fig. 73). Finally, the blurring of the image that follows the emersion of their faces from this basin receiving the world’s sorrow, a disturbance accentuated further still by the tears these same faces are again shedding, enables us to detect the true mechanism of the work: it is neither their bodies nor their tears directly that the video gives us to contemplate, but the reflection of their half-length bodies and their weeping (figs. 74-76). The couple model/reflection in each of these two panels has, in actual fact, been reversed, and in this way it goes counter to our initial intuition. This cycle of inclination, immersion of the face and straightening up again is repeated three times,444 and disturbs the surface to such an extent that it eventually distorts their bodies to the point of virtually dissolving them, in an arabesque of light and color.445 The very process of representation of the two protagonists in Surrender—a process which is unveiled through the image’s “bimediality,” where a plasma screen shows us a moving picture, reflected and blurred in the natural mirror of the surface of the water—progressively transforms their faces and bodies into pure emotion. Surrender combines this double archetypal quality of natural mirror (the place of reflection) and symbol of purification that is peculiar to the watery element, a quality which was already at the heart of The Reflecting Pool. But the union between mirror and purification is realized here through the action of tears, and even more so through the double function of “trouble” which the tears create in the image: - A function of a medial order: the troubled surface eventually lifts the veil of illusion in which the work had been enclosed until now. It reveals that the image, in actual fact, is a mirror

See infra n. 446. J. Walsh, 2003, p. 134. See also B. Viola, 2006, online version. See also D. Prudames, 2003, online version. 444 445

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John Chrysostom, Homily XXV, 2, online version, and print p. 89: “In Baptism are fulfilled the pledges of our covenant with God; burial and death, resurrection and life; and these take place all at once. For when we immerse our heads in the water, the old man is buried as in a tomb below, and wholly sunk forever; then as we raise them again, the new man rises in its stead. As it is easy for us to dip and to lift our heads again, so it is easy for God to bury the old man, and to show forth the new. And this is done thrice [my Italics], that you may learn that the power of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost fulfilleth all this. ”See also M. Eliade, 1949, p. 175. On the relation between Surrender and the baptismal rite, see also D. Prudames, 2003, online version. 447 I. Hausherr, 1944, p. 31: “For contrition to be real, there is no need for tears; but penthos cannot be conceived without them”; p. 40: “Similarly, when the matter is one of grave sins to be expiated, compunction is likened to actual penance; it penetrates it solely with an element of sensitivity which, to us moderns at any rate, does not seem to be essential to it.” [Translation: A. Anderson]; see also P. Adnès, 1976, p. 291. 448 See Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 39, 17 online version, and print p. 358. Cf. also P. Adnès, 1976, p. 293. 449 P. Adnès, 1976, pp. 290-295, in particular p. 294. 446

of water, and it arouses the curious pleasure we feel in having been deceived initially before finally being offered—as we make our way through the various stages of medial comprehension—the keys with which to interpret the work of art facing us. - A function of a mystical order: the troubled surface translates the trouble in one’s soul with even greater intensity, transforming the image into pure emotion. It is the result of a partial immersion of the two characters into the pool, then of the tears that are drawn from the pool. Subsequently they wear these tears on their already grieving faces, then the tears fall onto the surface of the water, thus returning to their source. The actors’ faces are now an indecipherable abstraction, a via negativa of the image, a nebulous form, a “darkness” which reveals their “passion” in its most accomplished expression. This cycle of compassion and purification by water which the work projects is, moreover, a baptism446—to be sure, a very particular one: the “baptism of tears.” This notion first appeared with the Christian spiritual Fathers of the East, whose texts are filled with all sorts of tears: tears of compunction (from the Greek penthos, compunction is a penance filled with sensitivity),447 of love, of fear, etc. While the Eastern fathers generally insisted upon their cleansing power, Gregory Nazianzen (ca. 330-390) speaks in particular of tears as a fifth baptism. The four others, in order of increasing perfection, are: Moses’—allegorical—baptism in the waters of the Red Sea; the baptism of John the Baptist, which was purely one of penance; that of Christ in the Spirit; that of the martyrdom in blood. The baptism of tears, in a way, is more painful than that of the martyr.448 Other Eastern spiritual scholars also subsequently adopted the concept of the “baptism of tears,” holding it in high esteem and investing it with virtues of purification that were even more powerful than those of traditional baptism.449 The idea that tears are a new baptism can similarly be found in the Christian West, particularly during the Middle Ages. Pierre Adnès points out the example of Thomas of Froidmont, and cites a passage from the epistles of Guigues II the Carthusian in the 12th century: “At the baptism of little children, the purification of the inner man is represented and signified by external ablution. Here, on the contrary, the external purification proceeds from the inner ablution. Oh, happy tears,

173 through which one’s inner stains are cleansed, and the fires set ablaze by our sins are all extinguished!”450

Consequently, these terms can be applied to Viola’s Surrender— taking into account his syncretic and universal approach based on different spiritual currents—insofar as in this instance he is staging a traditional ritual of immersion and emersion, whose purifying virtues are enhanced by the presence of tears, troubling both face and surface. The baptism of tears, according to Viola, corresponds visually to the traditional rite of purification by water, but this is, rather, a rite of purification where the waters are the tears wept by all humanity. Purification This “baptism of tears” acts as an effective catharsis, thanks both to the sorrowful expressions of the protagonists and the disturbance of their reflection on the surface of the water, and it reappears in the work Purification (2005), which came after the series of “Passions” as part of “The Tristan Project”. In 2002 Bill Viola, Esa-Pekka Salonen—conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic—and Peter Sellars, a theatre director, filmmaker, and professor at the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, came together with an idea for a joint endeavor. Sellars had already co-curated Bill Viola’s retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum451 and was the author of a contribution to the catalogue published for “The Passions” exhibition.452 The three artists quickly agreed to collaborate on a new production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, devising a new esthetic in order to reformulate the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk and incorporate music, theatrical staging, and visual art.453 The fascinating result of their collaboration was performed for the first time at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in December, 2004, with the three acts spread over three days.454 The premiere of the opera in full was held at the Opéra Bastille in Paris on April 12, 2005. Performances continued through April and May, 2005,455 and in November and December, 2005.456 Tristan und Isolde then returned to Los Angeles in April, 2007,457 to be followed by two performances at the Lincoln Center in New York in May, 2007.458 Since then it has been performed in a number of different cities around the globe. Viola brought together the ensemble he created for this Tristan und Isolde under the evocative title “The Tristan Project”. For the art-

450 Guigues II the Carthusian, Lettre sur la vie contemplative, pp. 98-99. [Translation: A. Anderson]. Cf. Thomas of Froidmont, Liber de modo bene vivendi, p. 1217 AB. Cf. P. Adnès, 1976, p. 298. 451 D. Ross/P. Sellars, 1997. 452 P. Sellars, 2003, pp. 158-185. 453 See J. Moss, 2007, pp. 7-8. 454 December 3, 4, 5 and 10, 11, 12, 2004. Each act was then accompanied by other musical pieces. 455 April 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 2005, and May 4 and 7, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. See also A. Perroux, 2005, pp. 50-79 (text by J.-J. Roth, photographs by R. Walz, interviews by A. Perroux). 456 November 8, 12, 16, 20, 29, 2005 as well as December 3 and 6, 2005. On these dates, however, the music was performed by the orchestra and choirs of the Opéra National de Paris, conducted by Valery Gergiev. 457 A first time with the three acts spread over three days, April 1214, 2007, then the following two times in a single performance, on April 18 and 24, 2007. 458 On May 2 and 5, 2007, at the Avery Fisher Hall of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

174 ist the aim was to create a visual world in parallel to the action and reflecting the various manifestations of unconditional love, on the model of Tristan and Isolde’s love for each other, and retracing the various stages that led the two lovers to their death and rebirth:

459 B. Viola, 2007, pp. 9-11, here p. 10. 460 The exhibition at the Haunch of Venison Gallery in London entitled “Bill Viola: Love/Death: The Tristan Project, Works from Tristan und Isolde (2005-2006)”, from June 21, 2006 to September 2, 2006, presented the “Tristan Project“ divided into different separate sections: Purification (2005); Bodies of Light (2006); Becoming Light (2005); Lover’s Path (2006); Poem B (The Guest House) (2006); Old Oak (Study) (2005); Passage into Night; Fire Woman (2005); Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) (2005); Isolde’s Ascension (The Shape of Light in the Space After Death) (2005). Cf. the catalogue published for the exhibition: B. Viola/S. Grant, 2006. Since that time several works from “The Tristan Project” have been exhibited individually. See Bill Viola’s official website, online. 461 Bill Viola, 2007, p. 10. 462 See B. Viola/S. Grant, 2006, p. 11.

“I knew from the start that I did not want the images to illustrate or represent the story directly. Instead I wanted to create an image world that existed in parallel to the action on the stage, in the same way that a more subtle poetic narrative mediates the hidden dimensions of our inner lives. The images are intended to function as symbolic, inner representations that become, to echo the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ‘reflections of the spiritual world in the mirror of the material and the temporal.’ They trace the movement of human consciousness through one of its most delicate, poignant states: the surrender to an absolute, all-consuming love. The range of experience of this power extends over an entire lifetime, from the excited, naïve heartbeats of a teenager’s first love to the expansive realization of a much larger Love that is the fundamental, universal principle of human existence, glimpsed later in life and described in detail by saints and mystics in all cultures throughout history. The images in the three acts contain interweaving, recurring threads but are distinct in reflecting different stages of the lover’s path toward liberation.”459

Given its deliberately universal character, “The Tristan Project” was in a position not only to be exhibited outside the context of the Wagnerian opera but also to be divided into several works that could function independently from each other.460 This means that we can approach Purification (2005) as a selfsufficient work—without, for all that, neglecting the primary reason for its creation. It does in fact cover the first act of Tristan und Isolde: “Act I presents the theme of the purification, the universal act of the individual’s preparation for the symbolic sacrifice and death required for the transformation and rebirth of the self. The mutual decision to drink death plunges the lovers beneath the surface to reveal the infinite ocean of an invisible immaterial world.”461

Purification (2005) is a silent video installation consisting of two rear projected screens mounted against the wall in a diptych. The work is structured in seven image sequences that unfold in slow motion for a total length of slightly more than 50 minutes. The seven sequences of Purification are as follows: The Approach; The Arrival; The Disrobing; Ablutions; Basin of Tears; The Cleansing; Dissolution.462 These sequences comprise a continuous incarnation of the different stages of the ritual for preparing the symbolic sacrifice required for the two lovers’ transformation and rebirth.

175 The two screens act as doors, their casings decorated with molding. They open onto a lunar atmosphere, where the bluishgray floor is streaked with shafts of light close to the horizon; the upper third of the two screens is deep black. Two white dots appear in the center of the horizon. They grow larger as one watches: two human shapes are moving in the distance, cloaked in light. The light then grows distilled and encircles the two figures, now in full black, with a halo. They start walking toward the viewer. After a few moments we can see the two lovers, the woman on the righthand screen, the man on the left. Finally they walk through the doorway and stand there without moving, confronting our gaze (fig. 77, The Approach). The following shot confronts us with their silhouettes plunged into darkness and projected against a weakly lit stony graybrown background. They remove their coats and put them down off camera, making quarter turns (the woman on our left and the man on our right), before resuming their initial position. They take a small step forward; the light progressively illuminates them, revealing the brilliant colors of their clothing (fig. 78, The Arrival). They adjust their breathing, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Their eyes close and their faces express extreme concentration. Now they remove all their clothes, and each is helped by an assistant of the same sex. Their clothes and pendants are placed on an altar table (fig. 79, The Disrobing). In the sequence that follows, a long stream of water flows vertically from top to bottom in the foreground, dividing each of the screens in two. The two naked protagonists, with an eminently liturgical expression, enter the scene from the side (the woman from our left, the man from our right). Their outstretched arms, palms up, are carrying a folded rectangular cloth, a sort of manutergium.463 They stand motionless for a moment facing this source of purification; the crystalline stream of water makes a powerful contrast with the blurred rendering of the other agents located in the background of the image. They move forward and proceed at last with their ablutions, lifting their hands to the flow of water. They begin by holding the water, their palms cupped to form a receptacle, then they proceed with the actual washing of their hands. The washing is concluded with their hands still in this cupped position, then both hands open and, palms forward, move slowly away from the stream of water before returning to their bodies. Once they have finished their ablutions, we watch the water streaming for a few more seconds, and the scene is now plunged into a shadowy light (fig. 80, Ablutions).

463 In the Roman Catholic tradition the manutergium is a liturgical cloth which the priest uses to dry his hands after washing them during the gesture known as the lavabo.

176 77-78. B ill Viola, Purification,

2005, rear projected color High-Definition video diptych, screen size: 223 cm x 260 cm; room dimensions variable. Performers: Jeff Mills, Lisa Rhoden. Photos: Kira Perov.

See supra n. 446. On the question of the refraction of the face through the drop of water in Migration and in the installation He Weeps for You, see also A.-M. Duguet, 1986/l987, p. 12. 466 D. Ross/P. Sellars, 1997, p. 59 (introductory text for He Weeps for You by B. Viola): “The simultaneous scales represented in the live video/water system draw a connection to the traditional philosophy or belief that everything on the higher order of existence reflects, and is contained in, the manifestation and operation of the lower orders. This idea has been expressed in ancient religious terms as the symbolic of the mundane (the earth) and the divine (the heavens), and is also represented in theories of contemporary physics that describe how each particle of matter in space contains knowledge or information of the entire system.” 467 These words are from a passage in The Secret Rose Garden (Gulshan-i Raz/ca.1317) by the Sufi mystic Mahmud Shabistari, a passage which Bill Viola retranscribed in one of his notebooks (December 1, 1977) in: B. Viola, 1995, pp. 42-43, here p. 43. Cf. M. Shabistari, The Secret Rose Garden, p. 63: “Know the world from end to end is a mir464 465

The two characters wearing simple loin cloths are now standing, heads lowered, in front of an altar table located in the foreground of the image, on which a round basin filled with water has been placed. They raise their heads and walk slowly toward the basin, in such a way that the reflection of their faces and shoulders appears progressively on the surface of the water. They place their hands flat on the table, close their eyes, and lean toward the recipient (fig. 81, Basin of Tears). Basin of Tears reproduces the cycle of inclination, immersion of the face, and straightening up with which we have been familiar since Surrender. Just as their reflection becomes troubled following the emersion of their face from the basin, this trouble is further accentuated by the tears on their faces which they now let fall again to the surface. The two protagonists also repeat this cycle three times over.464 Shortly before their second immersion, they grasp the basin with their hands, and when they break the surface for the second then third time, the water spills over with increasing intensity. The last time they emerge from the water their smiles are ecstatic, but very quickly their features become distraught and express a deep sorrow. Their heads shudder to the sobs shaking their bodies, emphasizing their dejection. Once again, in a still more evocative way, we are confronted with a “baptism of tears.” This ritual of immersion and emersion at the basin of tears is one of the different phases of the process of purification that is threaded throughout the work. The exhibition of the reflection of a face in a basin with this shape has already appeared in Viola’s work. Migration (1976, videotape) depicts the reflection of the artist’s face (we do not see his actual face) on the surface of a bowl of water resting on the table where he is sitting. Water slowly drips, one drop at a time, from a faucet placed above the bowl, blurring the reflection (fig. 82). In its final sequence Migration further insists on the phenomenon of reflected facial distortion: the camera takes a close-up of the drops as they fall and uses them as an additional lens through which the artist’s refracted face appears upside-down. The drop stretches the face and distorts it, taking it along it as it falls. At the time, the phenomenon of the drop of water refracting the surrounding space also constituted the central theme of an installation entitled He Weeps for You (1976, video/sound installation) (figs. 83-84).465 The drop of water which, in a relation of microcosm to macrocosm,466 contains “a hundred pure oceans,”467 might also be assimilated—even by its title alone—to a tear. Basin of Tears is, therefore, a succinct, accomplished synthesis of the work Viola had already been producing for a number of years. The sequence—which represents a ritual of baptismal im-

177

178 79-80. B ill Viola, Purification, 2005.

ror; / In each atom a hundred suns are concealed. / If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water, / From it will flow a hundred clear oceans; / If you look intently at each speck of dust, / In it you will see a thousand beings, / A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant; / In name a drop of water resembles the Nile, / In the heart of a barley-corn is stored a hundred harvests, / Within a millet-seed a world exists, / In an insect’s wing is an ocean of life, / A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye, / The core in the center of the heart is small, / Yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.”

mersion in the process of purification—combines the expression of human passion, the play of blurred mirrors, and streams of tears. The penultimate phase of Purification is entitled The Cleansing (fig. 85). The two actors are crouching, wearing only their loin cloths. They breathe deeply for a few seconds, then rise up on their knees. Their two servants located in the background take hold of a jar placed on a stand and come over to them. The two kneeling protagonists cross their arms over their chests and bow their heads, before the two assistants pour the contents of the jar over their bodies. Once the ablutions are completed, the assistants withdraw to the back of the image; the man and the woman, apparently afflicted, remain on their knees, raise their heads then lower their arms alongside their hips. Dissolution is the seventh and last sequence of Purification. The man and the woman find themselves in front of a brushed blue background. We can see the upper part of their naked torsos and their heads. Their faces are scrubbed, their hair pulled back. Their eyes are closed and their expression is serene. They seem completely motionless until their noses penetrate a surface which we presume is liquid, given the ripples that form around the contact zone. Their faces dip gradually deeper into the water—or are they, on the contrary, pulling away? At the beginning it is difficult to tell which side of the water’s surface their faces are on: are they breaking through the surface in order to go into the water, or to withdraw (fig. 86, Dissolution)? The fine edge of the surface, the line of demarcation between the space where their faces are entering/withdrawing and that containing their bodies is gradually growing larger so that, once the characters stop moving, we can see the corpse-like color of their faces, and their protruding veins. Their faces, through refraction, are disproportionately large in comparison with their bodies, and their necks are no longer visible. These various signs make it obvious that the two actors have plunged their faces into the water and not the other way round. They open their eyes (fig. 87, Dissolution). After a few moments, one after the other, they blink, a first time. Then a second time, again one after the other but at a shorter interval; this time two air bubbles escape from the corner of the man’s eyes, rise to the surface (they seem to be going down but are actually rising) and thus certify that their faces are indeed under water. The woman blinks her eyes one last time. Suddenly they breathe out all at once, making large bubbles, then rise up out of the water. A shower of “tears” pearls their faces— now on the other side—and strikes the surface of the water (fig. 88, Dissolution). We are watching the scene from within the “basin

179

180

81. Bill Viola, Purification, 2005. 82. Bill

Viola, Migration, 1976, videotape, color, mono sound; 7 minutes, produced in association with Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Photo: Kira Perov.

181

83-84. Bill Viola, He Weeps

for You, 1976, video/ sound installation, 3.7 m x 7.9 m x 11 m, water drop from copper pipe; live color camera with macro lens; amplified drum; video projection in dark room. Photos: Kira Perov.

182

85. Bill Viola, Purification, 2005.

468 This is the second moment of the “the stage of the other” (A.2), that of the naïve reception of the medium as a simple obstacle. 469 Therefore we clearly cannot see the same effect of “bimediality’ of the image encountered earlier in Surrender. Cf. in particular supra n. 438.

of tears,” from this baptismal font, so to speak. The surface is agitated and now constitutes a watery obstacle between the camera lens and the protagonists’ faces. This blurred obstacle distorts their faces and prevents us from seeing them clearly. Our underwater position is precisely that which Ovid’s Narcissus ascribed to “the other,” when he despaired of ever being able to embrace him, until he recognized the figure of his reflection.468 We are indeed on the other side of that “thin layer of water”—located between the screen and the stage, not a watery mirror (support-medium of a reflected image) but a “simple” blurred obstacle469—and we are confronted with both of these faces on both of these screens; all that remains is to imitate them and let our own tears fall: “Whoever you are come out to me! Why do you disappoint me, you extraordinary boy? Where do you vanish when I reach for you? Surely my form and years are not what you flee from, and I am one that the nymphs have loved! You offer me some unknown hope with your friendly face and when I stretch my arms out to you, you stretch out yours. When I

183 smile, you smile back. And I have often seen your tears when I weep tears [my Italics].” (Met., III, 454-460)

The scene continues in this way for roughly two minutes, until the colors that lit up the image begin to fade. The image turns progressively to black and white; the agitation of the water is such that we can hardly make out their features and cannot tell the woman from the man. They are no longer specific faces, they are just any face (fig. 89, Dissolution). Soon they will no longer be human faces but swollen spots. The light is fading now and the screen founders in darkness as we head toward complete obscurity. Only a few rare ripples still shine on the surface. Then, nothing; Purification ends with this image of nothingness. As we wander through Bill Viola’s world of distorted faces and surfaces—from In Version (1973) to Dissolution (2005)—in search of an ever purer representation of the primary human emotions, we are rapidly confronted with a medial and mystical understanding of tears. Tears are—in the double light which Bill Viola’s work almost systematically casts upon them—a blurring, a zone of interference, whether they are located between the image and the viewer or are even endogenous to the image. Whether they are wept and wept again on actors’ faces or eventually well up empathetically in our own eyes, tears blur our gaze and darken the object of our perception. But this disruption of our vision is alone capable of leading us to that which we cannot see solely with our eyes. The philosopher Jacques Derrida devotes the final pages of his book entitled Memoirs of the Blind: the Self-Portrait and Other Ruins470 to the relationship between sight and tears, to conclude that tears, even more than sight and knowledge, are the essence of the eye: “What does the anthropo-theological discourse (which we shall leave open here like an eye, the most lucid and the most blind) say about this? That if the eyes of all animals are destined for sight, and perhaps by means of this for the scopic knowledge of animal rationale, only man knows how to go beyond seeing and knowing [savoir], because only he knows how to weep. (‘But only human eyes can weep,’ writes Andrew Marvell.) Only man knows how to see this [voir ça]—that tears and not sight are the essence of the eye. The essence of the eye is proper to man. Contrary to what one believes one knows, the best point of view (and the point of view will have been our theme) is a source-point and a watering hole, a water-point— which thus comes down to tears. The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. The revelatory or apocalyptic blindness, the blindness that reveals the very truth of the eyes, would be the gaze veiled by tears. It neither sees nor does not see: it is indifferent to its blurred vision.

470 J. Derrida, (1990) 1993. This work was published for the exhibition of the same name [Mémoires d’aveugle: l’autoportrait et autres ruines] and the choice of comments and drawings which inspired it was entrusted to Derrida by the Louvre Museum. The exhibition was held at the Louvre in the Hall Napoléon from October 26, 1990 to January 21, 1991.

184

86

88

185

87

86-89. Bill Viola, Purification, 2005. 89

186 It implores: first of all in order to know from where these tears stream down and from whose eyes they come to well up. From where and from whom this mourning or these tears of joy? The essence of eye, this eye water?”471

J. Derrida, (1990) 1993, pp. 126-127. 471

While we are not here to force a comparison between Derrida’s blind man and Viola’s viewer, this reminder of the possible tension between seeing, knowing, and weeping, all of which can occur in the human eye, enlightens us as to what, in the final analysis, we must retain from Viola’s work: that it is only through tears that one sees properly.

6

Jeff Wall Self-Representation and the Self-Reflectivity of the Medium The works of Jeff Wall initially hold the viewer’s attention because of the original way in which they are displayed. The photographic image is actually inserted into a rectangular box whose outside surface is illuminated from behind (fig. 90). The photograph is presented here like a transparent film similar to a slide—a transparency in a lightbox—and placed against a white material in such a way that one cannot see through the image. Thus the fluorescent bulbs cast an even light over the surface and we see only the illuminated image.472 This technique, borrowed from advertising,473 was already used by Jeff Wall as an esthetic device starting at the end of the 1970s, when he chose to differentiate his work from conceptualism and devote himself to the “photographic tableau.” Double Self-Portrait (1979) depicts two photographic self-portraits, the representation of two “medial” doubles (fig. 91). Jeff Wall replicates his own double in the image. This photomontage results in the paradoxical representation of two self-portraits. Something of the impossible emanates from the work, a feeling of déjà-vu of the figure from one double to the other; the composition makes the work strange, unheimlich: “I feel that there has always been a grain of ‘improbable’ in my pictures and in my characters. […] I made a ‘double’ in 1979. […] I have always thought of my ‘realistic’ work as populated with spectral characters whose state of being was not that fixed.”474

The two doubles are training their gaze at the same point beyond the threshold of the image, in the direction of the camera lens, the instrument creating the image, whose author happens to be, one way or another, Jeff Wall in person (fig. 92). Thus the artist establishes a triangular relationship between his real I and his replicated medial I. The artist’s “I”—in a distant reference to

472 Wall uses this technique (silver dye bleach transparency in lightbox) in all his color photographs. His black and white pictures, on the other hand, are generally gelatin silver prints. Cf. J.P. Krief [et al.], 2000 (documentary). Jeff Wall refers, moreover, in several articles, to the display mode of his large-format images; see also J. Wall (1979) 2005, pp. 437-438; J. Wall, 2003, pp. 188-193. 473 This type of backlit picture is frequently seen in airports, for example. 474 J. Wall/A. Pelenc, (1996) 2003, p. 13.

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90. Jeff Wall, Stereo, 1980 [Installation view, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1993], Jeff Wall Studio.

475 “Je est un autre,” in: A. Rimbaud, (1871) 1975a, p. 113. See also, in the same work, A. Rimbaud, (1871) 1975b, p. 135. Double Self-Portrait was moreover exhibited in 2000 in Düsseldorf within the framework of an exhibition entitled: Ich ist etwas Anderes [I is Another]. Kunst am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Kunstsammlung N o r d r h e i n -We s t f a l e n , Düsseldorf, February 19 to June 18, 2000. Cf. R. Spieler, 2000, pp. 214-215.

Rimbaud’s famous words—is not “another” in this image but in fact “two others.”475 Wall further accentuates otherness and the dissociation between the doubles in the image; they are distinct from each other by virtue of their body language and the different clothes they are wearing. The double on the right faces the viewer with his head turned slightly to his left. His left hand is on his hip and his right hand is holding the back of the chair in the center of the representation. On his right wrist he is wearing a watch. The avatar on the left displays his right side from a narrower angle, and his crossed arms are hiding his hands. He has no watch on his wrist but the pallor of his skin in that very spot indicates that he frequently does wear a watch. This last detail has a unitive function insofar as it reveals that the two figures not only share the same face and body but also have the same skin tone: these two images were probably taken at the same time, and the picture knows no real internal temporal split. The play of unity/otherness animating Narcissus’ relation to his double on “the other side of the medium” is evoked here not in the shape of a mirror-self-portrait but with the features of a strat-

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egy of improbable representation, in line with the “double representation” of the artist’s double within the work. Their differences and similarities are the result of a photomontage, beyond any phenomenon of specular inversion. This is, in a way, the “montage stage” at the service of self-representation.

91. Jeff Wall, Double Self-Portrait, 1979, transparency in lightbox, 172 cm x 229 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

92. Jeff Wall, Double Self-Portrait, production shot, Jeff Wall Studio.

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93. Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, 1979, transparency in lightbox, 142.5 cm x 204.5 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

476 See T. Vischer/H. Naef, 2005, p. 277: “Picture for Women was photographed in a borrowed studio in Vancouver in winter 1979. The male figure is the artist. Wall made another self-portrait in the same year, Double Self-Portrait (cat. 5). Since then, he has not photographed himself”; p. 283: “Double Self-Portrait was photographed on a set in a borrowed studio in Vancouver in winterspring 1979. As in Picture for

That same year, and in all likelihood during the same period,476 Jeff Wall had already left his imprint on the equivocal enterprise of his photographic self-representation through a major work. Picture for Women (1979) is constructed like a triptych (fig. 93).477 Two silver metal tripods, whose ends we cannot see—they are probably holding up two projectors—divide the space into three compartments. A woman fills the left hand side,478 and her hands are resting on a wooden board running along the image and marking the boundary between the space of the image and the space of the viewer. The central section shows a camera on a tripod. To the right stands Women (cat. 3), the vertical seam, where the two transparencies overlap and are joined together, is deliberately emphasized.” 477 For a detailed description of this image, see also T. de Duve, (1996) 2003, pp. 30-31; D. Campany, 2007, pp. 7-25; D. Campany, 2011. 478 It should be noted that Picture for Women alludes to the context of militant feminism in the 1970s as well as to the erotic nature of the relationships governing man/woman – painter/model. See also R. Rochlitz, 1998, pp. 392399; D. Campany, 2011.

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Jeff Wall in person, in front of a chair that has more padding than the ones set up in the background. In his hand he is holding a shutter cable which will allow him to press the shutter at a distance. The background of the image is an empty classroom: to the left there is an untidy desk along with a chair. To the right a number of chairs fill the space. The ceiling is covered with an excessive number of lights as well as a complicated network of visible pipes. Several wires connect the lights (and other elements necessary for the proper functioning of this photographic construction site, not visible in the image) to the multiple extension cords meandering across the floor. In sum the entire image is offered to the viewer as if it were a reflected image, like a photograph of a mirror revealing what was placed in front of it at the time. It is obvious that the structure of Picture for Women is directly related to Manet’s Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère (fig. 94), with which Wall was very well-acquainted, as he had lived in London from 1970 to 1973, thanks to a scholarship he was awarded by the very same Courtauld Institute of Art.479 A number of the scenic components found in Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère—the woman visible to all,

94. Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882, oil on canvas, 96 cm x 130 cm, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery.

Cf. J. Wall/E. Barents, (1986) 2007, pp. 187-188. On the connection between Picture for Women and Un Bar aux FoliesBergères, see among others: T. de Duve, (1996) 2003, pp. 3031; P. Galassi, 2007, pp. 26-28; V. Hammerbacher, 2010, pp. 4347 and pp. 63-69; D. Campany, 2011. 479

192 We must insist in a general way upon the heterochrony which distinguishes the timespace of the place always reflected in the photographed mirrorimage and the time-space of the viewer when he/she gazes into this “frozen” mirror. Cf. V.I. Stoichita, (1993) 1997, pp. 184197; p. 197: “[…] the key to the paradox created by the representation of painted mirrors: If the mirror is an ‘image’ only as long as someone (or something) is standing in front of it, the painted image continues to ‘reflect’ even if the object of this reflection has for some time been ‘elsewhere’.” 481 Maurice Du Seigneur, quoted in T.J. Clark, (1985) 1990, p. 312 n. 71: “(Follows a description of Ernest Duez’s picture Autour de la lampe) This tranquil, bourgeois interior will inspire more than merely François Coppée; the family is an excellent thing, but one will not be hanged for going to fetch a few human or feminine documents at the FoliesBergères—Monsieur Manet’s Le Bar almost makes us feel like going there one evening, to understand, in nature, the truth of the reflection of the room in the mirror. I won’t deny that Monsieur Manet has painted truthfully; the young lady at the counter, with her hair trimmed across her forehead, her annoyed expression, the bottles of champagne and multicolored liqueurs, the oranges in a pile, the sucres de pomme all in a cluster, are drawn from life…but that devilish reflection makes us reflect [Mais ce diable de miroir nous donne à réfléchir]—‘It’s been gallantly painted, after all!’ Don’t you agree?” [Translation: A. Anderson]. 480

the man standing to the far right of the picture, the mirror reflecting the space which was once before him and where the viewer now stands,480 the lighting in the room, the two columns which divide the image in the background, etc.—are ingeniously reformulated in Picture for Women. Manet’s work, signed, and dated 1882 on the label of a bottle of liqueur in the lower left of the painting, is centered around the representation of an impossible mirror—“that devilish reflection makes us reflect [Mais ce diable de miroir nous donne à réfléchir],”481 commented the critic Maurice Du Seigneur after observing Le Bar at the Salon of 1882—literally dissociating the young woman, ready to serve us, at the center of the picture from her own reflection, featured at an angle and far too busy conversing with another admirer.482 But beyond these similarities, Jeff Wall’s photograph serves other purposes. It places the “painter” and his model on the same side of the “canvas,” and explores the theme of the artist’s self-portrait as he is making the picture. This self-portrait is to be found in the framework of a production scenario of the work. The artist makes himself visible within the “photographic tableau” but subordinates his own insertion to the process of creation of the image: it is I, Jeff Wall, whom you see, in the process of taking the picture, in the process of pressing the shutter. And indeed, if we observe attentively the cable connecting the camera to the trigger, we can see a slight doubling of the cable where it is near the artist’s hand.483 This kinetic blurriness—an effect of the time of exposure of the film to the light—constitutes the theme of movement at this very spot. The artist’s hand contracts and presses on the shutter; the image focuses on the instant the photograph is taken. This production scenario has been imported into the image by means of the mirrorsurface, which blends into the photographic surface. The mirror is not visible in the image, and yet the image is entirely displayed as an image in the mirror. The reflection, including self-reflection, is the major axis for comprehension of the work.484 The photographic surface, therefore, gives us the reflected representation of a three-dimensional space, hosting the image’s production scenario. But at the same time it asserts itself as a surface, emphasizing its flatness, its two-dimensional nature. In an audio-

For a detailed description of Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, cf. T. J. Clark, (1985) 1990, pp. 239-258. 483 See also C. Burnett, 2005, p. 13. 484 For further discussion of the relationship between self-portrait and production scenario, cf. V.I. Stoichita, (1993) 1997, pp. 226-267. 482

193 visual monologue where he was asked to speak about his work, Jeff Wall pointed out that in Picture for Women, as in several of his works of a certain size, the image had to be printed on two separate pieces of film. The two parts are generally “seamed” with clear scotch tape. Where they meet there is a slight overlap and this creates a thin black line which Wall sometimes decides to hide, sometimes not. Beforehand he always considers the relation between this break and the image as a whole, as well as the place where it will appear. He concluded his observation by asserting that a break like this brings the viewer’s gaze back to the surface and creates a dialectic between depth and flat surface—a dialectic which he learned from painting and which he has always appreciated.485 Here, the fine black line runs vertically through the center of the image.486 It divides the surface into two equal parts and in so doing divides the very lens of the “image box.” This acts as a reminder of the true nature of what we are observing: a flat surface resulting from the activation of a camera. Picture for Women, therefore, belongs to two self-referential modalities: the scenic modality of the image, focalized on the reflection of its own production scenario, and the material modality of displaying the image—the fragmented photographic surface—in order not to trick us as to its nature. But while the surface may intentionally surrender to our gaze, the spatial mise en scène, on the other hand, warrants further examination. The mirror is the key to the relationship between the “inside” of the image and the “outside” of the image. It is an obligatory medial passage, inscribed within the very surface of the photograph, visually indissociable from the image.487 In order to understand the work, our gaze must confront the image’s bi-mediality, and recognize it as a photographic image that is an image in the mirror. Finally, the “photographed mirror” crystallizes the visual relation the various actors in the image have among themselves as well as with the outside of the image (fig. 95). Jeff Wall plays the role of an active authority in the photograph, his body in profile and his face from three quarters, not looking at the viewer. He is, however, observing his model through the mirror. The model has her gaze turned toward the “reflection“ of the camera—the place where we are now standing. Intangibly, the camera eye is taking its photograph in the mirror, whereas it seems to be staring at us with an inquisitive gaze, ready to capture our image. As we study the work we might ask ourselves: what if there were no mirror? What if this were a photograph taken from another camera located opposite this composition of “making” a photograph, and not a camera taking its own picture in a mir-

485 See J.-P. Krief [et al.], 2000 (documentary); T. Vischer/H. Naef, 2005, pp. 277-279. See also supra n. 476. 486 However on most photographic reproductions the black seam does not show up. 487 See T. de Duve, (1996) 2003, pp. 29-31; p. 30: “It is the work with which Wall has once and for all made visible the invisibility of the picture plane in photography, while also respecting it. His solution is literally to have made a mirror capable of holding the image, a mirror which is never opaque (something photography cannot be), but is simultaneously transparent and reflective.”

194 95. Diagram by Thierry de Duve, Picture for Women, Jeff Wall Studio.

488 The fact the watch is worn on the right wrist in Double SelfPortrait could be an additional guarantee of the presence of a mirror in Picture for Women. 489 In favor of the mirror thesis—if further proof is necessary—one should also mention the inversion of the various numbers on the camera’s metering system, and of the stickers on the tripod, which are not easy to detect, however, unless one resorts to a very close, careful examination of the work, which was not necessary for the watch and the make of the camera.

ror? What if the elements of the picture were visible according to their actual position in space, without being subjected to specular inversion? With no other information than that which the image is willing to provide, we cannot resolve to a degree of absolute certainty the ambiguity we encounter when facing the image. A deeper examination can nevertheless offer up a few more or less conclusive clues. Jeff Wall’s watch, for example, does not help us much. It would seem that most human beings—whether they are right- or left-handed—wear their watch on their left wrist. And that is what the picture shows us. But if the work is reflected in the mirror, then the artist is actually wearing his watch on his right wrist.488 Is the artist playing with this common assumption in order to delude us? It is impossible to say. Another more reliable clue relates to the inscription and logo that are just above the camera lens. The inscription tells us the make of the camera: TECHNIKA. It appears clearly reversed in the picture, and thus offers reliable proof of the medial intervention of a mirror (fig. 96).489 This role as guarantor for the presence of a reflective surface thus seems to echo directly the label on the bottle of pinkish-orange liqueur located to the far left in Manet’s Un Bar

195 96. Jeff Wall, Picture for Wom-

en, 1979, detail, transparency in lightbox, 142.5 cm x 204.5 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

aux Folies-Bergères (fig. 94).490 Painted in the background, this bottle of liqueur, by leaving the edge of its label visible, demonstrably asserts that it is the reflection of the back of the bottle located in the foreground, whose label is not totally visible from the angle from which we are viewing it. This bottle of liqueur, therefore, through the effect of reflection, is actively inciting us to recognize the presence of a mirror in Manet’s painting.491 It is interesting to note that the label of the bottle, in addition to two indecipherable motifs, has an inscription at the bottom: “Manet, 1882.” Not content with merely revealing the structure of the picture, the label, through this detail, conveys the authorial and temporal origins of the work; it reminds us that it was the painter Manet who created Le Bar in 1882.

490 My thanks to V.I. Stoichita here for pointing out this detail during a discussion following my presentation at a seminar at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma (ISR) in 2006. 491 T.J. Clark, (1985) 1990, p. 249: “Behind the girl is a mirror. One can make out the yellow molding of its frame on either side of the barmaid’s wrists, and take in the general haze and dazzle on the glass – the illusion being strongest towards the left, where white paint obscures the distant balcony, or over the heads of the crowd at the right. A mirror it palpably is: one has only to notice the edge of the marble counter reflected in it, or the back view of the bottle of pink liqueur, for the illusion to be inescapable. […]”

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492 Concerning the “difficult” beauty of this image, see also T. de Duve, (1996) 2003, p. 31. Cf. David Campany, who also interrogates the presence of a mirror in Picture for Women. He notes, in particular, the manufacturer’s nameplate that reads backwards and theorizes that this effect could be the result of reversing the transparency left to right, in D. Campany, 2007, p. 22; D. Campany, 2011, pp. 67-69. 493 See supra n. 480.

To return to Wall’s photograph, after this brief commentary on its filiation with Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, it would appear that the signature inscription of Technika on the camera also serves to a certain extent both to decode the image and introduce the author. The inscription which we see backwards acts to indicate the effect of the mirror as well as indirectly to “sign” the work; naturally it is not Technika that is at the origin of the work, but Jeff Wall, who poses as the creator of the image by using a Linhof Technika 4x5 camera. Given the fact that the photographic surface and the mirror have blended together here, let us imagine for a moment that we have been the victims of some mischief on the part of the artist, who might have intentionally reversed the inscription to make us believe in the presence of a mirror, although this is not the case. This persistent difficulty is what informs the beauty and constitutes the interest of Picture for Woman.492 The point is not to try indefinitely to resolve the difficulty, but to understand its consequences and focus on the duplicity of what the photograph is showing us: a representation by means of reflection/a direct representation knowingly arranged like a representation in the mirror. The fact remains that Jeff Wall has given us his photographic self-portrait, regardless of how he has gone about it: using either a camera that is taking its own picture in the mirror, or a camera located opposite the scene it is photographing. This duality which the image unveils can nevertheless confuse our initial intuition and thus prevent us from understanding the exact nature of this medial double; are we seeing the artist’s photographic image or the photographic image of the reflection of the artist? Are we at a double distance from him or not? The strategy of representation stamped with the seal of ambiguity which characterizes Picture for Women introduces a variation on the theme of Narcissus at the spring. Narcissus is already implicitly present, insofar as the image has as its theme the self-representation of the artist on a medial surface. The inspiration on the part of the myth is all the more ostensible in that the viewer might find it difficult to make out what he or she is seeing: is this the specular double of the artist as transmitted by a mirror “fixed” on an earlier representation—a mirror which paradoxically does not reflect us493—or is it the “simple” photographic double of the artist, who has staged himself posing in front of the mirror? The author of the image is mischievously questioning our ability to recognize the medium. This interrogation purports to trouble us and make us hesitate constantly between real presence and illusory presence of the mirror.

197 After Double Self-Portrait and Picture for Women, Jeff Wall never again portrayed himself in his own work.494 While the paradigm of Narcissus would continue to manifest its presence in various forms, the mastery of an esthetics of illusion involving the relation between real space and representational space was already present in his very first large-format photographic work, displayed in a lightbox. The Destroyed Room was designed and staged in his studio in 1978 (fig. 97). The image represents a devastated room, where the center is filled with a partially overturned mattress that has been ripped open along its entire length. Underwear and female accessories are scattered throughout the scene and overflow from the drawers. The walls, with their oppressive Pompeian red color, vandalized here and there, evoke a plush, almost pornographic atmosphere. There is an air of unprecedented violence—as if the room had just been brutally raided. The formal composition and scenic virulence echo Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (1827) in particular, which Wall had seen at the Louvre (fig. 98).495 The chaos reigning in the room, moreover, follows the same rhythm as the painting in the Louvre: a wave of furniture and clothing crashes across the room along an identical dynamic, a descending diagonal from left to right. But in fact there is nothing intrinsically chaotic about the picture: it has been carefully studied, and obeys a pictorial composition prepared right down to the finest detail.496 Moreover, the work contains powerful self-referential qualities: it has been deliberately set up as a totally constructed space. Indexed traces of the space from which it results—the studio—are made obvious at various places in the room. For example, a door on the left gives onto a white wall, opens onto a “nowhere” and allows us to see the framework of this scenographic “box.” A beam even crosses the representational field, apparent in the décor. The image is no more than a rudimentary theatre décor, a perspective box embedded in another box, the studio, and it is not afraid to be shown as such. It is openly displayed as a purely artificial construction and not as a credible dwelling place. The year of its creation, The Destroyed Room was exhibited for the first time at the Nova Gallery in Vancouver (fig. 99). The transparency was embedded in a wall directly behind the gallery’s front window and was artificially lit from behind, both day and night.497 Thus the work was only visible outside the building, from the street. Commercially inspired, this tactic for exhibiting and lighting the work made it similar to the indoor decoration of a shop window.498 Passers-by would be irresistibly drawn to the incoherence of a commercial exhibition space presenting such a chaotic and repellant arrangement of things that were supposedly for sale.

Jeff Wall does however appear accessorily and almost unidentifiably in Pleading (1984, printed in 1988). Cf. R. Rochlitz, 1998, p. 388. 495 See T. Vischer/H. Naef, 2005, p. 274. 496 Jeff Wall frequently likes to speak of the “cinematographic” construction behind the staging of his images: “The poetics or the ʻproductivity' of my work has been in the stagecraft and pictorial composition—what I call ʻcinematography',” in: J. Wall/A. Pelenc, (1996) 2003, p. 17. 497 Only later would it be properly exhibited in a lightbox. Cf. T. Vischer/H. Naef, 2005, p. 275. 498 D. Graham, (1980) 2003, pp. 240-241. 494

198

97. Jeff Wall, The Destroyed

Room, 1978, transparency in lightbox, 159 cm x 234 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

Disturbed by the contradiction, eager for an explanation, they might even be compelled to think of this space as a private interior that had been smashed to pieces for all to see, curtains opened wide. Any judicious observer, however, would quickly be able to spot the ambiguity by going up to the window and discovering a photographic surface where a real surface should have been—regardless of whether the window was being used for commercial purposes, or whether it aroused still further the viewer’s voyeurism by revealing a devastated bedroom. Whatever the case may be, this way of presenting Wall’s “photographic tableau” obeyed the ludic principle behind the trompel’oeil, toying with the degree of reality of what the shop windowsurface would reveal to us. Once the bubble of illusion was pricked, the viewer would probably meditate on the deception the artist achieved by using a mise en scène and an industrial technology for purposes that were both critical and esthetic. But a curious fact remains. The moment the window decoration is identified as a photograph, the image becomes all the more

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striking, revealing certain aspects of the conditions under which it was made. It is a photograph one sees behind the window, but the image shows us even more: it is a photograph that has been entirely constructed in the studio, presenting a rudimentary architecture that has never been a window decoration and still less a bedroom. The Destroyed Room functions here as a trompe-l’oeil, a fake arrangement of the window space at the Nova Gallery, while integrating non-fictional elements regarding its creation, “dis-illusions” acting as keys to the reading of the work. When all is said and done, The Destroyed Room is based upon a quantity of contradictory information: ordered chaos, a room that is nothing more than a cardboard box, an unsavory shop window, an image that moves from inganno to self-referentiality, in other words from a mimetic device acting as a deception to a photograph examining itself. In the beginning viewers might be disoriented by this device made all of oxymorons, then they will grasp the deliberately equivocal nature of the work and, finally, enjoy their perception of it.

98. Eugène Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1827, oil on canvas, 392 cm x 496 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

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99. Nova Gallery, 1978, Vancouver, Jeff Wall Studio.

The ambiguity of the image within the framework of a reflection of a spatial and/or medial order is a constant in Jeff Wall’s body of photographic work. Following his initial experiments, aspects related to the myth of Narcissus would continue to be expressed under new forms, revealing in particular an emphatic interest in the liquid element and its properties. This change of perspective can also be associated with a displacement of the question of self-referentiality, of the reflexivity of the work of art in Jeff Wall’s creative process. In 2001 during an interview with Jan Tumlir, Jeff Wall referred to the more polemical or accentuated positions he had adopted in his earlier work with regard to the notion of reflexivity and his present desire to evoke this quality of the work in a more subtle fashion: “WALL. Because I grew up at the time I did, and experienced the art I did, I’ve always felt that good art has to reflect somehow on its own process of coming to be. I have never been really convinced that this reflexivity had to be made explicit, though, as it has been in so many artists’ works. I’ve always thought that if work is good it will automatically contain that reflection, but you won’t be able to see it immediately. It will flicker into view in some subtle way. TUMLIR. Perhaps you’re also recycling themes that had a polemical relation to the medium, to critical theory, etc., but within this more open-ended

201 framework. WALL. Yes that’s possible. I see pictures I’ve done in what you call a ‘polemical’ way as a sort of mannerism, in which different aspects are forced, or exaggerated, or worried, in order to provoke internal problems, to stimulate the kind of reflexivity we were just talking about. But I don’t think this is the only way, or even the best way, to do that. It’s just one possible, interesting way. What I think of as a neorealist strand of my work is just as good, and I’m a bit more interested in that these days. […]”499

Milk, from 1984, shows a squatting man in an urban setting who suddenly explodes a milk carton hidden in a paper bag (fig. 100). This street scene was inspired by a real event. In a Vancouver street Wall came upon a shouting man with a milk carton in his hand. He set about reproducing the scene, abandoning the idea of representing the act of screaming in favor of a violent explosion of the milk carton.500 The way the actor is dressed in the picture suggests a homeless man: he has no laces in his shoes. The camera captures his brief, abrupt, violent and almost compulsive gesture,501 echoed by the spontaneous, uncontrolled splattering of milk in the air. The work explores the indeterminate nature of movement and form taken by scrolling shapes suddenly frozen where they are captured by the photographic instant, which brings an abrupt halt to the flow of liquid. This fascination with the liquid element became the subject of an astonishing article, Photography and Liquid Intelligence, 1989, where Jeff Wall elucidates his desire to represent through imagery a movement that is the opposite of the photographic act, of the mechanical act of opening and closing the camera shutter.502 He develops the contrast between “liquid” and “dry” to a point where he makes it emblematic of a re-

499 J. Wall/J. Tumlir, 2001, p. 156. See also Michael Fried, who has already cited the first part of this passage in:. M. Fried, 2007, p. 512. In a similar context, the better to explain the fact that works of art can suggest attributes which they do not represent, Wall directly refers to Francis Bacon’s words, in: J-P. Criqui, 2006, pp. 42-43: “Of course, something invisible in a picture does not exist, so it is a manner of speaking to put it that way. But I think that works of art do summon up, or suggest, things or qualities they do not depict or present. That power of suggestion is one of their unique qualities and it separates works of art from other depictions, which are exhausted in depicting something and leave nothing to go on in time. I don’t want to be melodramatic about it. If a picture is of high artistic quality, it will usually make such suggestions, such projections in the experience and feelings of the viewer. Francis Bacon said he thought his paintings worked directly on the viewer’s nervous system and were not perceived primarily as visual. He thought this was a property peculiar to painting and maybe he’s right about that. Or it is a property peculiar to his painting. But it might also be possible in photography. The photos Bacon kept in his studio seemed to work on him that way [my Italics].” 500 R. Lauter, 2001, pp. 90-91. Jeff Wall likes to think of himself as a “paint-

er of modern life”—in the Baudelairean tradition of the term, and he attributes an important role in his work to street photography or the expression of social violence. Cf. J. Wall/J-F. Chevrier, 2001, pp. 168-185; J. Wall/A. Pelenc, (1996) 2003, p. 17: “The violence you see in my pictures is social violence. Milk or No derived from things I had seen on the street.” 501 Wall uses the term microgesture. Cf. J. Wall/E. Barents, (1986) 2007, pp. 196-197: “In my pictures feeling, too, is heavily constrained. I think that every figure I have made is filled with suppressed emotion, which isn’t allowed to be seen directly. In Milk, for example, the man’s body is tense and rigid with inexpressivity. It’s the object which is exploding. In my pictures there is a lot of non-gesturing, or very small, compulsive gesturing, what I call ‘microgesture.’ The men’s gestures in No or Mimic are micro-gestures. There are gestures which seem automatic, mechanical, or compulsive. They well up from somewhere deeply social, somewhere I don’t primarily identify with the individual’s unconscious as such.” 502 J. Wall, (1989) 2007, p. 109: “In Milk as in some of my other pictures, an important part is played by complicated natural forms. The explosion of the milk from its container takes a shape which is not really describable or characterizable, but which provokes many associations. A natural form, with its unpredictable contours, is an expression of infinitesimal metamorphoses of quality. Photography seems perfectly adapted for repre-

202 100. Jeff Wall, Milk, 1984, transparency in lightbox, 187 cm x 228.6 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

senting this kind of movement or form. I think this is because the mechanical character of the action of opening and closing the shutter–the substratum of instantaneity which persists in all photography–is the concrete opposite kind of movement from, for example, the flow of a liquid.” 503 J. Wall, (1989) 2007, p. 109. 504 J. Wall, (2000) 2005, p. 393: “My pictures about cleaning and washing are Diagonal Composition, made in 1993, Swept, 1995, Volunteer and Housekeeping, in black and white, 1996, Just Washed, 1997, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, 1999, and maybe some others.” In fact, Jeff Wall has been making such pictures ever since. 505 For a detailed description of this work, see also M. Fried, 2007, pp. 507-517; M. Fried, 2009, pp. 66-76; C. Conley, 2009, pp. 996-1015.

lation between nature and technology, a relation which one eventually finds in the very process of crafting images. Water is an archaism which, even if it must move or disappear from the immediate process of production, continues to connect photography to a mythical past: “So, for me, water–symbolically–represents an archaism in photography, one that is admitted into the process but also excluded, contained or channelled by its hydraulics. This archaism of water, of liquid chemicals, connects photography to the past, to time, in an important way. By calling water an ‘archaism’ here I mean that it embodies a memory-trace of very ancient production-processes–of washing, bleaching, dissolving and so on, which are connected to the origin of techne–like the separation of ores in primitive mining, for example. In this sense, the echo of water in photography evokes its prehistory. I think that this ‘prehistorical’ image of photography–a speculative image in which the apparatus itself can be thought of as not yet having emerged from the mineral and vegetable worlds–can help us understand the ‘dry’ part of photography differently. This dry part I identify with optics and mechanics–with the lens and the shutter, either of the camera or of the projector or enlarger.”503

In his photographs Wall also regularly features the ancestral production processes—washing, bleaching, dissolving, etc.—that connect the photographic “doing” to the origins of techne.504 Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona (1999) shows a man washing one of the picture windows at the Mies van der Rohe Foundation in Barcelona (fig. 101).505 The picture window he

203

is cleaning consists of a number of panels, suggesting the adjacent frames of an unwound film. The panels have just been scrubbed with a mop and are about to be rinsed. The surfaces on the left are already losing their moisture and are covered with a fine, blurred film, clearly reflecting the mop’s to and fro over the glass, whereas the surfaces on the right are still covered with soapy water (fig. 102). Here Wall is evoking the different degrees of surface opacity, as they evolve from the blurriest to the most transparent, from left to right across the picture window, until eventually they reach the

101-102. Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, 1999, transparency in lightbox, 187 cm x 351 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

204

506 See J. Wall/J. Tumlir, 2001, pp. 150-157. 507 See J.-F. Chevrier, (2002) 2003, p. 177.

very absence of any surface separating the interior from the exterior of the Foundation. The glass on the right-hand panel is dry, on the other hand, and allows a view of the external surroundings while reflecting the interior space of the Foundation. The work delights in compiling an inventory of the various stages or functions with which surface can be invested within the framework of a medial reflection. In The Flooded Grave (1998-2000), the watery surface returns to a reflection on the “scopic drive toward death” which overcame Narcissus from the very first moments of his encounter at the spring (fig. 103). This picture—the result of a complex computer montage506—opens onto a “watery grave” in the middle of an ancient cemetery. The grave is carpeted with underwater fauna and flora: this organic “gaping hole [béance organique]”allows us to envisage death as a return to the oceanic world whence all life originates.507 Here the traditional home of the dead body has been reformulated as a remembrance of the prenatal home, of the time when one’s body bathed comfortably in amniotic liquid. The surface of this “womb [matrice]” is constructed according to two levels of density. On the left-hand side a rectangle stands out and gives one the impression of a thicker consistency of the surface at this spot. The remainder is perfectly transparent and is separated from the un-immersed space of the cavity by a fine edging of foam. But if one looks closely, there is, strictly speaking, no body in this grave. Perhaps Narcissus—at the very spot where the viewer is standing—is still gazing at himself in the mirror of his own grave? Or perhaps he is already resting there, metamorphosed into an underwater flower?

205

103. Jeff Wall, The Flooded Grave, 1998-2000, transparency in lightbox, 228.5 cm x 282 cm, Jeff Wall Studio.

7

Conclusion

The myth of Narcissus is a drama, a tragedy. A tragedy of madness, illusion, recognition; a tragedy of unity (of one who dreams of splitting in two), unrequited love, of death. We have noticed, in particular, that the psychoanalytic instrumentalization of the myth in Lacan’s mirror stage can fully convey the meaning of the myth of Narcissus by explaining the drama of the body in relation to its image, and more specifically the omnipresence of its death. Our interpretative exploration of the myth, utilizing Freudian concepts situated within the Lacanian mirror stage, in order, perhaps, to enlighten the myth retroactively, has led to the notion of the “scopic drive toward death.” Such a concept, combining in a same drive-motion life drive [sexual drive] and death drive, seeks to emphasize the indestructible connection between the visual perception of his image and his death: from the moment he sees himself in the spring Narcissus is condemned to an inevitable death.508 This desire to see will not leave him, and will lead him to a slow, wasting death. But it might be useful to consider the “scopic drive toward death” within the context of other visual myths—Medusa, Actaeon, Orpheus, etc.—also exemplifying the combined presence of the gaze and of death.509 If this notion could truly elucidate these myths in interpretative terms, we could then envisage expanding the use of the “scopic drive toward death” to these other typical situations of Western representation, and, consecutively, to their resonance throughout the ages. Francis Bacon, through his endeavors to distort appearance in his self-portraits, aims to capture the sensation and the feeling of life, to seize the vital energy that can be tapped from the sitter’s appearance and simultaneously grasp the daily presence/progression of death. The face, here, is the venue par excellence for a visual

508 Met., III, 440: “Narcissus is doomed, victim of his own eyes. (Perque oculos perit ipse suos).” 509 On this combined presence, see, among others: R. Caillois, 1960; J.-P. Vernant, 1985; P. Quignard, 1994; F. FrontisiDucroux, 1995; F. FrontisiDucroux/J.-P. Vernant, 1997; C. Kruse, 2003, pp. 379-400; H. Belting, 2008, p. 250.

208 expression of the confrontation between life drive and death drive taking place within any human being: the face in shreds, the black hole-face, the face of shadow and light, the face to dust. These various paradigms of the deformation of facial features are so many signs, each of them punctuating a certain phase in the artist’s life, his awareness of mortality, his suffering and decline. Thus, in visual terms and as he sees fit, Bacon develops this dramatic perspective of the body’s relation to its own image: his identificatory enterprise—executed in particular by means of the specular image—carries within it the stigmata of impending death, the permanent threat of total destruction.510 In Bill Viola’s Surrender (2001), the blurring of the medium, of the surface, is used to lift the veil of illusion enveloping the work until then. It is the conveyor of a correct understanding of the image and its compositional mechanisms. This distortion of faces and surfaces, this zone of interference and disturbance, however, is the result of a flood of tears, the most explicit expression of subjection to the most violent passions, pouring from the faces of the afflicted to fall upon the natural mirror. The use of tears in the perspective of a troubled medial support evokes the final moments of Narcissus, when his tears came to trouble the water and blur his image.511 Viola similarly causes tears to intervene in other works that feature a process of image distortion. Tears become a refracting, distorting lens, or an instrument to disturb a simple layer of water located between the screen and the scene. But the blurriness caused by tears is also part of a mystical comprehension of Viola’s work: in the examples of Surrender (2001) and Purification (2005), and principally in the sequences Basin of Tears and Dissolution, the troubled aspect is a result of the partial immersion of the two characters into the pool, then of their tears as they re-emerge. These tears cover their already afflicted faces before spilling once again onto the surface and returning to their source, violently distorting the protagonists’ faces and thus most eloquently revealing the passions that inhabit them. This cycle of compassion and purification through water is a “baptism of tears.” Viola’s work is an apology for the disturbance of vision and knowledge through weeping, with a view to celebrating another form of perception, that which is born of tears.

510 See also G. Wajcman, 2001, p. 250. 511 Met., III, 475-480. See also B. Viola/H. Belting, 2003, p. 208.

Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979) examines the theme of the self-portrait of the artist within the work’s production scenario, the process of photographic creation. But the spatial mise en scène of the self-referential image constantly swings between transparency and opacity, between the real and the illusory presence of the mirror,

209 between the artist’s photographic representation and his reflection. The esthetics of illusion on display here, and recurrent throughout Jeff Wall’s work, is based on an interrogation of the viewer’s capacities of medial recognition. By deploying devices that are oxymorons, the artist enjoys leaving us disoriented, filling us with doubt as to the nature of what we are seeing. Here the troubled aspects are to be interpreted as an articulation of the persistent difficulty that confronts viewers in their effort to decode the image and its existential conditions. The advantage of creating such situations is that they incite us go beyond the initial stage of a furtive glance or a simplistic approach, in order to plunge us into a more penetrating contemplation of the work, which, perhaps, will enable us to find pleasure in our heightened perception. By analyzing the multiple situations created with a troubled aspect [mises en situation d’un effet de trouble], and in particular by observing the contexts and processes where strategies already existing within the myth of Narcissus have been visually reformulated, we might ultimately have succeeded in verifying the anthropological axiom according to which humankind will resort to new means/media in order to debate issues that are age-old but never outmoded. Perhaps, too, this sort of approach nurtures the hope of killing the widely-held critique of contemporary artistic activity which suggests that it has been cut off from its base, that it is frequently obscure and has no connection to earlier periods. Henceforth we must agree to cast our gaze somewhat more cautiously upon what we, too hastily, thought we recognized as art of that kind, and we must try to truly identify it in all its beauty and complexity, at the risk of being fascinated. We might, moreover, as the 21st century unfolds, question the fortunes of the myth of Narcissus. What dominant aspect will we seek to draw from the myth in order to feed the anthropological needs of the day? What will these needs be? What major issues will the myth embrace? What new context, what new reasons will lie behind its reformulations? How will they be displayed? What media will be mobilized to host them? Naturally we are unable at present to answer these questions, but we might wager that for as long as images require the presence of a medium in order to be seen, contemplated, and transmitted, Narcissus—or at least his reflection—will never be far from view.

8

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FILMOGRAPHY M. Kidel, 1996 Mark Kidel (a film by), Bill Viola, The Eye of the Heart, A Calliope (documentary) Media production for BBC in association with ARTE France, 1996. Film) J.-P. Krief [et al.], 2000 Jean-Pierre Krief [et al.], Contacts, Le renouveau de la photographie (documentary) contemporaine. The world’s greatest photographers reveal the secrets behind their images. Based on an idea by W. Klein. Directed by Jean-Pierre Krief [et al.], © Arte France Développement, 2000.

Photography Credits

Fig. 1 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narciso alla fonte, Galleria Nazionale d’arte antica, Palazzo Barberini - I dipinti, Catalogo sistematico, “L’ERMA” di BRETSCHNEIDER Fig. 2 Source: Christopher Wright, Poussin: Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London: Chaucer Press, 2007), p. 88 n° 53 Fig. 3 Source: Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, [The A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts, 1958, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.], vol. 1, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), p. 79 n° 73 Fig. 4 Source: Rolf Toman (ed.), La Renaissance italienne, (Cologne: Könemann, 1995), p. 236 Fig. 5 Source: Charles Avery, Bernin. Le génie du baroque, (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), p. 59 Fig. 6 Source: Andrea Bolland, “Desiderio and Diletto: Vision, Touch, and the Poetics of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphné,” in: The Art Bulletin, June 2000, Vol. LXXXII, n° 2, p. 314 Fig. 7 Source: Rudolf Wittkower, Bernin. Le sculpteur du baroque romain, (Paris: Phaidon, 2005), p. 42 (detail)

Fig. 8 Source: Rudolf Wittkower, Bernin. Le sculpteur du baroque romain, (Paris: Phaidon, 2005), p. 47 Fig. 9 Source: Christopher Wright, Poussin: Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London: Chaucer Press, 2007), p. 40 n° 14 Fig. 10 Source: Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, “The Imagines of the Elder Philostratus,” in: The Art Bulletin, No 1 (Mar., 1941), p. 35 Fig. 11 Source: Philostrate, Les images ou tableaux de plattepeinture, translation and commentary by Blaise de Vigenère (1578), with an introduction and notes by Françoise Graziani, 2 volumes, vol. 2, (Paris: H. Champion [distribution outside France: Geneva, Slatkine], 1995), p. 1012 Fig. 12 Source: Christopher Wright, Poussin: Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné, (London: Chaucer Press, 2007), p. 249 n° 190 Fig. 13 Source: Raimund Wünsche, Glyptothek München. Meisterwerke griechischer und römischer Skulptur, (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2005), p. 109 Fig. 14 Source: Ekkehard Mai/Kurt Wettengl (ed.), Wettstreit der Künste. Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier, (Munich: Haus der Kunst, 2002), p. 361

236 Figs. 15-19, 22, 26 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Photographer: Perry Ogden. Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane Figs. 20, 21 © Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane Figs. 23, 27, 34, 35, 40-45 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Fig. 24 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Photographer: John Kellet. Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane Figs. 25, 29, 30 © The Lewinsky Archive at Chatsworth Photographs by Jorge Lewinski Fig. 28 Courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s Photograph by Cecil Beaton Fig. 31 © Arnold Newman Collection/Getty Images Photograph by Arnold Newman Fig. 32 © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (RM98F22:88) Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson Fig. 33 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Source: Martin Harrison/Rebecca Daniels, Francis Bacon: Incunabula, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008) p. 13 Fig. 36 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012

Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, (RM98F112:37) Fig. 37 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, (RM98F11:12) Fig. 38 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, (RM98F1:34) Fig. 39 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, SIAE 2012 Photograph by John Deakin Figs. 46, 47 Bill Viola In Version, 1973 Videotape, black-and-white, mono sound; 4:24 minutes Produced at Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Figs. 48–51 Bill Viola Information, 1973 Videotape, color, mono sound; 29:35 minutes Produced at Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Figs. 52–58 Bill Viola The Reflecting Pool, 1977-79 Videotape, color, mono sound; 7 minutes Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Fig. 59 Source: James Elkins, Picture and Tears, A History of People Who have Cried in Front of Paintings, (New York/London: Routledge, 2001)

237 Fig. 60 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), pp. 28-29 Fig. 61 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), p. 31 (detail) Fig. 62 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), p. 32 (detail) Fig. 63 Source: Dirk de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden. Das Gesamtwerk, (Munich: Himmer Verlag, 1999), p. 184 Fig. 64 Source: Dirk de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden. Das Gesamtwerk, (Munich: Himmer Verlag, 1999), p. 14 Fig. 65 Source: Dirk de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden. Das Gesamtwerk, (Munich: Himmer Verlag, 1999), p. 24 Fig. 66 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), p. 127 Fig. 67 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), p. 126 Fig. 68 Source: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin: a monographic study with critical catalogue, (Munich/ New York: Prestel, 2002), p. 124 Fig. 69 Source: Catheline Périer-d’Ieteren, Thierry Bouts. L’oeuvre complet. (Bruxelles: Fonds Mercator, 2005), p. 270 Fig. 70 Source: John Walsh (exh. cat.), Bill Viola: The Passions, John Walsh (ed.), with essays by Peter Sellars [and] John Walsh; a conversation between

Hans Belting and Bill Viola […], Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003, p. 37 Fig. 71 Bill Viola Dolorosa, 2000 Color video diptych on two freestanding hinged LCD flat panels 40.6 cm x 62.2 cm x 14.6 cm Performers: Natasha Basley, Shishir Kurup Photo: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Figs. 72–76 Bill Viola Surrender, 2001 Color video diptych on two plasma displays mounted vertically on wall 204.2 cm x 61 cm x 8.9 cm Performers: John Fleck, Weba Garretson Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Figs. 77– 81, 85–89 Bill Viola Purification, 2005 Rear projected color High-Definition video diptych Screen size: 223 cm x 260 cm; room dimensions variable Performers: Jeff Mills, Lisa Rhoden Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Fig. 82 Bill Viola Migration, 1976 Videotape, color, mono sound; 7 minutes Produced in association with Synapse Video Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Photo: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio Figs. 83, 84 Bill Viola He Weeps for You, 1976 Video/sound installation 3.7 m x 7.9 m x 11 m Water drop from copper pipe; live color camera with macro lens; amplified drum; video projection in dark room Photos: Kira Perov Courtesy Bill Viola Studio

238 Figs. 90–93, 96, 97, 99–103 © Jeff Wall Fig. 94 Source: Carol Armstrong, Manet Manette, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 268

Fig. 95 Source: Thierry De Duve, “The Mainstream and the Crooked Path,” in: Thierry de Duve [et al.], Jeff Wall, (London: Phaidon, 2003 [first published 1996]), pp. 24-55; p. 31 © Jeff Wall Fig. 98 Source: Lee Johnson, The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix. A critical catalogue 1816-1863, vol. 4, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 114

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