Subject: Re: heidegger's knowledge of art
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 15:17:45 +0100


thanks for this Rene.  I've seen caricatures with the 2 cupidons smoking
joints.  It seems to push a satirical comment a little farther on, don't you
think?  I agree that they point this painting in the direction of animation
and irreverance, perhaps it pleased the patron greatly?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rene de Bakker" <rene.de.bakker-AT-uba.uva.nl>
To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: heidegger's knowledge of art


> The weirdest text of Heidegger i've met sofar was
> "About the Sixtina" (Ueber die Sixtina). At first sight,
> even at ten sights, it seems only fit to demonstrate
> Heidegger's 'crypto-catholicism'.
>
> (Of course it is not 'about' the Sixtina, so the tone
> is set even before the beginning.)
>
> The Sixtina is a painting, by Raffael, of Maria
> holding Jesus. More famous are perhaps the
> 2 cherubs at the bottom of the painting
>
> http://www.onlinekunst.de/april/Raffael_3.html
>
> After "getting to business", I concluded that
> Heidegger's piece on art, which ends with the
> admission that it was only a stumbling of words,
> cannot be reduced to catholic reminiscences,
> also not to art history, the talking 'about'.
> The real topic is the 'scheinen' of the 'Bild', a wholly
> ungraspable phenomenon, for which the language
> seems to be missing.
>
> Recently, I came along a note in Walter Benjamin's
> "The work of art in the age of (its) mechanical reproduction",
> a long note, on this same painting. But hey, here it is:
>
>
> "This polarity [between 'cult value' and 'exhibition value' - rdb] cannot
> come into its own in the aesthetics of Idealism. Its idea of beauty
> comprises these polar opposites without dlfferentiating between them and
> consequently excludes their polarity. Yet in Hegel this polarity announces
> itself as clearly as possible within the limits of Idealism. We quote from
> his *Philosophy of History*:
>
> "Images were known of old. Piety at an early time required them for
> worship, but it could do without beautiful images. These might even be
> disturbing. In every beautiful painting there is also something
> nonspiritual, merely external, but its spirit speaks to man through its
> beauty. Worshipping, conversely, is concerned with the work as an object,
> for it is but a spiritless stupor of the soul.... Fine art has arisen ...
> in the church ..., although it has already gone beyond its principle as
art."
>
> Likewise, the following passage from *The Philosophy of Fine Art indicates
> that Hegel sensed a problem here. "We are beyond the stage of reverence
for
> works of art as divine and objects deserving our worship. The impression
> they produce is one of a more reflective kind, and the emotions they
arouse
> require a higher test...."--G. W. F. Hegel, *The Philosophy of Fine Art*,
> trans., with notes, by F. P. B. Osmaston, Vol. I, p. 12, London, 192O.
>
> "The transition from the first kind of artistic reception to the second
> characterizes the history of artistic reception in general. Apart from
> that, a certain oscillation between these two polar modes of reception can
> be demonstrated for each work of art. Take the Sistine Madonna. Since
> Hubert Grimme's research it has been known that the Madonna originally was
> painted for the purpose of exhibition. Grimme's research was inspired by
> the question: What is the purpose of the molding in the foreground of the
> painting which the two cupids lean upon? How, Grimme asked further, did
> Raphael come to furnish the sky with two draperies? Research proved that
> the Madonna had been commissioned for the public lying-in-state of Pope
> Sixties. The Popes lay in state in a certain side chapel of St. Peter's.
On
> that occasion Raphael's picture had been fastened in a niche like
> background of the chapel, supported by. the coffin. In this picture
Raphael
> portrays the Madonna approaching the papal coffin in clouds from the
> background of the niche, which was demarcated by green drapes. At the
> obsequies of Sixties a pre-eminent exhibition value of Raphael's picture
> was taken advantage of. Some time later it was placed on the high altar in
> the church of the Black Friars at Piacenza. The reason for this exile is
to
> be found in the Roman rites which forbid the use of paintings exhibited at
> obsequies as cult objects on the high altar. This regulation devalued
> Raphael's picture to some degree. In order to obtain an adequate price
> nevertheless, the Papal See resolved to add to the bargain the tacit
> toleration of the plcture above the high altar. To avoid attention the
> picture was given to the monks of the far-off provincial town."
>
>
>
> Now, Heidegger, as he has done elsewhere, questioned the 'modern' work of
> art as to its place (remember the note on Stravinsky). The painting, he
> repeatedly says, longs, as an 'Altarbild' (altarpiece), back to its place
> behind the altar in the church of Piacenza. (Ex)positioned in Dresden,
away
> from its own place, it cannot but keep on longing for its origin.
> Heidegger, like Benjamin,  seems to maintain a loss, or only a change in
> the essence, the way of being, of a work, when it developed from a cult
> work into something independent, which led to its being expositionable and
> reproducible. But that is not what he's really after.
> Would he be, then Benjamin's correction as to the historical origin of the
> painting would have been fatal: the painting does not belong to the church
> in Piacenza, but was 'dumped' there after the funeral.
>
>
> If you know "The truth of art", by another sensitive Jew, Derrida, wherein
> he treats the question whereto belong the shoes of Van Gogh, to
Heidegger's
> 'peasant woman' or to Shapiro's 'man of the city', then, we have here a
> similar situation, though Heidegger's 'About the Sixtina" was not yet
> written.
>
> There is much to be said about all this. Allow me to restrict myself to
> this: historical, or factical knowledge has its own right. When it becomes
> absolute, though, it becomes bottom-, place-less as well. The absence of
> another kind of knowing, not one of facts, but of
> what it is, that possibly makes them have sense or non-sense, brings a
> pressure to these same things, that itself escapes thematization.
> It does not help, but it makes only worse, to fall back on the traditional
> paradigma's, which is merely a linguistic affair.The pressure (Strauss:
> dissolution) asks for US, defies us, but not the old us. It asks for
> transformation. But then Heidegger's 'analysis' is not at all criticism.
> But it AFFIRMS the disappearing of the work of art, of things generally,
> because only then the free space can become free, over against which a
> transformation is possible. As a preparative thinking, the transformation
> remains limited to Dasein as possibility. How a 'real' transformation
might
> work out, what 'real' might mean then, MUST remain untouched, and I'm
> already saying too much. Heidegger does not ever talk the way I just did,
> Juenger sometimes does. Heidegger, certainly later, preferred ...
stumbling
> and dots. So my drive, to spell it out, will certainly be an illusion.
Well
> then..
>
>
>
> ----
>
>
> Eminem on historical knowledge:
>
> So they always keep askin' the same fuckin' questions...
> What school did I go to? What hood I grew up in?
> The why, the who what, when the where and the how
> 'til I'm grabbin' my hair and I'm tearin' it out.
>
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> -----------------------------------
> drs. Rene de Bakker
> Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
> Afdeling Catalogisering
> tel. 020-5252368
>
>
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