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| GERICAULT 2 |
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"Picking Up the Pieces" from Negotiations Towards a Self, 1770-1830
Géricault's uvre, his body fragments, his legs/legs reflect the un-coding of the notion of the art work as being able to reflect the artist, society, class relations, "the world out there", but it also provides the basis for any such dialogue, for any such language. It is the structure upon which the artist speaks her self to herself, that allows her to reflect to herself, and while the "world out there" is only a world in here, the deception of reflection is briefly cognized and a beyond the speculum is finally seen as one can look behind the mirror. The problem with the history of art has been to take the surface of the work, the textuality of the work of art, as the reflection itself, as a surface that clearly reflects the artist's world and her perception of this world and her perception of herself in this world.
The history of art mistakes the painting for a speech of full presence, an un-distorted speech, a successful speech act. It does not cognize all the factors that go into the very possibility of full speech, the conditions of any speech to take place. Statements such as "Géricault realized, as he built his composition, that there was danger in its complexity" (Lorenz Eitner) call forth a pure presence that is only a myth and, for this myth to be possible, it has to have every other possibility already inscribed within it for such a myth to be possible. The history of art can make the claim to show what "most likely happened", but are we to be content with this dream? Or should we instead look for what makes the possibility for anything to happen in art, to see why this dream is possible? I have tried to argue for this last point in studying Géricault's work as a confrontation with a fragmented reality and the processes that go on in dealing with this reality, the process of coding this reality, this reality where death is always already en-coded, where death is there to be de-coded, re-coded, and un-coded, where death is always seen but never looked at. Géricault studies this problem not by painting a picture of a severed limb or head, but by having the artistic experience become one of death, a loss of the dream of unity, the death of illusions of full presence. In a sense the death that is about Géricault's work, if it is about death, is the death of the mirror, the death of reflection, the death that takes place during reflection, but it is also a birth that gives life beyond the mirror.
It is the death of Géricault that gave birth to "Géricault", the "Géricault" we have to live with and talk about. To believe that we can talk to Géricault, to believe that Géricault lives on in his paintings is a mistake. "Géricault" lives on in these paintings, but there is no Géricault in them. That the hand will be there and not here. How does one put one's hand into the work? To argue that "Géricault" expressed his self through these paintings denies the inadequacy of expression, of language, the failure of expression, a failure that Géricault tried to express. "I have created nothing, absolutely nothing." As soon as Géricault put the brush to canvas, pencil to paper, spoke as a subject, he became divided and left us with this object named "Géricault". The history of art has since its inception tried to erase these quotation marks, to erase the effects of iterability, in order to arrive at the original, pure statement, the one that would not have to be quoted. But all we have are quotations and fragments to which we sometimes give expression to an illusion of full retrieval without remainder. It may be wondered how something is said under these conditions. Yet there has been so much talking. The problem with this speech has been the assumption that the work of art is a mirror that may be looked into and which will reflect back to us Géricault and not our own illusion.
Is there an escape from this illusion? No, to think that there is would be an even greater illusion. Instead, there may be a careful working out of the structures that allow these illusions to come forth, to see how they do not lead to solutions but a dead end. To put it another way, it is a careful working out of specific structures in order to determine where they break down. With Géricault, the structure of "Géricault", it has been the notion that the work of art reflects the artist's personality and the notion of the unified artistic personality. In the first case it has been a type of interpretive act that has broken down in its illusion producing effect, as when a reel of film breaks and a blank screen is exposed. In the second case, the assumptions of connoisseurship lead to its own negation, the revelation of its own lack of basis as a "science".
If Géricault's career began because of his mother's legs/legs or her legs/legs were one of the conditions that made his career (im)possible, then it is with Géricault's legs/legs that we are left to fight over. But have we looked at these legs/legs, have we looked at what is being struggled over? I have tried to examine these legs/legs through a process of de-coding, re-coding, and un-coding, a process in which all three steps take place at once, similar to the Derridean process of discovering terms of opposition, reversing the hierarchical structure, and then displacing the structure. The process of coding I have been describing is also related to the Lacanian categories of the real, imaginary, and symbolic. These are relations, however, and the differences are more or less noticeable. In using this coding process, I have hoped to find a terminology that may perhaps be of use for working within the discourse of the history of art, and while there is little original about the coding process I have described, it has the benefit of trying to keep a focus on the history of art, as opposed to philosophy and psychoanalysis, if such distinctions are feasible or functional. Most of all, however, it has allowed me to try to describe a process already at work in Géricault's body fragments, a process that involves all three coding processes and blurs the distinctions between them because it is three processes in one, and in this sense it may be theological, but it is exactly the tradition of Western thought exemplified in one instance by theology that this coding process works against, what Derrida terms "phallo-phono-logo-centrism" at certain instances.
The naming of the process, however, is not so important as the product, and I hope that this product has been a new perception of Géricault, a perception of Géricault not in the terms of psychoanalysis or philosophy, but seen through the discourse of the history of art thought out more philosophically, or at the very least more carefully. In doing this there has been a certain abuse, transformation, and violence done to the terms of philosophy as in all translation from one context to another. However, this violence has been done in order to open the history of art up, in order that the history of art may question itself and re-think its terms within terms of its own choosing. The problem, of course is that the history of art does not have a unified, monolithic self. The struggle for terms will and has always involved exclusion, if it is to think itself as a unified whole. For this study, I have merely tried to re-think Géricault in terms of my own choosing, but I have tried to keep an eye/I on the debate that has formed our notion of Géricault. If the version of Géricault that has come out of this study is a little strange, that may be because Géricault's place within the narrative of the history of art is a little strange. It reflects no strangeness on Géricault's part. This strangeness, however, has been invisible, or rather it has been kept from sight, perhaps for ideological reasons, and it is a strangeness that has become harder to see as Géricault becomes inscribed deeper and deeper into the history of art.
Delacroix was perhaps the first to inscribe Géricault back into the discourse of the history of art, if Géricault himself did not, if, unless, Géricault's intention was to desperately write himself into history by becoming history. "Their vain anger will not shake me. I have come to port for a long time now, without passion, as without rivalry." Yet Delacroix was the first to make a claim for Géricault's legs/legs. "It is the best argument for Beauty as it ought to be understood." It is Ingres, however, who may have been the first to recognize Géricault's discovery, to understand Géricault's discovery, and it may be perhaps paradoxical that in trying to not represent death, his figures often became cold and lifeless. Perhaps his anger towards Géricault was due to his realization that he could not escape this death that is involved in creation. Nevertheless, it was Delacroix who inscribed Géricault's legs/legs into the narrative of the sublime and beautiful, and, while Géricault's work may be related to this debate, it is also very different, very unrelated to this tradition. Many have made claims to Géricault's legs/legs afterwards, but there seems to be no rightful heir. If this loss of legitimacy, loss of limits, fragmentation does not allow for a rightful heir, it also denies death through closure by accepting the death of Géricault. "Géricault" will continue to live in the absence of Géricault, through the quotation marks, through his legs/legs. Thus, the loss of Géricault allows for the continuation of "Géricault". The very conditions of Géricault's death, his fall, allows for "Géricault"'s life, his ascendancy.
"Géricault" is written in quotation marks, open to change, iterability, new life, re-inscription into new histories, meanwhile the terms that are used to discuss his work are re-written, put under erasure, re-worked, re-thought, de-coded, re-coded, un-coded, put in a progressive chain without closure, a process of de-composition that allows for continual re-writing, not for the better understanding of Géricault's bones, but of our way of looking at these bones and what they tell us about ourselves. Solutions have not been offered. Instead, questions about questions have been asked and questions of a whole discourse on "Géricault" have been asked in order to understand this discourse, how "Géricault's" work writes against this writing, and how "Géricault's" work writes both against and for certain practices in the history of art; commentaries on a discourse, as these comments become part of discourse opening to further discourse without a last word.
Shall we always be our own judges? And won't our works, mixed in the galleries with others, one day proclaim our vanity and presumption? (Theodore Gericault)
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