Genealogy of the Image in Histoire(s) du Cinéma
2013; Routledge; Volume: 27; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2013.859480
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoAbstractTheories of montage have long proliferated within cinema studies, in attempts to understand and account for the medium's temporality, its mode of address and image repertory. However, art historical and theoretical precedent have rarely been engaged in such discussions, despite the fact that thinkers and practitioners like Gerhard Richter and Aby Warburg have long focused on the format of the atlas and its implications for the spatiotemporal and ‘genealogical’ articulation of art and imagery more generally. Based on a comparative examination of Warburg's last great project Atlas Mnemosyne and Jean-Luc Godard's monumental video-essay-cum-history Histoire(s) du Cinéma, this article envisions what a transhistorical, interdisciplinary and image-based art history would look like, as well as probing its political and aesthetical connotations. Focusing on the Warburgian Pathosformulae and the Godardian ideology of the interstice, a conceptualization of media as self-archiving and historicizing organisms is offered that has as much import for contemporary artistic praxis as for the re-evaluation of the past.Keywords: Dimitrios S LatsisAby WarburgAtlas MnemosyneJean-Luc GodardHistoire(s) du cinémamontageintersticeiconologyarchivegenealogyimage Notes1. ‘The dear Lord dwells in the detail.’2. Claus Clüver, ‘On Intersemiotic Transposition’, Poetics Today, vol 10, no 1, spring 1989, pp 55–903. Peter Wollen, Readings and Writings, Verso, New York, 1982, p 844. Andre Bazin, What is Cinema?, University of California Press, Berkeley, California 2004, p 95. Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007, pp 248–2496. Alternatively titled Cavalcade of Motion Pictures/Stars that Live Forever/March of the Movies. See Sight & Sound, vol 3, no 10, 1934, p 70.7. Marian Blackton Trimble, J Stuart Blackton: A Personal Biography, Scarecrow, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1985, p 1078. Sight & Sound, vol 6, no 10, 1996, p 589. Sight & Sound, vol 8, no 2,1998, p 2810. Sight & Sound, vol 5, no 6, 1995, pp 22–2511. Christophe Gauthier, ‘L'invention d'une discipline: l'histoire du cinéma’, Vertigo 16, 1997, pp 117–12312. For the first cf Raymond Bellour, L'entre-images 2, P O L, Paris, 1999, pp 335–362; for the second Christa Blümlinger, ‘Introduction’, in Harun Farocki and Christa Blümlinger, Reconnaître et poursuivre, Théâtre Typographique Courbevoie, 2002, pp 11–18.13. Susan Sontag, ‘A Century of Cinema’, in Where the Stress Falls: Essays, Picador, New York, 2001, p 12214. Georges Didi-Huberman, Images malgré tout, Minuit, Paris, 2003, p 152. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.15. Godard playfully muses: ‘After all, montage has never really existed … no one has found it’; see Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1998, vol 2, p 242.16. Georges Didi-Huberman, Images malgré tout, op cit, p15517. Godard, op cit, vol 1, p 41518. Jean-Luc Godard and Youssef Ishaghpour, Archéologie du cinéma et mémoire du siècle, Farrago, Tours, 2000, p 27. The title of this work is reflective of the Godardian agenda that permeates Histoire(s).19. Jean-Luc Godard, Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, Albatros, Paris, 1980, p 14520. See Alain Bergala, Nul mieux que Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1999, pp 221–249 and Godard's interview with Antoine de Baecque in Libération, pp 6–7 April 2002, p 45.21. Bazin went so far as to juxtapose the two; see Film Comment, July/August 2003, p 44.22. Quoted in Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1, l'image-mouvement, Minuit, Paris, 1983, p 181. Deleuze goes on to characterize Godard's films as syllogisms and to compare them to Louis Aragon's concept of collage, one that constructs endless series and categories.23. Bellour, L'entre-images 2, op cit, p 14324. Godard and Ishaghpour, op cit, pp 24–2525. The comparison of the two has been directly made before by Maurizia Natali, ‘Warburg et Godard’, in Pierre Taminiaux and Claude Murcia, eds, Cinéma art(s) plastique(s), L'Harmattan, Paris, 2004, pp 169–183; Philippe-Alain Michaud, ‘Qu'est-ce qu'une “Iconologie des intervalles”? Mnemosyne et la question de l'agencement des images et des vides’, in Marco Bertozzi, ed, Aby Warburg e le metamorfosi degli antichi dei, Franco Cosimo Panini, Modena, 2002, p 78; Philippe-Alain Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, Sophie Hawkes, trans, Zone, New York, 2004, p 262; Ute Holl, ‘Man erinnert sich nicht, man schreibt das Gedächtnis um!’, in Wolfgang Schäffner and Inge Münz-Koenen, eds, Der Bilderatlas im Wandel der Künste und Medien, Fink, Munich, 2005, pp 251–270, and by Georges Didi-Huberman, who has written extensively on both Warburg and Godard and the role of the interval and the survival of the image in their works.26. Bellour, op cit, p 13427. Annette Michelson, ‘The Wings of Hypothesis: On Montage and the Theory of the Interval’, in Matthew Teitelbaum, ed, Montage and Modern Life, 1919–1942, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992, pp 61–8128. Georges Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante. Histoire de l'art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg, Minuit, Paris, 2002, p 45429. Philippe-Alain Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, op cit, p 27830. Heckscher notes the influence of Warburg's montage on the collages of Picasso, the works of Duchamp and early cinematographic experimentations; William Heckscher, Art and Literature, Valentin Koerner, Baden-Baden, 1985, pp 268–273.31. Quoted in Philippe-Alain Michaud, Aby Warburg et l'image en mouvement, Macula, Paris, p 8132. Giorgio Agamben, Image et mémoire, Hoebëke, Paris, 1998, p 2733. He states: ‘[I did it] to make, to recount, to take account of myself.’ Jean-Luc Godard, Histoire(s) du cinéma, Gallimard, Paris, 1999, vol 2, p 834. Aby Warburg, Essais Florentins, Klincksieck, Paris, 2003, p 14535. Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit, p 49436. Aby Warburg, Mnemosyne. L'Atlante della memoria di Aby Warburg, Artemide, Rome, 1998, p 13537. Godard, Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, op cit, vol 2, p 29138. Ibid, vol 4, p 6239. Agamben, Image et mémoire, op cit, pp 67–6840. Bellour, L'entre-images 2, op cit, p 14341. André Bazin, Qu'est-ce que le cinéma, Cerf, Paris, 1985, p 1442. Jean-Luc Godard, ‘A propos de cinéma et d'histoire’, Trafic 18, 1996, pp 28–3243. Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps. Histoire de l'art et anachronisme des images, Minuit, Paris, 2000, p 8744. Bergala, op cit, p 22545. Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit, p 495; The link is also explored at length in Hannah Arendt, Vies Politiques, Gallimard, Paris, 1974, pp 244–306.46. Matthew Rampley, ‘Archives of Memory’, in Alex Coles, ed, The Optic of Walter Benjamin: de-, dis-, ex-, Black Dog, London, 1999, vol 3, p 9747. Quoted in Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture, House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 1999, p 14348. Warburg's major essays have been collected and translated in Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to The Cultural History of The European Renaissance, Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, California, 1999. I draw theoretical material from this collection but also from the discussion of Warburg's theories in the classic Ernst Hans Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, Phaidon, Oxford, 1986. Pathosformulae is the term used by Warburg to designate the pictorial motifs or gestures that connect different artistic periods and styles through the evocation of a shared affect.49. Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit; Philippe-Alain Michaud, ‘Crossing the Frontiers: Mnemosyne Between Art History and Cinema’, in Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, op cit, pp 277–292.50. Karl Sierek, ‘Cinéma’, in Karl Sierek, Images oiseaux: Aby Warburg et la théorie des médias, Klincksieck, Paris, 2009, pp 83–13051. Godard quoted in Antoine de Baecque, ed, Théories du cinema, Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 2001, p 121.52. He elaborates: ‘Eisenstein thought he had found montage. I mean something much more vast … the montage of the resurrection of life’; Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, op cit, vol 2, p 246. On their divergence see also Trond Lundemo, ‘The Index and Erasure: Godard's Approach to Film History’, in Michael Temple, James Williams and Michael Witt, eds, For Ever Godard, Black Dog, London, 2004, p 382 and Wollen, op cit, p 100.53. Richard Neer, ‘Godard Counts’, Critical Inquiry, vol 34, no 1, 2007, pp 151–15254. Warburg, Mnemosyne, op cit, p 4755. Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit, p 47056. Godard, Histoire(s) du cinéma, op cit, vols 1–457. Philippe Alain Michaud, in Aby Warburg e le metamorfosi degli antichi dei, op cit, p 7858. Monica Dall'Asta, ‘The (Im)possible History’, in Temple, Williams and Witt, eds, op cit, p 36359. Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema’, Chicago Reader, vol 35, no 24, 2006, p 2660. Jean-Luc Godard, ‘La légende du siècle’, Les Inrockuptibles 170, 1998, p 2861. Quoted in Jonas (J) Magnusson, ‘New Forms of Knowledge’, Site 29–30, 2010, p 2362. Godard and Ishaghpour, op cit, pp 45–4663. For Kandinsky's ‘inner meaning, outward expression’ theory see Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Dover, New York, 1977, p 29.64. Bellour, L'entre-images 2, op cit, 19465. Godard, Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, op cit, vol 2, p 24566. Jean-Christophe Royoux, ‘L'instant du Redépart: après le cinéma, le cinéma du sujet’, Trafic 37, 2001, pp 250–26367. Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit, p 47168. Warburg, Mnemosyne, op cit, pp 135–14669. Warburg is quoted in Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, op cit, p 503.70. For more on this important concept, see Richard Woodfield, ed, Art History as Cultural History: Warburg's projects, OPA, Amsterdam, 2001, pp 143–144 and Maurizia Natali, ‘The Course of the Empire: Sublime Landscapes in the American Cinema’, in Martin Lefebvre, ed, Landscape and Film, Routledge, New York, 2006, pp 99–100.71. Ute Holl, Der Bilderatlas im Wandel der Künste und Medien, op cit, p 27072. Sam Rohdie, ‘Intersections’, Screening the Past 23, 2008, currently accessible at http://web.archive.org/web/20110308083504/ http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/23/intersections.html
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