Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 16:12:20 +0100
From: Rene de Bakker <rene.de.bakker-AT-uba.uva.nl>
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.





















-----------------------------------
drs. Rene de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252368              


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