Elective Affinities: Testing Word and Image Relationships.

398 Pages·2009·11.51 MB·English

by  Catriona MacLeod

Elective Affinities
Testing Word and Image Relationships
Edited by
Catriona MacLeod, Véronique Plesch
and Charlotte Schoell-Glass
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Cover image: Edgar Fahs Smith Collection Rare Book and
Manuscript Library University of Pennsylvania
Cover Design: Rachel S. Tobie
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2618-6
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2619-3
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Printed in the Netherlands
_T___ __ C____________________________________
ABLEOF ONTENTS
I
NTRODUCTION
C M L 11
ATRIONA AC EOD

S 19
UMMARIES
UNION
MICHAEL R. TAYLOR
Consulting the Manual:
Word and Image in Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés 31
ADRIANA DRAGOMIR
Living and Dying in the Limelight:
Performing the Self in Frida Kahlo’s Diary and Paintings 47
L W
AURENCE UIDAR
Imbrication de l’image, du texte et de la musique
dans un corpus de prières énigmatiques à la Vierge 61
C G
ORDULA REWE
The Künstlerroman as Romantic Arabesque:
Parody, Collaboration, and the Making of The Modern Vasari (1854) 77
K E. B
AREN ROWN
The “Inscapes” of Louis le Brocquy 99
ROBERT GRANT
American Scenery/Canadian Scenery:
Conflicting Views of Indigenes in Mid Nineteenth Century
British Portrayals of the American Continent 113
MIRIAM HARRIS
Cartoonists as Matchmakers: The Vibrant Relationship of Text
and Image in the Work of Lynda Barry 129
CONFLICT
S C
TEEN HRISTIANSEN
The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image:
Transmetropolitan’s Critique of the Society of the Spectacle 147
D L
ANIELLE EENAERTS
Le magazine français Vu (1928 40):
Naissance de l’information visuelle et utopie de la substitution
de l’image photographique au texte écrit 159
H L
UBERT OCHER
From Ekphrasis to History: Verbal Transformations of the Display
of Picture Galleries Wilhelm Heinse and Friedrich Schlegel 173
L S. W
AUREN EINGARDEN
Modernizing History and Historicizing Modernity:
Baudelaire and Baudelairean Representations of Contemporaneity 187
V N
ALENTIN USSBAUM
Serial Künstler: Portrait of the Artist as a Malefactor 205
J M
ONATHAN ARSHALL
Hypnotic Performance and the Falsity of Appearances:
The Aesthetics of Medical Spectatorship and Axel Munthe’s
Critique of Jean Martin Charcot 221

EXPERIMENT
SUSANA OLIVEIRA
New Light and Old Shadows:
Industrial Illumination and its Imaginaire 243
J A. G
ENNIFER REENHILL
Illustrating the Shadow of Doubt:
Henry James, Blindness, and “The Real Thing” 261
E T. H
RIC ASKELL
Picturing Paradise: Baudelaire’s “L’Invitation au voyage” 281
J F
ULIA RIEDMAN
The Writing Drawing Continuum of Alexei Remizov 299
S P
PYROS APAPETROS
Aby Warburg as Reader of Gottfried Semper:
Reflections on the Cosmic Character of Ornament 317
C C W
RISTINA UEVAS OLF
John Heartfield’s Insects and the “Idea” of Natural History 337
M D G
ARÍA E UZMÁN
The Photographic Thought of Latina/o Literature
and Cultural Critique 355
S N S
USAN URMI CHOMERS
Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein, Fassbinder:
Découpage Aesthetics on the Divide 369
B M
IRGIT ERSMANN
(Ideo )Logical Alliances between Image and Script:
Calligraphic Reconfigurations in Contemporary Chinese Art 387
C 401
ONTRIBUTORS
I 409
NDEX
A__CK_N_O_W_LE_D_GE_M_E_N_TS_____________________________
The essays contained in this volume are based on papers presented at
the Seventh Triennial Conference on Word and Image Studies, “Elective
Affinities,” which was held from 23 to 27 September 2005 in Philadelphia,
U.S.A.
We would like to express our thanks, above all, to Richard “Tres” Lambert III,
who worked tirelessly on the layout of this volume and also read the copy and
offered numerous valuable suggestions. Rachel S. Tobie generously answered
technical queries and designed the cover. For practical and logistical help,
we are also grateful to Paul Guyer, Martina Bale, and Philip Miraglia at the
University of Pennsylvania. Finally, our sincere thanks to Esther Roth at
Rodopi for her patience and support.
Catriona MacLeod, University of Pennsylvania
Véronique Plesch, Colby College
Charlotte Schoell Glass, University of Hamburg
Introduction
Catriona MacLeod
Bald werden sie [Naturwesen] sich als Freunde und alte Bekannte begegnen, die schnell
zusammentreten, sich vereinigen, ohne an einander etwas zu verändern, wie sich Wein
mit Wasser vermischt. Dagegen werden andre fremd neben einander verharren und
selbst durch mechanisches Mischen und Reiben sich keineswegs verbinden; wie Öl und
Wasser zusammengerüttelt sich den Augenblick wieder aus einander sondert. (Goethe,
Sämtliche Werke, I, 8: 302)
Sometimes they [natural substances] will meet as friends and old acquaintances and
come together quickly and be united without either altering the other at all, as wine for
example mixes with water. But others will remain strangers side by side and will never
unite even if mechanically ground and mixed. Thus oil and water shaken together will
immediately separate again. (Goethe, Elective Affinities 31)
In the autumn of 2005 more than 120 scholars from across the world and
representing a range of academic disciplines gathered in Philadelphia for a
week of discussions on topics relating to word and image studies. The essays
collected in this volume are based on papers presented at that meeting, the
seventh triennial conference of the International Association of Word and
Image Studies, whose overall theme was Elective Affinities. Our conference title
was borrowed from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1809 novel Die Wahl
verwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), which in turn took its title from Swedish
scientist Torbern Bergman’s chemical treatise A Dissertation on Elective Affinities
(Disquisitio de attractractionibus electivis, 1775). Like the alkalis and acids whose
behavior captivates the novel’s protagonists, words and images, though ap
parently opposed, may also display a remarkable affinity. At the same time, as
one of Goethe’s characters objects, affinities themselves are problematic, and
“werden erst interessant, wenn sie Scheidungen bewirken” (I, 8: 303; “‘are
only really interesting when they bring about separations’”: 32).
From the so called “linguistic turn” to what W. J. T. Mitchell has dubbed
the “pictorial turn” (Mitchell 9 34), much of twentieth century culture was
preoccupied with hierarchical and polar relationships between words and
images; but the twentieth century was also defined by the invention of film, a
medium combining the visual, the verbal, and the phonic. The IAWIS conference
12 Catriona MacLeod
“Orientations” that took place in Hamburg in 2002 emphasized what has
come to be known as “the spatial turn,” with the concomitant implications
for words and images. As we move onward into the twenty first century,
new art, literature, and technologies that present us with mutating relations
and layerings of words and pictures make us revisit the old yet still pressing
debate about the respective abilities of words and images to represent. They
also challenge us to reconsider the nature of reading and spectatorship. Are
images supplements or “illustrations” to words, or is text now subordinate
in our hyper visual culture? What lies between word and image? Is a third
kind of meaning generated by new forms of interplay between word and
image, and if so, what is it, what are its claims, and how does it insert itself
into our consciousness? Do words and images enjoy a harmonious kinship,
yield to adulterous passion, engage in border skirmishes, or seek to annihilate
one another? Such questions have been at the heart of word and images
studies since the foundation of IAWIS in 1987. These are not merely formal
matters, but rather constitute an ideologically charged terrain, as indeed much
of the recent work in this field has demonstrated and as spatial metaphors
such as “borders,” “crossings,” or “orientation” also suggest. A term open
to multiple meanings and to experimental testing, “elective affinities” allows
us even obliges us to conduct a discussion that traverses and sometimes
falls between disciplines and that takes a historical perspective in order to
approach current innovations.
To look back at Goethe’s 1809 novel is simultaneously to look forward
this is a move performed by Goethe’s book itself, as we shall see. The novel
opens at a secluded country estate, where the happily married couple Char
lotte and Eduard, sitting in what is described as a small, even cramped sum
merhouse, casually suggest that the space, just large enough for them, might
also accommodate a third, and even a fourth person. The married happiness
of Charlotte and Eduard is soon interrupted and reconfigured by the arrival
of two new characters, Eduard’s unmarried friend the Captain, and Charlotte’s
foster daughter Ottilie. Goethe’s adultery novel, a textual space filled with
hybrid forms ranging from travel albums, to the picturesque gardens tended
so obsessively by Charlotte and Eduard, to the tableau vivant performances
enthusiastically mounted by Luciane, Charlotte’s daughter from her first mar
riage, and the Architect, both anticipates a burgeoning mixed media culture
and mounts a (possibly parodic) critique of such combinations. Only a decade
before the publication of Elective Affinities, Goethe, in full throated classical
disapproval of the combining of art forms, had argued in his programmatic
introduction to the Propyläen journal (1798) that any mingling of arts is a sure
indication of artistic degeneration, or even moral perversion. Yet, the reader
Introduction 13
will also note that Goethe here takes for granted the “affinities” between arts,
natural attractions which the “true artist” is charged with repelling:
Eines der vorzüglichsten Kennzeichen des Verfalles der Kunst ist die Vermischung der
verschiedenen Arten derselben. Die Künste selbst, so wie ihre Arten, sind unterein
ander verwandt, sie haben eine gewisse Neigung, sich zu vereinigen, ja sich ineinander
zu verlieren; aber eben darin besteht die Pflicht, das Verdienst, die Würde des echten
Künstlers, daß er das Kunstfach, in welchem er arbeitet, von anderen abzusondern,
jede Kunst und Kunstart auf sich selbst zu stellen und sie aufs möglichste zu isolieren
wisse. (I, 18: 468 69)
One of the most striking signs of decline in art is the intermingling of the various
forms of art. To be sure, the arts themselves and the various art forms are intimately
related and have a certain tendency to unite, if not merge completely. However, the
duty, task, and worth of the true artist lie precisely in keeping one particular art form
separate from the others. He should give autonomy to each branch and form of the
arts and isolate them as far as possible.1
Contemporary readers of Goethe’s novel were scandalized by the adulter
ous passions of its protagonists (Tantillo 1 26). Romantic author Ludwig
Tieck reportedly called it the “Qualverwandtschaften” (“Torture Affinities”;
qtd. in Tantillo, Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” 7). At first, to be sure, the novel
appears to signal that a consideration of elective affinities is a harmless intel
lectual parlor game: “Diese Gleichnisreden sind artig und unterhaltend, und
wer spielt nicht gern mit Ähnlichkeiten?” (I, 8: 305; “‘These comparisons are
very entertaining, everyone likes playing with analogies’”: 33). Nevertheless,
the scientific banter has consequences that will be of twofold importance for
the novel as well as for the present collection of essays. Firstly, of course, as
even Charlotte realizes when she makes the apparent misstep of likening elec
tive affinities in nature to the social structures and divisions of her age (I, 8:
302; 31), there will be far reaching ideological implications for class (and, one
should add, gender). Secondly, the discourse of adultery/adulteration shifts
readily from the realms of marriage and chemistry to that of “improper” art.
Indebted to classical indictments of hybridity such as those by Goethe and
Lessing, art historian Karl August Böttiger would go on to characterize Lu
ciane’s sculptural poses or “attitudes” as “Ungebührnisse” (qtd. in Jooss, 295;
“improprieties”) in a skeptical review of the novel. Writers of fiction did not
like it any better. Christoph Martin Wieland scorned the popular tone of the
novel, indicting it as “ein farrago, ein Mischmasch von Dialogen und Vorle
sungen über Gartenkunst, Baukunst, Decorationskunst, Mahlerei, Bildnerei,
Musik, Mimische Kunst, u. Gott weiß über wie vielerlei Künste” (“a farrago, a
mishmash of dialogues and lectures on landscaping, architecture, decorating,
painting, portraiture, music, mimic art, and God knows on how many arts”;
qtd. in Tantillo, Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” 10). When Luciane’s spectators urge
14 Catriona MacLeod
her to break her pose in a performance after Gerard ter Borch’s painting The
Paternal Admonition, uttering in unison the words “tournez s’il vous plaît” (I, 8:
429; 148), they are actually speaking like readers, demanding that she behave
more like a book (her proper place being that of a character in a novel) than a
painting. Nevertheless, Goethe was of course himself responsible for generi
cally mixed literary masterpieces, and was passionately involved in the visual
arts at every stage of his long career. Whether or not the tableau vivant was an
affront to genuine art, because of its mingling of performance, body, paint
ing, and text, and its merger with popular culture, we know that Goethe did
embrace its theatrical potential. In a birthday celebration at the Weimar court
in 1813 for Maria Pawlowna von Sachsen Weimar Eisenach, Goethe directed
a series of tableaux vivants and appeared on stage himself as a Roman soldier
in the Belisarius scene, thus re enacting one of the performances for which
his novel had become famous or, indeed, notorious (Jooss 314 17).
This Janus like aspect of Goethe’s Elective Affinities does he want to police
the boundaries, or surrender to the irresistible pleasures and possibilities of
hybrid unions? proved useful in reflecting on the wide diversity of topics,
historical periods, and disciplinary approaches present in this collection, with
their tendency to fall into patterns of attraction and repulsion. Furthermore,
the complexity of the term “affinity” needs to be emphasized, highlighting
as it does natural law and necessity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
human beings’ belief that they can manipulate these affinities according to
their volition. (The grotesque embodiment of the latter principle will be
Goethe’s spectacularly unsuccessful marriage broker, Mittler.) To take one last
glance at the novel, it is striking that during the initial discussion of scientific
affinities three of the protagonists who will be caught up in the experimental
reactions project their own human subjectivity and desires onto the chemical
pairings (I, 8: 300 07; 29 35). Charlotte is interested in the marital bond,
Eduard in divorces (“Scheidungen”), and the Captain focuses on the free
movement of the elements (cf. Tantillo, “Polarity and Productivity” 317). As
Tony Tanner aptly puts it, “the characters themselves are effectively creating
the experiment in which they will be the materials” (209). The fourth human
component in the test, Ottilie, most drastically, is converted at the end of the
novel into an art object, a mixed media spectacle: a latter day Sleeping Beauty
in a glass covered coffin (I, 8: 523; 235 36).2
Following the experimental modalities opened up by Goethe, the present
volume is divided into three sections, which explore, respectively, how words
and images can merge in harmony, engage in conflicts and contestations, and,
finally, interact in an experimental way that self consciously tests the boundar
ies and relations among verbal and visual arts.