Objetivos

If we therefore adopt the tenets of Merleau-Ponty‟s thought it may seem that we have a basis for explaining why a trompe l‟œil like Gijbrechts‟s appeals to our sense of touch. Let us start by considering the subject matter of the picture. As we noted earlier, Gijbrechts presents us with familiar objects which are close at hand. But while we might not think of these objects as especially pleasant to the touch, their everyday banality (to a seventeenth-century observer, at least) may be precisely what invests them with a tactile magnetism. More specifically, by being things which are handled regularly in life, the very perception of these objects might be said to mobilise our hands into action.126 Their proximity to the viewer thus adds to this feeling by making them seem as if readily available. Furthermore, since they are depicted as loosely attached to the surface we are invited to see them as easily removable and hence as eminently usable too.

125

Ibid, pp. 159 –161.

126

This point may be illuminated by Merleau-Ponty‟s description of a workaday task: „the subject, when put in front of his scissors, needle and familiar tasks, does not need to look for his hands and fingers, because they are […] potentialities already mobilised by the perception of scissors or needle, the central end of those „intentional threads‟ which link him to the objects given.‟ Ibid, p. 121.

But of course, we need to understand how this effect is transported from real life into the realm of representation and why, in particular, it is engendered so effectively by Gijbrechts‟s style. In this case, the answer appears to be that it is not so much translated into a language of pictures that is sui generis for, as we have seen, the artist deliberately conceals the artifice of his work. 127 Rather, the motor response elicited by this painting seems due to the way that it behaves like a chameleon against the backdrop of reality, merging with its surroundings in an inconspicuous way. Accordingly, if seeing and acting are indissolubly related in

normal perception and if this style allows a flat plane to masquerade (however briefly) as a real three-dimensional scene, then the phenomenology of the former will be transferred to the latter. Thus, for as long as the illusion lasts (or perhaps, for as long as it is entertained) the quodlibet will be invested with the „thickness‟ of the real.128

This points to a further reason why the spaces and subjects of still life are favoured in the trompe l‟œil tradition. For not only do they bolster the illusion of the picture, but they also invest it with a particular tactility which is borrowed from – but can nevertheless thematise – the physicality of sight. I say „thematise‟ because this is not something that we necessarily attend to in real scene perception since, according to Merleau-Ponty, the intentionality of thought

127

Of course, I am not denying that this effect is translated into the terms of the medium, as it obviously must be. And neither am I saying that Gijbrechts‟s picture lacks a representational system which operates according to the principles that Willats describes. My point is rather that the formal syntax employed by the artist avoids the kind of detectable structure that would serve to differentiate it from the look of real space. It might therefore be said that in terms of his use of the medium, Gijbrechts‟s work exhibits no visible style.

128

The word „thickness‟ is one I borrow from Merleau-Ponty. This word refers to the substantive nature of perceiving in the world and the way that objects encountered through one sense seem to speak to all the senses at once. See, for example, Ibid, p. 237.

obscures the motor intentionality of vision.129 Thus, we are not normally aware of the physical magnetism which gives the visual field its meaning, even though it instructs and depends upon our movements and actions.130 Nevertheless, an artist may draw attention to this pre-objective realm by representing a scene which – through the selection of objects or their deliberate arrangement – is abundant in the qualities which invite a manual response. Thus while it may be the ready availability of the objects in Gijbrechts‟s work which invites us to manipulate and use them, it may be the exquisitely rendered silk in van der Spelt‟s painting which make his curtains solicit a more caressing kind of touch. But whatever the specifics, these „proximal‟ trompe l‟œils do not simply produce

visual illusions. Rather they recruit from perceptual reality the appearances which most forcefully engender a sense of movement and touch.

One thing that therefore distinguishes an effective trompe l‟œil from most other pictures is the peculiar physicality of its aesthetic effect: an effect that one might characterise as exhilarating for it makes us feel ourselves in the process of perceiving and therefore affirms our sense of being alive. However, because this is purely a function of the verisimilitude of the spaces and subjects represented, this condition only obtains to the extent that we entertain the illusion, that is, to the extent that we treat the contents of the picture as if they are real. When we

129

For example, Merleau-Ponty claims that: „…the positing of one single object…exceeds perceptual experience…I detach myself from experience and pass to the idea…I am no longer concerned with my body, nor with time, nor with the world, as I experience them in

antepredicative knowledge, in the inner communion that I have with them. I now refer to my body as only an idea, to the universe as idea, to the idea of space and the idea of time. Thus „objective thought‟…is formed – being that of common sense and of science – which finally causes us to lose contact with perceptual experience, of which it is nevertheless the outcome and the natural sequel.‟ Ibid, p. 82. I shall go on to say more about this in the following chapter.

130

This seems to be what Merleau-Ponty means when he describes the spatiality of the body as „not…a spatiality of position, but a spatiality of situation‟. Ibid, pp. 114 – 115 (original emphasis).

discern or pay attention to the artifice of picture – when we consider it as a painted surface – this sense of tangibility will inevitably fade. But equally, it is only with this latter mode of seeing that the style of the artist – or of trompe l‟œil more broadly – becomes apparent, for if we are to see the manipulations of the medium we must suspend the „reality effect‟131

(and vice versa). In other words, we can either be deceived by the illusion or we can admire the artistry that creates the illusion, but since the one is the obverse of the other, we cannot experience these things at the same time. Trompe l‟œil does not therefore accede to the logic of the „third domain‟, for it either deceives as an illusion or is appreciated as paint on a surface, but because this phenomenology is disjunctive it does not constitute its own representational space.

In summary, therefore, it is by simulating the perceived world in its most physically evocative aspects that a trompe l‟œil becomes invested with the „thickness‟ of the real. In other words, it is by tricking the eye that these artworks fool the body: they produce a contagion that spreads from vision to touch. In comparison, I wish to argue that the strategies of Cubism are manifestly different: Picasso and Braque do not structure an experience which is physically invested by deceiving the senses and which loses its tactility as soon as the illusion recedes. Rather feelings of touch are directly engendered through the

131

My use of this term does not correspond to the definition given by Roland Barthes. According to Barthes the „reality effect‟ is occasioned by as „the direct collusion of a referent and a

signifier,‟ such that „the signified is expelled from the sign‟ and the latter purports „to denote the real directly‟ (p. 147; p.148). The descriptive detail included in a trompe l‟œil is clearly not designed to serve this purpose, for it is not incidental or superfluous, but rather conforms to the iconography of a particular genre (be this a quodlibet, a curtain painting or an illusionistic ceiling). Thus while a photograph might be included under Barthes‟s description, a trompe l‟œil is closer to the figure of hypotyposis which he claims is intended to „“put things before the hearer‟s eyes,” not in a neutral, constative manner, but by imparting to representation all the lustre of desire…‟ (pp. 145 – 46). See Barthes, „The Reality Effect‟ in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 141 – 148, first published in Communications (1968).

actual nature of their style. So one thing is not gained or lost at the expense of the other – while artifice is announced, motor intentionality is retained. 132 This is therefore my interpretation of the „realism‟ of Cubism133 – it does not produce its effect by masking its own pictorial nature, that is, by letting the fact that it is a representation slide out of view. Instead, it creates this experience on its own terms. Thus, in place of deceiving, it might be said to evoke.134

132

Jaakko Hintikka has also noted the accord between Cubism and phenomenology. However, his interpretation is very different from mine since he argues that the Cubists attempt to represent the intentionality of thought (in the sense proposed by Husserl) instead of the perspectival appearance of objects. See The Intentions of Intentionality and Other New Models for Modalities (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel Publishing Co., 1975), Chap. 11, „Concept as Vision: On the Problem of Representation in Modern Art and in Modern Philosophy‟.

133

Cubism has frequently been discussed as a style of realism, although this term has been defined in many different ways. In the early critical literature, Courbet is often cited as the father of the movement due to his emphasis on the substantiality of form rather than on shifting visual appearances. This is in accordance with an understanding of realism as a form intellection whereby the Cubists are said to represent the world as it is known instead of as it is seen. Writers who espouse this view include André Salmon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger and Fernand Léger. More specifically, Apollinaire and Gleizes and Metzinger characterise realism as an act of creation which, by expressing new ideas, the artist actively constitutes the world. Alternatively, Jaakko Hintikka has claimed that the realism of Cubism is to be associated with the essential character of experience that phenomenological reflection reveals. For an analysis of this concept in the early critical literature see Christopher Gray, Cubist Aesthetic Theories (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1953). For extracts from some of the key texts see Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (ed), Art in Theory: 1900 – 2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 184 – 217.

134

To be explicit, then, my concept of Cubist realism can be said to have two distinct

components: first, it alerts us to a latent substrate of perceptual reality by serving as a pictorial „criterion‟ of it (in the Wittgensteinian sense) and second, it does not deny (and in many cases, it emphasises) the ontological status of the representation itself.

CHAPTER 3

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