Photogenic Painting
packages together a lengthy introduction and two essays by Deleuze and
Foucault on Gerard Fromanger, a French hyperrealist painter whom one of
the editors calls “
the
political artist of 1968 and its aftermath.” The volume also offers a
generous collection of images of Fromanger’s paintings, which are
relatively unknown outside France. Fromanger was friends with the two
philosophers and painted magnificent portraits of them, as well as of
other French intellectuals, including Guattari and Sartre. Deleuze and
Foucault return the favor in their critical “portraits” of Fromanger,
sharpening their respective theoretical frameworks into supportive
introductions to his work. Deleuze’s essay, “Cold and Heat,” is perhaps
a bit too abstract. Deleuze argues that “Fromanger’s model is the
commodity.” In the world Fromanger paints, everything has been
“rendered in the terms of the single model, the Commodity, which
circulates with the painter.”
Rather
than reject the model of the commodity, or attempt to criticize it from
supposed point of externality, Fromanger works wholly within the
“system of indifferences in which exchange-value circulates.” In his
paintings, he manipulates the relational potential of the hotness and
coldness of different colors, creating “connections,” ”disjunctions,”
and “conjunctions” between different elements of the paintings.
Deleuze praises this “mobilisation of indifferents” for its “radical
absence
of bitterness, of the tragic, of anxiety, of all this drivel you get in
the fake great painters who are called witnesses to their age.” He
concludes, “From what is ugly, repugnant, hateful and hateable he knows
how to bring out the colds and hots which produce a life for tomorrow.
We can imagine the cold revolution as having to heat the over-heated
world of today.”
Foucault’s
essay, “Photogenic Painting,” is the better contribution, a remarkably
clear and insightful text that makes one wish that Foucault would have
written more in the way of art criticism. Foucault’s argument is
especially relevant today, as images are increasingly remediated as they
circulate throughout digital networks. Foucault takes issue with the
modernist attempt to purify painting of everything but its own essence.
Instead, he finds inspiration in the early decades of photography, a
period when photographers playfully indulged in a wide variety of
“operations” on their images, many of which, such as painting directly
on the photographs, undermined the border between photography and
painting. Confronted today with political and commercial control over
images, we need to learn once again how to “put images into circulation,
to convey them, disguise them, deform them, heat them red hot, freeze
them, multiply them.” According to Foucault, “Pop Art and hyperrealism
have re-taught us the love of images. Not by a return to figuration,
not by a rediscovery of the object and its real density, but by plugging
us in to the endless circulation of images.” “Pop artists and
hyperrealists paint images,” but not images that are meant to accurately
represent reality. These images are “relays” that transmit
photographic images, further circulating them in a form that retains the
traces of this act of translation and circulation between media.
Foucault considers Fromanger an exemplary hyperrealist who is ahead of
the game. Fromanger creates a painting by taking a photo, projecting
this photo on the canvas, and then directly painting over the projected
image. His photos are not deliberately composed, but rather record a
“photo-event.” According to Foucault, Fromanger attempts “To create a
painting-event on the photo-event. To generate an event that transmits
and magnifies the other, which combines with it and gives rise, for all
those who come to look at it, and for every particular gaze that comes
to rest on it, to an infinite series of new passages.” When the
photographic projection is turned off, the painting must “sustain” the
image; its function is not to fix the image once and for all, but to
help it to continue to circulate, beyond the original photograph. “The
function of the photo-slide projection-painting sequence present in
every painting is to ensure the transit of an image. Each painting is a
thoroughfare; a ‘snap’ which rather than fixing the movement of things
in a photograph, animates, concentrates and magnifies the movement of
the image through its successive supporting media.” Fromanger can
therefore take a single photograph, a single photographic event, and
relay its image in different ways through a series of paintings.
Foucault concludes, “We are now coming out of the long period during
which painting always minimized itself as painting in order to ‘purify’
itself, to sharpen and intensify itself as art. Perhaps with the new
‘photogenic’ painting it is at last coming to laugh at that part of
itself which sought the intransitive gesture, the pure sign, the
‘trace’. Here it agrees to become a thoroughfare, an infinite
transition, a busy and crowded painting. And in opening itself up to so
many events that it relaunches, it incorporates all the techniques of
the image: it re-establishes its relationship with them, to connect to
them, to amplify them, to multiply them, to disturb them or deflect
them.”
Photogenic Painting
packages together a lengthy introduction and two essays by Deleuze and
Foucault on Gerard Fromanger, a French hyperrealist painter whom one of
the editors calls “the
political artist of 1968 and its aftermath.” The volume also offers a
generous collection of images of Fromanger’s paintings, which are
relatively unknown outside France. Fromanger was friends with the two
philosophers and painted magnificent portraits of them, as well as of
other French intellectuals, including Guattari and Sartre. Deleuze and
Foucault return the favor in their critical “portraits” of Fromanger,
sharpening their respective theoretical frameworks into supportive
introductions to his work. Deleuze’s essay, “Cold and Heat,” is perhaps
a bit too abstract. Deleuze argues that “Fromanger’s model is the
commodity.” In the world Fromanger paints, everything has been
“rendered in the terms of the single model, the Commodity, which
circulates with the painter.”
Rather
than reject the model of the commodity, or attempt to criticize it from
supposed point of externality, Fromanger works wholly within the
“system of indifferences in which exchange-value circulates.” In his
paintings, he manipulates the relational potential of the hotness and
coldness of different colors, creating “connections,” ”disjunctions,”
and “conjunctions” between different elements of the paintings.
Deleuze praises this “mobilisation of indifferents” for its “radical absence
of bitterness, of the tragic, of anxiety, of all this drivel you get in
the fake great painters who are called witnesses to their age.” He
concludes, “From what is ugly, repugnant, hateful and hateable he knows
how to bring out the colds and hots which produce a life for tomorrow.
We can imagine the cold revolution as having to heat the over-heated
world of today.”
Foucault’s
essay, “Photogenic Painting,” is the better contribution, a remarkably
clear and insightful text that makes one wish that Foucault would have
written more in the way of art criticism. Foucault’s argument is
especially relevant today, as images are increasingly remediated as they
circulate throughout digital networks. Foucault takes issue with the
modernist attempt to purify painting of everything but its own essence.
Instead, he finds inspiration in the early decades of photography, a
period when photographers playfully indulged in a wide variety of
“operations” on their images, many of which, such as painting directly
on the photographs, undermined the border between photography and
painting. Confronted today with political and commercial control over
images, we need to learn once again how to “put images into circulation,
to convey them, disguise them, deform them, heat them red hot, freeze
them, multiply them.” According to Foucault, “Pop Art and hyperrealism
have re-taught us the love of images. Not by a return to figuration,
not by a rediscovery of the object and its real density, but by plugging
us in to the endless circulation of images.” “Pop artists and
hyperrealists paint images,” but not images that are meant to accurately
represent reality. These images are “relays” that transmit
photographic images, further circulating them in a form that retains the
traces of this act of translation and circulation between media.
Foucault considers Fromanger an exemplary hyperrealist who is ahead of
the game. Fromanger creates a painting by taking a photo, projecting
this photo on the canvas, and then directly painting over the projected
image. His photos are not deliberately composed, but rather record a
“photo-event.” According to Foucault, Fromanger attempts “To create a
painting-event on the photo-event. To generate an event that transmits
and magnifies the other, which combines with it and gives rise, for all
those who come to look at it, and for every particular gaze that comes
to rest on it, to an infinite series of new passages.” When the
photographic projection is turned off, the painting must “sustain” the
image; its function is not to fix the image once and for all, but to
help it to continue to circulate, beyond the original photograph. “The
function of the photo-slide projection-painting sequence present in
every painting is to ensure the transit of an image. Each painting is a
thoroughfare; a ‘snap’ which rather than fixing the movement of things
in a photograph, animates, concentrates and magnifies the movement of
the image through its successive supporting media.” Fromanger can
therefore take a single photograph, a single photographic event, and
relay its image in different ways through a series of paintings.
Foucault concludes, “We are now coming out of the long period during
which painting always minimized itself as painting in order to ‘purify’
itself, to sharpen and intensify itself as art. Perhaps with the new
‘photogenic’ painting it is at last coming to laugh at that part of
itself which sought the intransitive gesture, the pure sign, the
‘trace’. Here it agrees to become a thoroughfare, an infinite
transition, a busy and crowded painting. And in opening itself up to so
many events that it relaunches, it incorporates all the techniques of
the image: it re-establishes its relationship with them, to connect to
them, to amplify them, to multiply them, to disturb them or deflect
them.”
