visual images in context

Visual Images in Context Table of contents – Ben Baruch Blich An Introduction 1. Pictorial realism 2. "Natural kinds" as a kind of "Family resemblance" 3.The logic of curatorship: Between displaying and representing as a matter of selection 4. About Art 5. A short note on the epistemology of the photographic image 6. Photography and photographers in concentration camps and ghettos during world war 2 7. The body as a mirror 8. The Holocaust in the eyes of Comics 9. Twisted bodies: annihilating the aesthetic An Introduction The book is a collection of papers I have published in several academic journals since the late eighties of the 20 th century. Most of them have to do with the problem of pictorial representation as part and parcel of my intention to extend an approach to the study of visual culture based on the philosophy advocated by Nelson Goodman and his followers. In a nutshell, Goodman has maintained that visual objects of all sorts, such as paintings, photographs, comics, as well as objects of design and architecture, share the trait of aboutness, i.e.: they refer and denote objects in the real world symbolizing ideas and ideologies as in the case of Design and Architecture. Objects of representation do not stand on 1 their own; they signify and retrieve information and as such they function much the same as archeological objects for ancient cultures in the history of mankind. Being a vehicle of information, practically means that they bring to the open concealed and undercurrent motivations prompted by the agents who have created them. Take for instance the question I raise in the chapter 6 dealing with Nazi photographers who took unauthorized quick snaps of the Jews in the concentration camps, or comics depicting the Holocaust in chapter 8 – both refer to historical facts, and yet their concealed undercurrent motivations reveal another story; a story of revenge as in the case of the Nazi photographers, and fear as in the case of comics. The same goes with depictions which use the body as their central theme (chapters 7, 8). The body for centuries was considered the most beautiful object glorified by poets, painters, sculpture, photographers and architects. Why all of a sudden in the late 19th century the picture has been changed which brought to the open a new approach rendering the body as twisted, ugly and deformed. Was it because artists suddenly paid attention to the deprived side of our reality, or – as suggested by me – art has stepped down from its high elated position, incorporating the popular low art as a legitimate part of its expression. The book opens with two papers discussing Goodman's assertion according to which realism is a matter of habit, and not as a matter of similarity. By incorporating Wittgenstein's family resemblance, I set an alternative to Goodman's straightforward dictum. The next two papers (3, 4) point at the differences between two methods of displaying art practically used by museums, galleries and even us in our private homes. Since art objects are always about something, 2 be it an object or a scenery in reality, or about an idea, it is vital to discuss their nature as objects of reference. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the merit of art objects as vehicles of denotation, and their power of teaching us to see and enhance the world we live in. Pictures are an enigma. They are considered the most common and most readily perceived means of communication, but as soon as we try to explain the reality they stand for, it becomes clear that unusual perceptual processes are involved. This polarity between the immediate automatic apprehension of the content represented by pictures, and the difficulty in explicating it, stems from the fact that pictorial representation is an extremely strange creature. The collection of papers presented here are an attempt to unveil this enigma. I want to thank my colleagues for encouraging me to publish this collection, my wife – Sara - for her love and patience, and dedicate the book to the memory of my mother – Mina - who taught me how to look at pictures. Ben Baruch Blich 2012 3 Pictorial Realism Regarding realism, Goodman says, inter alia, the following: "Realism is relative, determined by the system of representation standard for a given culture or person at a given time. "... "Realism is a matter of habit"1 . "... reality in the world, like realism in a picture, is largely a matter of habit".2 The relativist position expressed here, with its emphasis on the concept of 'habit,' is reiterated by Goodman in many areas. It resurfaces in each and every one of the subjects or issues he dealt with: in his treatment of the status of scientific theories, in the role of induction,3 and finally in the subject to be discussed here, namely the problem of pictorial representation. While considering a wide range of problems, Goodman consistently presents the attribution of meanings to reality as an acquired habit, conditioned primarily by being exposed to the history we live in, our culture and natural languages. When focusing attention on habit, presenting it as the sole framework in which acquaintance with the world occurs, he not only leaves truth and similarity 'out of the game,' of appraising scientific theories or a picture's claim to realism; in many ways he also renders the whole argument circular. 1 Goodman, N., Languages of Art: An Approach to the Study of Symbols, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1976, pp. 37-38 2 Goodman, N., "Words, Works, Worlds", in his Ways of Worldmaking, Harvester press, p. 20 3 Goodman, N., "The New Riddle of Induction", in his Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Harvard U. press 1983, pp. 59-83 4 As regards visual representation, his claim also carries a strange organic implication, that under an alternative world version-Le., an alternative cultural-historical framework, we would actually see the world differently. And what we presently consider a painting faithfully describing reality, will accordingly turn out to be far from the realistic power latent in its style under an alternative framework to which we would be exposed in the future. In other words, Goodman leaves the ruling of realism to the mercy of cultural frameworks. He believes in habit alone as the final test for determining pictorial denotation. A picture is understood as denoting a particular scene the moment we accustom ourselves to use a particular interpretative key, that is in turn determined by tradition or sometimes even ad hoc. In adopting this position, Goodman dismisses the simple, generally accepted test of realism, i.e., the degree of similarity between picture and depicted object. Yet by the same token, he also dismisses any possibility of rationally determining what is or isn't a realistic representation of reality. None of the critical studies of Goodman's thesis of which I'm aware, refer to his unintuitive use of the world 'habit.' This discussion will, therefore, attempt to return the concept of habit to its usual, natural grounds, with the intent of proposing an approach contrasting with Goodman's, where the test of a picture's faithfulness to reality depends not on the framework of its sign system, but rather on our innate commonsense appraisal of similarity between the picture and the depicted objects. My attempt is to show that a painting is to be considered realistic as long as various alternative readings of what it depicts, require the retrieval of more 5 information from it than necessitated by its prima facie interpretation. Thus, a Cubist painting cannot, at any stage, be considered more, or even equally, realistic than a Renaissance picture. likewise, it is impossible that if we are given a different interpretative key to the renowned Constable painting 'Wivenhoe Park,' a pink elephant will be perceived, with equal facility as suggested by Goodman.4 While consolidating an approach to realism, this I will also consider Goodman's parallel position according to which "to represent, a picture must function as a pictorial symbol; that is, function in a system such that what is denoted depends solely upon the pictorial properties of the symbol".5 Demonstrated is the concept that in separating the interpretation of a picture from its immediate and natural perception, and requiring a sign system to elucidate it, Goodman ignores the natural and essential relationship between the artistic means deployed by the artist and the outcome achieved through these means. The same picture may subsequently denote a considerable number of alternatives just as the sign system currently in use determines just what it represents. The claim will be substantiated with the aid of several studies conducted in the field of Gestalt psychology, through which I hope to dismiss the specific piece of relativism that Goodman expounds here. I will start, though, with the last, by establishing my view on the nature of pictures, then going on to discuss the problem of realism. But first let us clear up some misunderstandings. 4 Goodman, Review of Art and Illusion, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 57 1960, pp. 595-599 Goodman, N., Languages of Art: An Approach to the Study of Symbols, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1976, pp. 41-42 5 6 PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION A picture is an enigma. It is considered the most common and most readily perceived means of communication, but as soon as we try to explain the reality for which it stands, it becomes clear that unusual perceptual processes are involved. This polarity between the immediate automatic apprehension of the content represented by pictures, and the difficulty in explicating it, stems from the fact that pictorial representation is an extremely strange creature. On the one hand, its relations with reality are denotative, as is generally accepted for all representational systems. Being denotative, it reflects and frequently also preserves reality (for instance-photography), and serves as a convenient channel for the acquisition of knowledge, the shaping of public opinion, advertising, education, etc. On the other hand, pictorial representation raises the complex issue of understanding the visual perception of objects appearing in a picture; an issue that puts the normal channels of perception, vis-à-vis problems that oblige us to classify pictures as a unique mediator. This equivocal understanding of pictures, stems mainly from our dilemmas on how we are to treat the 'aboutness' of pictures. While pictures are made of paper, canvas, covered with paints, dots and lines, all to be perceived on their own merit, they are also, after all, vehicles of representation, in which we are presumed to identify other objects, and whose value we determine according to established similarities between the said smears and the reality they bring to life. Nevertheless, looking at pictures requires no special methods of perception, unusual ones as to testify to their uniqueness. We perceive them in a simple, ordinary manner that in no way reveals 7 its complexity. And yet, when we try to explain how we elicit scenes and figures from an array of colors, we suddenly have to answer for the meanings of the common terms of perception. But as long as we stay within the framework of everyday language, and refer to paintings and photographs as such, we need not pick and choose words. Neither do we have any difficulty in expressing the degree of similarity or dissimilarity, for example, between a picture and our appearances. The first compliment, or alternatively, the first critical comment awarded an artist usually has to do with the extent to which his handiwork resembles a depicted object. We acknowledge the picture as one of the Prime Minister if it represents him by virtue of, or on the basis of a visual similarity between the two. A good portrait, or in other words, one which bears a similarity, may elicit comments on the gravity of the P.M.'s gaze, or his pursed and determined lips, etc., though it is completely clear that this is a mass of dots, a scramble of lines, and not the Prime Minister himself. Yet when we set out to understand what this similarity involves, and how reality is mediated by this sort of portrait, much of what we find turns out to be far from evident in daily usage. In fact, it is here that our problems with pictorial representation begin, and so I now intend to deal with the relationship between what is really in the picture, and what emerges from it. PERCEPTUAL "HABITS" In dismissing similarity as a necessary and sufficient condition for pictorial representation, Goodman raises a traditional question dating back to Aristotle, as to how we see the figure – be it the 8 Prime Minister's, or anyone else that emerges from the picture. Goodman's answer attributes its emergence to a symbol system conditioning us to this habit. The picture becomes a picture of the Prime Minister, and is entitled 'a picture of the Prime Minister,' because the key necessary for its decoding has determined which habit will govern the picture's reading. Any other key might well induce different reading habits causing us to see completely different objects in the picture. In Languages of Art Goodman discusses the very process of visual perception, but not the artistic experiences which may, undoubtedly, change through exposure to new or different interpretations of a picture. It is therefore only natural to oppose his claims with a number of psychological facts about perception, which can serve to demonstrate that visual perceptual habits aren't subject to an interpretative key, and are certainly not influenced by one. In the interim it will become clear, that when talking about the processes of visual perception and the evaluation of pictures, the term 'habit' must be understood as the very opposite of Goodman's construal. In order to elucidate my position, let me consider the following hypothetical case. Assume that the Ministry of Interior, in an attempt to honor the Prime Minister, had commissioned his portrait from a renowned portrait artist. The Prime Minister, who was interested in the painting and in its installation in his office, took the time to sit for the artist in the studio, so that the finished work should resemble him closely. After a long time, the picture mysteriously fell into our hands, and, looking at it, we noticed how much it also resembled our neighborhood grocer. We will disregard all sorts of psychological explanations of the 9 subconscious relationship between a Prime Minister and a grocer in general, and our's in particular, and consider the similarity itself. Would we not like to say that the picture also depicts our grocer, despite our knowing that he did not model for the artist? Moreover, can we refuse the grocer when he wishes to buy the portrait? Will our claim, that the famous artist was commissioned to paint, and intended to portray, the Prime Minister, be upheld, and so you, the grocer, are prevented from sending the picture to your relatives abroad, and of boasting that you were painted by one of the world's leading artists? It seems that Goodman's answers to this series of questions would be in the negative; negative as a picture's interpretation relies on its perceptual qualities and is in no way determined by causality. The best illustration in the annals of art, of dismissing causality as a criterion for representation, was provided by Rembrandt, who, as we know, painted his wife Hendrijke, to depict Bath-Sheba. Now, it is correct that when dealing with fictional or unfamiliar characters, it is not improbable that we will regard the picture, like that of Hendrijke, as a representation of Bath-Sheba. But imagine Rembrandt's contemporaries, relatives and neighbors standing in front of a picture said to represent Bath-Sheba, when in fact, it resembles the artist's wife Hendrijke. Nonetheless, Rembrandt's picture is considered a depiction of BathSheba, and not of Hendrijke, even by those who are fully acquainted with its history. The same should hold for our grocer. Though he cannot credit himself with the artist's intention, should we not judge his act of sending the Prime Minister's portrait to his relatives abroad, knowing full well that the they are totally ignorant of the Prime 11 Minister's appearance, in the same way that we forgivingly regard Rembrandt's Hendrijke as a depiction of Bath-Sheba? Now, this may undoubtedly happen at times, but only when the newly attached label, as in the grocer's case, resembles what is represented in the picture in the first place. The grocer would not dare to send the Prime Minister's picture to his relatives unless the figure painted in the picture actually resembled him. The same goes for Rembrandt's Bath-Sheba; when Rembrandt painted his wife, he used his colors, lines and dots smeared on the canvas with the aim of describing a woman, and the use of his wife as a model was designed to support this effect. If this were Goodman's only argument, my intervention would be unjustified. His claim, however, is much more extreme. According to his position, a particular sign key applied to Constable's famous 'Wivenhoe Park' would cause a pink elephant to emerge. In other words, our channels of visual perception can be trained to see things in a picture, where not even a partial resemblance exists between what is seen in the picture and what was originally painted. This point must be emphasized, as I wish to show that in basing representation on the relationship between the content of the picture and the framework in which we interpret it, makes putty of the term 'habit.' If the perception of pictures is conditioned through a symbol system, it becomes impossible to demonstrate any relevant relationship between laying paint on canvas, and what it is that assails our perception from within the picture. In the example we have just analyzed, there is an underlying assumption that the representational content of the picture is matched against its pictorial features, and that despite the possibility of assigning the 11 picture a different content - i.e., that of our grocer, we could not draw this similarity unless the grocer did in fact, resemble the Prime Minister. This is why, even for realistic paintings it is not impossible foolishly to establish an alternative causal relation. We would thus be better off looking for another criterion for realistic representation, one not based on the meaning assigned a picture, but rather on the special relation which must hold between the means whereby it is created and what finally emerges from it. In other words, it seems in place to establish a non-random relation between the elements of a picture - colors, lines, dots, etc. - and what actually emerges at the end of the process. For a fuller clarification of my understanding of the relations between what emerges from the picture and the means taken by the artist to achieve a realistic effect, I wish to draw attention to a number of studies in the psychology of visual perception. As we are all familiar with the findings of Gestalt psychology, the reference will be only to a number of unique studies which help explain how we see things like figures, objects, events, etc., possessing no real existence in the paintings, in a mixture of colors and a mass of dots smeared on a two-dimensional paper or canvas. With the aid of these studies, I hope to refute Goodman's thesis, replacing it with the idea that perception of a picture's visual content is immediate and does not require external mediating keys. A series of geometrical shapes consisting of two parts follows which demonstrates the illusion of reality. One of these parts parallels the role of the means deployed by the artist, whose mediation allows for the occurrence of the second part - i.e., the illusionary effect of each pattern. In the light of these studies, the 12 intention to claim that pictorial representation, and especially the effect of realism created by a picture, is a matter of the artist's precise timing. This, and this alone, creates the illusion of realism. The first pattern to illustrate pictorial emergence was initially drafted by Schumann as early as 1904 (Fig. 1). In this pattern we see a white square, many times whiter than its white background, although, and this must be stressed, the square in the middle is not actually present in the pattern but instead emerges from within as a result of the organization of the pattern's other contributary effects. This effect, known as 'subjective' or 'cognitive contours' by psychologists such as Kanizsa,6 Gregory,7 and Coren.8 Figure 1. Subjective contours It is created in the absence of a gradual change in the contour, and in contrast to the accepted description of creating a figure against a 6 Kanizsa, G., "Marzini quasi-percettivi in campi con stimolazione omogena", Rivista di Psichologia, vol. 49, 1955, pp. 7-30 7 Gregory R. L., "Cognitive contours", Nature vol. 238, 1972, pp. 51-52 8 Coren, S., "Subjective contours and Apparent Depth", Psychological Review vol. 79, 1972, pp. 359-365 13 background, its creation is not dependent on the gradual or sudden transition from the background to the figure. What is interesting in this specific type of contour is that a very high degree of accuracy is required for its establishment, and any deviation from the ad hoc norms laid down to create it, will prevent the contour from emerging. Gregory points out, justifiably, that the special effect of the cognitive contour lies in the timing of what he terms 'inducing elements,' which force us to make inferences about the pattern that emerges. Here are some additional examples of these patterns: the Kanizsa triangle (Fig. 2) and the Necker cube (Fig. 3). Figure 2. The Kanizsa triangle Figure 3. The Necker cube 14 Each is characterized by the fact that the figure emerging from within is inferred from such inducing elements. I am confident that no misrepresentation of Gregory's intention could occur if I said in my own words that for the perception of this type of contour, we must infer one thing from another; that is, from the conventions forming the visual trigger in these patterns, we are to infer the existence of the cognitive contour - the triangle, or the cube, which, again do not materially exist in the pattern. This ability is never acquired or culture-dependent, it is immediate and natural and may be considered in many ways as a constraint. Moreover, it is impossible for us to see a cognitive contour in another way, to interpret it differently, or to imagine a perspective from which a different shape or contour could be inferred from the same inducing elements. The implications regarding Goodman's views are obvious and it appears that the 'cognitive contours' may be seen as an appropriate analogy for pictorial representation. According to this model it becomes apparent that firstly to create a pictorial illusion, one's means must be used very attentively. Secondly, and this is a crucial point, this model shows that picture's interpretation does not depend on a foreign sign system, external to the picture, and thus allowing the picture to be assigned an infinite number of denotations, as Goodman maintains. Instead, the emergence of figures and scenes from within the picture depends, in all cases, on the inducing elements upon which the picture's interpretation is necessarily dependent. Thus what we assign to it, and what we see it as, cannot exceed the limits of the cognitive constraints imprinted in the picture from the start. 15 PICTORIAL REALISM The main problem confronting anyone who aspires to propose a new definition of realism is that of explaining the experience of similarity between whatever is in the picture and the real objects with which we are familiar in reality. Goodman's explanation places the burden on what he understands to be our acquired habits, thus implying that what is done by the artist is in no way relevant to what emerges from the picture. Moreover, according to Goodman, similarity has nothing to do with assessing a picture's realistic value, not only because the picture holds up only two dimensions to reality's three dimensions, but also because reality itself may be interpreted differently under an alternative worldversion. On the face of it, Goodman's contention does not stand to our commonsense convictions, but on second thought, and in this context of pictorial realism, it seems appropriate to pose the following question as to the relevance of our knowledge and beliefs concerning reality's actual appearances to the appraisal of pictorial realism. I admit that it is not an easy question to answer, since it will require us to answer a not less complicated additional question addressed to the problem of how do we learn about reality itself: do we learn about it by appealing to a transcendental world by which our knowledge and beliefs are shaped? Or should we say that we know the world around us by our immediate acquaintance with it? When addressing this question within the limited framework of pictorial realism, one may recruit the aid of Wittgenstein's 16 approach in order to say that one's knowledge or beliefs need not be taken into account in assessing a picture's realism. I am referring to Wittgenstein's ideas on 'seeing-as',9 and his stance that seeing a rabbit in the famous duck-rabbit figure must be regarded as the result of its having been painted there, and not of some transcendental mental experience (or in Goodman's words - a sign system) causing it to emerge. Figure 4. The Jastow duck rabbit illusion There would be little sense in saying that we see the duck-rabbit as a duck or as a rabbit, than in saying at the sight of a knife and a fork, that we are now seeing them as a knife and a fork. The lesson from Wittgenstein's approach is that the duck-rabbit figure is seen as either a duck or a rabbit because both were painted there, and it would be foolish to attribute their emergence to a mental experience or a sign system indifferent to what is present in the picture. The same goes for pictorial realism. Before presenting my view, I would like to look briefly at a contradictory approach, in which the assessment of realism depends on the arsenal of beliefs, knowledge, and experience that we bring to the museum. 9 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, Oxford University press 1963, part ii, chapter xi 17 According to this thesis, being realistic is tantamount to deepening the gap between what is seen in the picture, and what we believe and know about the world. The following example, taken from the theater, but also applicable to painting, will serve to illustrate this approach. It is generally assumed that the pleasure derived from a play depends upon the audience's ability to enter the illusion it offers. A good play presents events whose fidelity to reality is unquestioned. The scene where Othello strangles Desdemona will be taken as convincing if the actors portray it so as to create the illusion that a true event is taking place. But when we come to consider the audience's reaction to the scene on the stage, we must explain why it is that they do not storm the stage in order to separate the adversaries and save Desdemona. One explanation might be that the people of modem cities are too alienated from one another to butt into anothers' business. Another more plausible explanation would be that though the scene is realistic and calls for active, remedial intervention, the audience is aware that it is only theater - i.e., fictional. What makes the scenes on the stage fictional are various environmental factors, such as the building in which the theater is located and other apparently trivial things such as purchasing admission tickets to the play, the fairly strict rules of dress in the theater, the presence of a staff of ushers waiting to show the audience to their seats, the customs of dimming the lights and raising a curtain, etc. All of these play a part in leading the audience into the illusion offered by the play while by the same token they help suppress the audience's everyday behavior. 18 A similar explanation may be applied to the question to pictorial realism. Under this model, a picture will be considered realistic if the context in which it is presented (a museum, an illustration in a book, etc.) causes us to inhibit our natural reactions to the figure emerging from the picture. For example, an image of a hungry tiger will be considered realistic as long as our mental responses to it are restrained due to its occurrence on the wall of a museum or the front page of our daily paper. The moment we contravene these rules and see the picture as an actual appearance of a tiger, we confuse the representation with the tiger itself. According to this view, only realistic pictures oblige us to restrain these feelings; non-realistic pictures are in no way problematic in this respect, as they don't represent anything that can be interpreted as real. Consequently, the framework in which they occur does not contribute to their appreciation. In the following, I intend to propose a different approach to pictorial realism based on the content of the picture itself, and independent of any institutional or other framework in which the picture may occur. As mentioned with reference to Wittgenstein, it seems both uninteresting and incorrect to claim that we experience realism through some system irrelevant to the actual emergence of the objects from within the picture. It is difficult to entertain seriously the approach that in order to assess the realistic value of a painting, we must imagine or represent to our consciousness how the figures we are looking at are to be seen without the institutional framework in which they appear; a framework which restrains our true feelings towards the image. 19 Consequently, consider another approach which allows for two ways of inferring realism. The first takes, as a starting point, the relations between artistic styles, and the second refers to the isolated representation. As stated, Goodman sees realism as a matter of habit. In other words, a Cubist painting by Picasso may appear as realistic as a Rembrandt if and when we become accustomed to a sign-system by means of which we interpret, and so actually see, the Cubist painting as no less realistic than a Rembrandt. Now if picture interpretation is totally dependent upon sign-systems, we cannot object to Goodman's thesis, but he arouses opposition with the second claim that realism is also a function of habit formation. Justifiably, we strongly object to comparing a Cubist painting with a Rembrandt in this context, as we feel that the former can never be considered as realistic as the latter. To support our intuition, proposed is a criterion for realism followed by a presentation of empirical support for this position: Realism is a function of learning and inference. That is, the easier it is to infer, and thus learn various senses of a new picture from a number of familiar ones, the greater the likelihood that this picture is realistic. For example, let us compare two familiar styles: Cubism and Impressionism. It appears correct to say that an unfamiliar painting in a Cubist style will be more difficult to interpret than one in an Impressionistic style. This is not because the pictures have some sort of natural relationship with the reality they represent, but because of the internal relations holding in the painting's system. And of course conversely, the easier it is to draw inferences from picture to picture in a given style, the more central, rooted and realistic is the style. This, then, is the first point I am making. The 21 second, which completes and complements the first, presents this problem from the point of view of artistic conventions. That is, the more difficult it is to infer from one picture to another, the greater its conventionality. The picture's interpretation, in this system, will depend on extra-artistic factors such as: the artist's intentions, the period in which the painting was created, etc. This distinction should be borne in mind as the next stage of my argument will deal with the single representation. To consolidate this position, let me introduce two studies in gestalt psychology which demonstrate that the amount of information necessary for determining the quality of a given form is inversely proportional to the evaluation assigned the form's quality. I wish to enlist the help of this thesis in defining realism and suggest that the amount of information required for understanding the content of a picture is the chief measure for determining its degree of realism. A study carried out by Fred Attneave10 construes "perception as an information-handling process." According to this approach, the more regular, homogeneous, and symmetrical the form, the less information is retrieved in order to determine its shape. For example, if a subject is asked to guess the colors (black, brown, or white) of the square units comprising a bottle of ink (Fig. 5) and record them, he will no doubt have little trouble guessing them as his scanning of the unseen picture proceeds. On the first trial, the probability of a correct guess as to the color of the rust square is one in three, the probability for the next square of the scanning is one in two, and from there on no errors are predicted. He will only encounter difficulties in the broader areas where there is less 10 Attneave, F., "Some Informational Aspects of Visual Perception", Psychology Review vol. 61, 1954, pp. 183-193 21 redundant information as the homogeneity, symmetry and regularity of the form break down in these areas. However, upon discovering the picture's regularities, his errors will decrease. Figure 5. Attneave stimulus Figure 6. Simplicity and perceptual interpretation Had our argument stopped here, it would have to answer claims to the effect that Mondrian, Motherwell, or the early works of Jasper Johns accordingly constitute the zenith of realism, as they are all symmetrical, homogeneous, and regular. I now wish to call attention to another fact that in my opinion, complements the work of Attneave; I am referring to the joint work of Hochberg and Macalister,11 carried out, like the previous study, within the gestalt framework. Hochberg and Macalister aimed at presenting a qualitative approach to figural goodness, based on the assumption 11 Hochberg, J., and Macalister, E., "A Qualitative approach to Figural 'Goodness', Jornal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 46, 1953, pp. 361-364 22 that the smaller the amount of information required to define a given form as compared with other alternatives, the greater the probability that this form will be perceived as it is. In other words, the tendency to attribute alternative content to a particular form is inversely proportional to the amount of information needed for these alternatives. Take, for instance, the form shown in Figure 6. The illusion that two objects are situated one on top of the other, is perceived as long as less information is required to see the form this way than to interpret the form as comprising five adjacent irregular shapes. The amount of information in both cases may be calculated, and it appears that all proposed alternatives demand considerably more information than interpreting it as comprising two shapes one above the other. The number of intersections between various shapes will be greater, and the number of angles will multiply, etc. Thus, to attribute another meaning to this form, we must extract far more information from it than we extracted from its first and immediate sense. In the light of this finding, I wish to argue that a realistic painting is one in which any alternative readings require the retrieval of more information than is superficially apparent. A non-realistic picture will accordingly be characterized as one in which all the alternative meanings involve the retrieval of similar amounts of information. For example, a painting will be considered a realistic denotation of x as long as we cannot invent an alternative involving much less of information. I am not arguing that we weigh realism according to the degree of similarity between the picture and the scenes it depicts. Quite the opposite, according to my thesis, we explicate similarity by showing how the experience of realism is created 23 through the artistic means themselves. To be a realistic painting is to be dependent on the amount of information contained in the picture as compared with all its potential alternative senses. This means that seeing a picture does not depend on cultural or social conventions, or on causal habits of any kind. Another illustration of my argument takes us to what is known as Kopfermann cubes (figure 7). This experiment is especially fascinating as it is based on four alternatives, each of which may either be interpreted as a cube or as a two-dimensional form. The results indicate that the form which tends most to appear to us as two-dimensional is least perceived as a cube, despite the presence of the other three forms. The explanation is that the quality of a two-dimensional form does not increase and definitely does not decrease as long as we perceive it as two-dimensional, but when we wish to see it as three dimensional, its quality is impaired. The study examines the quality of two-dimensional prints, as the three dimensional forms are drawn in more or less the same way, differing only in the angle from which the cube is seen. The hypothesis it checks is that the relative duration needed for a response to the two-dimensional form is proportional to its quality. That is, the better the form is as two-dimensional, the faster the reaction time. Reaction time for the quality of the cubes on the other hand was found to be more or less constant. The variables determining the quality of the form were of three types: lines, angles and intersection points. In contrast with 1, 2 and 3, form number 4 (all in figure no. 7) was assessed as a better twodimensional shape, as it scored lower than any of the other three on all three variables. In other words, less information was contained 24 in the two-dimensional form than in any of its alternative forms, between which no significant differences were found. These experiments conclude that in order to be considered realistic a picture should contain less redundant information than any of its potential interpretations. 1 2 3 4 Figure 7. Kopfermann cubes The Rorschach ink blots, will therefore, be classified as nonrealistic, due to the potential possibility of seeing them first as a butterfly and then as a mother in law. The relative ease of switching from one interpretation to the other is proportional to the amount of information one has to invest in the picture so as to attain an alternative reading. When this investment is high, the picture is realistic. When it is lower this simply means that the picture tends to be less realistic. Realism, then, is not measured against reality; on the contrary, it is judged according to the alternatives addressed by the picture and according to its gestalt figural goodness-i.e., its symmetry, regularity, and homogeneity all of which are achieved if and only if the artist has used his artistic measures attentively. To conclude, if Goodman maintains that realism is a matter of habit, I have approached him halfway and agreed that realism is indeed a matter of habit, but not the habit he bears in mind. 25 26 "Natural Kinds" as a kind of "Family Resemblance" When we colloquially refer to paintings or photographs that depict our images we are likely to hear, among the very first things, remarks as to the extent of similarity that lies between these pictures and ourselves. Some of these remarks would praise the artist's talent, whereas others would condemn him for his negligence. Usually at this point these kinds of conversations end, and we all return to our daily business without undue delay. However, if there were a philosopher among us, we would no doubt hear him pose one more question as to the theory which supports this kind of similarity. Luckily, I do not have to speculate here which of the numerous theories our philosopher might have raised, since there are already a handful wellknown theories, addressed to answer the problem of similarity. I will debate it in the light of two theories: the one advocated by Quine and the other by Wittgenstein. My aim in confronting these two theories is to show not only that, as opposed to Wittgenstein Quine's theory of similarity is untenable for the explication of pictorial similarity, but also that under this aspect of pictorial similarity one is inclined to conclude that 'natural kinds' is a kind of 'family resemblance'. I shall open my discussion with some short remarks on 'natural kinds' with the purpose of showing that Quine's insistence on similarity of kinds, is his major obstacle in explicating resemblance between pictures and their depicted objects. My next step will be to rehabilitate the notion of similarity with the help of Wittgenstein's 'family resemblance' vis-avis the problem of pictorial similarity. Pictures, paintings, drawings etc. are all part and parcel of our means of communication. We use pictures for endless purposes in transferring 27 information, in education, in molding public opinion, in advertizing, etc., not to mention their traditional role in the visual arts. Just to illustrate the importance of pictures, allow me to call your attention to William Ivins' 12 interesting remark which relates the Greek's undeveloped science to the fact that they were unable to reproduce specimens of paintings and dawings. "From the point of view of art as expression or decoration there is no such need" says Ivins, "but from that of general knowledge, science, and technology, there is a vast need for them". The circulation of pictures and their reproduce ability made them among the means of communication that has accumulated nowadays a momentum that none of its counterparts, including language, can credit itself with. It would not be a cliche to say that the present century, as opposed to the previous ones, is the century of pictures which are easily transmitted by innumerous satellites to our television sets. People of all nations are exposed nowadays to pictures more than they are even exposed to their mother tongue, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that in some countries people recognize their elected leaders much more easily by their pictures than by their names. In the cognitive sciences, too, pictures have been used as a central means with the help of which scientists explore the nature of our power of seeing and perceiving, as well as a model for constructing a robot that would be able to distinguish between the innumerous cues from our reality, such as: depth, distance, shadows, constancy, etc. In philosophy as well, pictorial representation has served as an important aid in presenting various ideas. The three main philosophers who have used it as part of their philosophical method and as a means of explication, were, as far as I can tell, Plato, Kant and Wittgenstein. I do 12 Ivins, W. M., Prints and Visual Communication, Boston 1982, p. 12 28 not intend to elaborate on this matter here, but let me just remark that, contrary to Plato and Kant, Wittgenstein's use of pictorial representation is far more than an illustration, and it is well embedded in his philosophical approach. This statement applies to the later Wittgenstein and undisputedly to his early thought, where he took the picture to serve as a model for linguistic denotation. In the light of these remarks, it is only natural to pose our philosopher's question as to the theory that explicates the picture's representing power, i.e., similarity. As said, I confine myself to two theories and shall start right away with Quine's. Though Quine is interested in formulating an explication of scientific confirmation, he is nevertheless obligated to his two predecesorsHempel and Goodman. That is why one should read his "Natural Kinds" in reverse, i.e., be aware that the concept of natural kinds is linked directly to Goodman, whereas Goodman is mentioned there as a direct response to Hempel. With this in mind, it would be easier for us to understand Quine's intention as to the "innate flair that we have for natural kinds". But before attempting to do so, let me briefly reconstruct the first two stages of his thought and observe how he substantiates the idea that though "the relation between similarity and kind is less clear and neat than could be wished ... Still the two notions are in an important sense correlative".13 Hempel, as we all know, based his puzzle of scientific confirmation on opposing, yet complementary, predicates. The predicate 'black raven' is confirmed no doubt by each black raven, but it is also paradoxically confirmed by a 'non-black' and 'non-raven' green leaf. As a way out of this unpleasant situation, Quine harnesses Goodman's "New Riddle of 13 Quine, V. W., "Natural Kinds", in: Schwartz, S. P., (ed.), Naming, Necessity and Natural Kinds, Ithaca and London, 1977, p. 161 29 Induction", with the help of which he intends to show that Hempel's equivalent complementary predicates should be assesed as to the extent of their projectability. In other words, since 'non-raven' and 'non-black' are relatively less entrenched than 'black raven', they are ipso facto less projectible. Now, one should bear in mind that Goodman has formulated his riddle of induction in order to repudiate the traditional tendency to substantiate a confirmation by "defining a certain relationship between evidence or base cases on the one hand, and hypotheses, predictions on the other". Ignoring the role of "relevant knowledge ... the record of past predictions actually made and their outcome"14 in confirming hypotheses, actually means ignoring the distinction between lawlike and accidental hypotheses. That is why "entrenchment depends", as Putnam15 correctly observed, "on the frequency with which we have actually inductively projected a predicate in the past" though it practically means that a "scientific procedure rests upon chance choices sanctified by habit".16 The point important to our paper is that Goodman supports inductive confirmations by agreed upon conventional institutions, such as history, language, habit etc., which were shaped by the human race during its interactive contacts with the world. By no means can these conventional institutions be considered innate or natural, since they are also a matter of convention; given a different world-version, mankind no doubt would have created a set of totally different conventions. If we return now for a moment to the riddle of induction, and pose Quine's query "why do we expect the next emerald to be green rather than grue"? , we should not be surprised to find Goodman and Quine in 14 Goodman, N., "Prospects for the Theory of Projection", in his Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Cambridge, Ma., 1983, p. 84, 85 15 Putnam, H., "Foreward to the fourth edition", in: Goodman, N., Fact, Fiction and Forcast, Cambridge, Ma. 1983, p. xiii 16 Goodman, N., Problems and Project, Indianapolis and New york 1972, p. 357 31 total disagreement. Goodman would have answered that our knowledge that the next emerald would be green is based on our habitual use of the entrenched predicate 'green'. Anticipating the next emerald to be green is, therefore, substantiated by the knowledge as to the convention of entrenched predicates. Whereas Quine would have prefered to say that "the intuitive answer lies in similarity ... Green things, or at least green emeralds, are a kind". Now, it is true that Quine after all adopts portions of Goodman's insight as to the inequivalence of a green leaf with a black raven; "being a non-black thing" cannot be considered as a projectible predicate, since its instances do not confirm any generalisation. In other words, though the hypothesis that all ravens are black can be accounted for by the generalisation that all non-black things are non-ravens, it would still be inconceivable to address for that matter a green leaf, due to the fact that a green leaf cannot be seriously considered as a generalisation that all non-black things are non-ravens. However, his insistence on the use of Goodman's 'projection' for dissolving Hempel's paradox, does not by any means commit Quine to adhere to any form of conventionalism. On the contrary, Quine endeavours to show that "a projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only things of a kind", 17 whereas 'kind' is definable in terms of similarity, and "a standard of similarity is in some sense innate".18 Let me skip at this point several stages in Quine's argument as to the innateness of similarity and allow me to focus the rest of my discussion on the role of similarity in forming natural kinds. To begin with, one should not forget that induction after all is at the bottom of this issue. However, as Quine repeatedly stresses, the notion of similarity or kind is also fundamental to our thinking, and as such it is applicable to language 17 18 Quine, V. W., 1977, ibid. p. 157 Quine, V. W., 1977, ibid. 162 31 learning, to expectation (i.e., habit formation) and to the domain of dispositions, which is discussed by Quine towards the end of his paper. I shall not elaborate on the last issue of dispositions, but shall concentrate on the three topics which, to him, are "fundamental to learning in the widest sense". I will show that, though the notion of similarity and kind is fundamental to learning at large, it is inapplicable to the learning of pictorial similarity. I have touched already on the problem of induction, and I do not want to elaborate that thesis any further, but in a nutshell one can say that Quine's notion of induction is a function of the similarity of natural kinds. That is to say, one would not be able to carry out his predictions and generalizations unless the objects, events or phenomena of his investigation tend to group under a similar natural kind. Sorting for Quine is the key word for knowledge, and the fact that sorting is based on similar natural kinds puts pictorial representation in a very bad situation. Because, if one takes Quine's similarity and applies it to pictorial representation, he would amazingly find out that similarity in this context is related to pictures alone, and not to the expected natural link one desires to find between pictures and the objects painted or photographed. This leaves us with the unwanted conclusion that thosetwo-dimensional-flat-canvases-or-papers-smeared-with-paints-dots-andlines, are of a similar natural kind and in no way can they be clustered with their depicted objects. Now, if induction, as observed before, is a function of similar natural kinds, then our generalization as to the similarity of pictures and their depicted objects is untenable. Learning a language also relies on the dyadic relation between natural kinds and similarity. A child learns what presentations to call yellow by ostentation, and with the assistance of trial and error he also acquires the 32 ability to generalize "how reddish or brownish or greenish a thing can be and still be counted yellow". This unconscious process pointed out by Quine in the acquisition of colour can account for certain complexities, such as the similarity of respects or comparative similarity. However, in both cases the learning of colour is conditioned by the framework under which it would be taught. For example, when a child acquires a natural language, the framework of respects that would be presented for his language acquisition, such as colour, form, shape etc., would take into account only similar natural kinds, and would omit the possible similarity of respects which is significant between a picture and its depicted objects. The explanation for this omission, as mentioned earlier, is due to the bond between similarity and natural kinds, and since it is inconceivable to sort pictures as natural kinds with their depicted objects, it is then ipso facto inconceivable to acquire the word 'picture' by pointing to objects other than paintings, photographs, sketches etc. One can, no doubt, accompany the teaching of the word 'picture' with an explanation as to the essence of pictorial representation, but this cannot be done under the framework of natural kinds. For that matter we need another theory of similarity, and I find Wittgenstein's 'family resemblance' most suitable. To complete my criticism of Quine, allow me to refer in a few words to the problem of expectation or habit formation. Naturally, we are not aware of our habit formation and it would be hard to compare its mechanism with language acquisition. Yet our expectations become crystallized to the extent that the world is sorted into kinds. In other words, we would not be able to form habits or expect certain things, unless they were relevantly sorted into natural kinds. Now, referring once again to pictorial representation, could we expect a picture to cluster with 33 something which is not of its natural kind? I think that the answer according to Quine's theory of similarity is in the negative, and it absurdly means that we cannot expect from a picture to represent its depicted objects. The other theory I want to recruit for examining pictorial representation is 'family resemblance' which is advocated by Wittgenstein in paragraphs 65, 66, 67 of his Philosophical Investigations. You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what make them into language or farts of language ... All this is true. Instead of producing something common to al that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in many different ways ... Consider for example what we call 'games'. I mean boardgames, card-games, Olympic-games, and so on ... We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss- crossing… [and] I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than family resemblance . What Wittgenstein alludes to in this quoted paragraph is that, though languages, games, family members and the like, do not resemble each other, they are nevertheless sorted into a natural kind. Now, paintings, drawings and photographs in fact are of a different kind than the objects depicted by them, yet they are unique in that they behave on the one hand like any other concrete object, but on the other hand, due to their denoting capacity, their relation with reality is reflexive. It is true that a picture can so succeed in depicting an apple as to make us really see an actual apple in front of us, but in spite of the fact that there exist pictures of this sort, we have to admit in the first place that they are quiet rare, 34 and in the second place that their power of illusion is due, after all, to their artistic conventional means, such as colour, dots, lines, etc. Usually, the pictures we encounter do not deceive us as to their status in relation to their depicted objects and though they represent their depicted objects, they do not in all cases also resemble them. My question, therefore, is addressed to the grounds which substantiate their similarity. This question can be extended to our language behaviour as well as to our concept formation, in the purpose of discovering why we see in a canavas-smearedwith-paints-dots-lines etc., which is labelled 'apple' something similar to an apple. Before I answer this question I want to pay a debt to John B. Dilworth19 who refers to a depicted object represented in a picture as an adopted member of the object's real family. For example, a picture which depicts an apple would not be considered under this analysis as a sort of apple though it can serve us as a model of an apple, i.e., it can attribute to apples certain qualified properties, but in no case can it predicate or denote an apple independently of a real apple. Being an adopted member practically means that we cannot learn from pictures as to the real visual properties of the family, though under certain conditions we may treat pictures, sculptures etc., as if they were the real things themselves. Our manifest behaviour, as Kendell Walton20 has skillfully described it, has nothing to do with resemblance, though our reaction in this context is similar to our real reactions. Witholding the power of denotation from pictures as suggested by Dilworth, goes against our daily practice in which we use pictures, together with words, to refer to, and describe, our world. There are enormous issues in which pictures are the only means of information, such as in medicine, geography, journalism, cognitive 19 20 Dilworth, J. B., "Representation and Resemblance", The Philosophical Forum, vol. 12, 1980-81, pp. 139-158 Walton, K., "Pictires and Make-Believe" Philsophical Review, vol. 82, 1973, pp. 283-319 35 psychology etc., not to mention the problem of fictive entities, such as Pegasus and unicorn which, to my understanding, are denoted and not only modelled, or exemplified, by pictures. After all, aren't we able to distinguish quite easily between a caricature and a realistic picture of Pegasus? The answer is yes, and it means that we can choose out of several pictures the best picture, i.e., the one which successfully describes Pegasus. With this in mind, it should be clear why I do not agree with Dilworth's idea which treats pictures as adopted members in a family. First, because I want to explicate the resemblance experience of pictures, and if pictures are treated as adopted members, i.e., without any resembling traits to the family they belong to, then my efforts are in vain. My second reason is that occasionally pictures are the only things we have in our hand, as demonstrated by the case of fictive entities, which in no way can be considered adopted members of a family. Since my motivation, as said before, is to explicate the resemblance relation we experience between an object depicted and the picture representing power, allow me to borrow for that matter two single elements from John G. Bennett21 on the one hand and from Norwood Russell Hanson22 on the other. Bennett has shown that pictures acquire their meaning by combination with their labels; only by their labels can pictures be treated as true or false. Hanson on the other hand has shown that pictures acquire their meaning only in a given context. Now, what I want to say is that, coupled with a linguistic caption, such as a name or a phrase, we usually tend to improve our seeing of the objects depicted by the picture. For example, when we are shown pictures of our friend's last journey to the far east, we improve our perception if he accompanies his pictures with his own words. With his words we sharpen, to a certain 21 22 Bennett, J. G., "Depiction and Convention", The Monist, vol. 58, 1974, pp. 176-182 Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge 1981, chap. 1 36 extent, our visual capacities and though we do not recognize our friend in his snow coat on the Himalaya, we would certainly identify him if he explains the picture to us. The same goes for vague pictures or pictures that are taken from a strange, unfamiliar angle. In all these cases, a picture's caption helps us create a context under which we locate those features that make us see how similar the picture is to reality. Language games and family resemblance, therefore, play here an important role, because only with the help of such an understanding of language are we able not only to create a given context for identifying vague elements of pictures, but by expanding the language game we strech our reality to include new things. 'Apple', therefore, traditionally denotes that redround-sweet-fruit, but it also denotes apple-pictures of many styles, and with this extension of 'apple' to denote not only natural kinds, we learn to see how similar pictures are to their depicted real apples. Unless we could extend our language and apply words to pictures, one would not be able to grasp their relevance for reality, and this is true of simple pictures as well as of sophisticated pictures such as caricatures, impressionist paintings, cubist paintings etc. Now, to conclude my paper I want to go back to Quine's induction, language acquisition and habit formation, and examine the advantages of Wittgenstein's family resemblance vis-à-vis pictorial representation. To begin with, I am aware that Wittgenstein has nothing to contribute to induction in its limited sense; but from a broader point of view it seems that his idea of language games and their place in constituting new meanings, new concepts etc. in a given language, can account for new and unconventional generalizations. Practically it means that a prediction or a generalization does not have to rely any more on similar concrete natural kinds such as the kind of black ravens or the kind of apples etc., 37 but it can from now on be expressed even by metaphorical expressions, similes and the like, not to mention pictures as such. The fact that one can name things indifferently as to their natural kind and label for example a black bird with the singular term 'raven' as well as a picture that depicts it, is a sign no doubt, that generalizations are not confined to the conventional meanings of our language. Though labelling a picture with a caption like 'raven' is not considered by any sense deviating from the normal use of a language, it is still an elliptical way of denoting ravens, and without a theory capable to tie together these loose ends, it seems to me impossible to support, among other things, our intuition as to the resemblance between pictures and their depicted objects. The same goes for language acquisition. Learning the word 'picture' to mean an object capable of denoting other objects than pictures, is a precondition to the understanding of pictorial similarity. Teaching the word 'picture' should not, therefore, be confined to the similarity that lies between all sorts of visual representations, such as paintings, drawings, models, sketches etc., but it should allow a child who acquires this word to generalize as to the similarity that lies between the picture and its depicted objects. Teaching the use of the word 'picture' i.e., its language game, may help the child to expect from pictures to denote things other than drawings, photographs, sketches and the like. And though pictures, as said before, are by all means similar to their natural kind, we should admit that this kind of similarity is nevertheless not relevant to our colloquial expressions vis-à-vis pictorial representation. 38 The logic of curatorship: Between displaying and representing as a matter of selection The ideas I intend to put forward in this paper are intuitively known and practiced by each and every one of us, even without a title of a curator. After all, we all decorate our houses by hanging paintings, posters, photographs, by placing statues and all sorts of furniture – chairs, tables, cabinets, cupboards, as well as lamps, stereo sets, telephones, computers, etc. to make our private intimate surroundings agreeable, pleasant and cozy. Unknowingly, we all act as curators facing by each and every choice we make a dilemma of selection - should we use all or most of our collection of paintings, posters, furniture we own and display them in our private homes, or should we choose and pick those we consider important, representing taste, autobiography, political inclinations, etc., and put emphasis on those articles we find significant. In short, should we display whatever is available, or exhibit those pieces which represent an idea, an inclination, an ideology. The question I want to raise, is not so much on the praxis itself – displaying or representing, which to my mind are both legitimate and customarily practiced by prominent professional curators. The question I intend to explicate has to do with the logic behind the two: what does each one of them entail, what are their epistemological and ontological implications vis-à-vis the objects exhibited, and which of the two is suitable for exhibiting art, archeology, natural history objects, toys, fashion, etc. 39 But before elaborating, let me make a personal note. I consider myself as a freak-museum who obsessively visit again and again museums of all sorts: history museums, archeology museums, toy museums, horror museums, fashion museums, natural history museums, and art museums. I never discriminate or prefer one on the other, and I find them all interesting, appealing and educating. Yet I noticed in the course of years that museums not only differ in their exhibiting material, but also by their practice of presentation – the one I call display the other representation. My purpose, therefore, is to weigh and evaluate these two options of exhibiting objects and shed light on their nature. To do so I will incorporate two different and opposing points of view: the one advocated by Quine in his well known paper 'natural kinds', and the other is Wittgenstein's notion of 'family resemblance'. A display A display is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a "description; something intended for people to look at; an exhibition; a show; a manifestation; a visual presentation of data". In light of this straightforward definition it would not be incorrect to say that a display is a method, or may I say – a medium, with the help of which a collection of available data is exhibited for people to look at. To make my point clear, let me for a moment, take the Oxford's definition for the word 'representation' and compare it with 'display'. A 'representation' according to the dictionary has an added value, i.e.: it is defined as a presentation of a collection of data with the intention to "convey a particular point of view and to influence opinion or action". Would it be correct to say that a 'display-action' has to do with forms of exhibition typically exemplified by archeology museums, natural history 41 museums, fashion museums, etc., whereas a 'representation-action' is an open texture action, and as such it is typically exemplified by art museum? To answer these questions, let me start by analyzing the first of the two, and look upon the logic behind a display exhibition, and at its implications on the status of the curator. The notion of grouping objects under a specific well defined category goes back to antiquity. It was Plato, and then Aristotle, in spite of the differences between the two, who have agreed that one can not see, talk, nonetheless think without a pre-conceptual framework of forms (Plato) or categories (Aristotle). In his well known Cave Allegory (the republic book vii 514a-520a), Plato tries to convince us that the source of knowledge depends on being exposed to what he later labels as the agathon, the form of Good, which stipulates Truth and Existence. The sun (which symbolizes the Good in the allegory) – is the source of knowledge, without which one can not proceed knowing and understanding. Those confined in the Cave, exposed to shadows of light are ipso facto limited in the scope of their knowledge, and as such are unable to see and absorb genuine data. If we translate Plato's idea to modern language we would say that in order to have knowledge (nous) and truly (aletheia) select relevant data, one needs to have the ability to denote the real by his or her conceptual abstract ideas. Without an agathon (the Good), and its derivative forms, we would not be able to sort and cluster objects, phenomena, and events. Aristotle took a step further by classifying all aspects of reality under ten categories (Categories chap. 5) such as substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, state, action, passion. One can not use language without referring to these categories, nonetheless, one can not 41 apprehend reality and be able to see, recognize and define data, without them. A precondition for forming the notion of colour, of a plant, of an animal, etc., is to have the ability to use these categories. A horse is identified as an animal not by language itself; a horse is identified as an animal because it materializes a suitable category of horseness. To identify a horse as a furniture, or as an art object (as does Maurizio Cattelan) would be considered by Aristotle as a categorical mistake, and yet if we look at it from a wider angle, we could say that breaking a category, as done by Demian Hurst and Cattelan, is an expansion of a category without violating its boundaries. The legacy of Aristotle is still relevant today. Indeed, our craving to give meaning to reality, compels us to cluster objects, phenomena, events, under specific and determined categories. Only those objects, phenomena, etc., which conform to this principle of categorization, labeled by Quine – natural kinds, are allowed to be clustered under a group. An object is considered a table if and only if it materializes the category of tables, i.e.: it resembles those objects found suitable within the category of tables. The question now is how a category, i.e.: a natural kind is determined. Quine23, though reluctant to admit the power of induction, bases his idea of natural kinds on the assumption that if a, b, c, are of the same manifested feature (black), they are all ipso facto a group. That is to say – in order to be able to identify a group of objects and understand their featured characteristics, let us say – archeological relics, toys, fossils, etc., their grouping under one roof should conform to the logic of natural kinds, i.e.: inductively resemble each other. It would not be a far fetched conclusion to say that induction entails a display form of presentation, 23 Quine, W. V., 1977, "Natural Kinds", in Schwartz S. P., (ed.) Naming, Nescessity, and Natual kinds, Cornell U. Press. Pp. 155175 42 and one can not display objects, point at phenomena in nature, or at historical events, without assuming their similarity of each natural kind respectively. For example: a display of fossils in a natural history museum is based on the assumption that the next table of the exhibition will show something similar, close to the family of fossils, minerals, etc. but not a collection of fountain pens. Sorting for Quine ( as well as for his predecessors – Plato and Aristotle) is a key word for knowledge, and the fact that sorting is based on similar natural kinds, puts the act of selection carried out by curators, in a very tight position. That is why exhibitions of anatomy, history, natural history, toys, archeology, ethnic and fashion, are all considered a display, based on induction and natural kinds. Choosing objects in a display framework, is a non-open game, i.e.: the rules of induction and natural kinds should strictly be carried out dictating the curator's picking and the choosing. That is why an object in a display framework manifests features presented by its very existence; omitting an object in a display is a lacuna of features which can not be reconstructed by another object. Take for instance an exhibition in a natural history museum: a stuffed bird of a certain species can not be replaced by another stuffed bird of a different species. Either that very bird is shown in the exhibition, or it does not. The same goes with archeological objects, articles of fashion, etc. – each one of the exhibits has its own merit, un-replaceable by another one. That is why a selection of objects rendered in a display presentation denotes the content of the exhibition. Natural history, fashion, toys, can not be exhibited without a straightforward reference of objects specified for that purpose, which allows for original as well as surrogate objects to be displayed. To display a heart in an exhibition of anatomy, one does not need to display a real heart; a simulated heart either by a poster or a 43 plastic model will do. That is the reason why a display allows for artifacts, surrogates, and pictorial representations by posters or photographs, as a means of an exhibition, whereas under the framework of a representation rendering of exhibits, artifacts and surrogates would not be allowed for replacing real and original exhibits. To represent an idea like freedom, and replace the Guernica with a poster or a model, would no doubt abuse the very idea of the exhibition, nonetheless the merit of the curator. With this in mind we can conclude that a display exhibition is an archive of knowledge and the power and status vested upon the curator are retrieved by and from the items found in the collection of the museum. Representation As mentioned earlier, representation is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a "presentation of data with the intention to convey a particular point of view and to influence opinion or action". If we adhere to the Oxford definition, i.e.: that representation is a collection of data with the purpose to convey a particular point of view, then picking and choosing data are subordinated to the interests, motivations and experiences of the curator. Only those items that are found by the curator contributing to the cohesion of the collection and manifest a shared interest with the group at large, are allowed to be exhibited. To admit an item to an exhibition simply means that the very item manifests a shared trait with the collection already agreed upon, or with the idea behind the exhibition, which is determined by a network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing, better known as family resemblance advocated by Wittgenstein.24 24 Wittgenstein, L., 1963, Philosophical investigations, paragraphs 65, 66, 67. Oxford u. press 44 Family resemblance entails that though there are no features of similarity in a group of objects, they may nevertheless be considered a group due to their multitude relationships and shared interests vis-à-vis each other. Take for instance an adopted child who by no means does not resemble the bulk majority of the family he is in, and yet he is considered an equal member of the family on the basis of his shared goals, motivations, interests with the group he is in. An adopted child may under certain circumstances represent his foster family not on the basis of genetics or phenomenological resemblance, and yet he may legitimately forward the family's values, motivations, shared goals, business, due to his subjective identification with the group he is in. It seems to me correct to say that one can not manifest a shared interest of a group and represent its multitude relationships, without being carefully and meticulously picked and chosen. That is why an art object may cohesively function in a certain exhibition on the basis of its multitude relationships representing an ideology, aesthetic values, political messages, etc., and the very same item would in another context become a member in a totally different exhibition, representing opposing values. Choosing objects in a representation-action framework is, therefore, an open texture activity, exercised by the power, interest, belief, values of the curator. Another curator, a different context of values, would no doubt change the picture and constitute ad hoc new, unfamiliar and even bizarre rules of representation. Though by a representation of values we deepen our experience, broaden our sensitivity, and become aware of the environment we live in, the fact that the same item may acquire under a different selection a totally new and unexpected interpretation, bring to the open epistemological questions as to the effectiveness of an exhibition. Would we not prefer 45 long term exhibitions as in the case of a display of anatomy, archeology, and the like, instead of representation exhibitions based on undercurrent motivations? Do we go to see exhibitions just for the sake of exposing ourselves to new, intricate interpretations? Or our motivation to learn, broaden our knowledge are incentives to visit museums? I am not sure I could answer these questions in this short note, and yet I feel, as an obsessive visitor to museums, galleries, alternative shows, etc. that the space hosting the exhibit, and the curator as an agent of culture, implicitly obey to my two major concepts: representation and display. Selection natural kinds similarity family resemblance family resemblance induction multitude of relationships display representation archive-museums art-museums A table describing the two acts of selection 46 About Art Why art is so difficult to understand? Why do art objects raise questions as to their status? Why scrutinizing art involve semiotics, philosophy of language, linguistics, epistemology, ontology and even metaphysics? Why art is interpreted by psychoanalysis as well as by other fields of psychology such as behaviourism, perception and experimental psychology? What anthropology and sociology have to do with art and why do we witness art debated in the courtroom concerning copyright issues? In short – what makes art a crossroad for many and sometimes conflicting disciplines? Is there something in art which compels us to tune our commonsense reactions differently? The answer to these queries and many others, can be squeezed into one word – ‘aboutness’: art’s reference to reality is constituted on conventions far out from the common accepted rules of thumb. And though art reflects reality and is about our daily and often dreary business with life, it’s denotative aspects are different and sometimes even in contradiction in many respects to their colloquial use in other domains. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to shed light on some of these questions and I will do it by explicating the use of mimesis, representation, depiction, with the intention to show that their use in the context of art bear special and unique meanings. To do so, allow me to start with two examples which to my mind clearly demonstrate the gap between our ordinary reactions to reality as compared to our reactions to art. It is generally assumed that the pleasure derived from a play depends upon the audience’s ability to enter the 47 illusion it offers. A good play presents events whose fidelity to reality is unquestioned. The scene where Othello strangles Desdemona will be taken as convincing if the actors portray it so as to create the illusion that a true event is taking place. But when we come to consider the audience’s reaction to the scene on the stage, we must explain why it is that they do not storm the stage in order to separate the adversaries and save Desdemona. One straightforward explanation for inhibiting one’s sense of justice might be that people of modern cities are too alienated from one another to butt into one's business. An alternative explanation and more plausible one would be that though the scene is realistic and calls for active, remedial intervention, the audience is aware that it is only theater and on the stage of the theater we do not see real scenes but only as if real scenes. In other words, we the audience in the theater, in the cinema and in exhibitions of paintings and sculptures (not to mention ready-made-art), are conditioned to inhibit our sense of realism we constantly use while interacting with reality for the sake of ‘as if realism’ and illusion. The question, therefore, is how do we learn to react differently in the context of art, and sometimes even in diametric opposition to our norms of society, and the second problem we are faced with is who is our teacher; who instructs us the merits of illusion and where this kind of education is taking place enabling us to grasp the difference between what is seen on the stage from what we experience out there in the street. Would we want to say that reality is our teacher, evidence is our school, or would we say that we learn about fictional scenes from fiction itself and by conforming to the principles of illusion. To make a long question short, my intention is to point at the apparent discrepancy between the 48 means and ends of reality vis-a-vis the means and ends of art, and maintain that interpreting artistic illusion is much more complicated as well as sophisticated than our intuitive interpretation of reality. But before trying to give you an answer allow me to sharpen the idea I intend to present with another case. My second example is still in the theater but instead of a fictional occurrence taking place on the stage let us examine a case when the outside world, reality, intervenes with the ‘as if’ reality represented in the theater. I refer to Donald Davidson’s25 following example: “An actor is acting a scene in which there is supposed to be a fire. It is his role to imitate as persuasively as he can a man who is trying to warn others of a fire. ‘Fire!’ he screams. And perhaps he adds, ’I mean it! Look at the smoke!’ etc. And now a real fire breaks out, and the actor tries vainly to warn the real audience. ‘Fire!’ he screams, ‘I mean it!’ Look at the smoke!’ etc.” To be able to warn truly his audience the actor is supposedly required to use another language, language of reality; a language whose rules of referring are constituted by a different language game. In other words, our actor standing on the stage and facing a real fire behind the audience’s seats is expected to switch his language game and use a language appropriate for a true warning as compared to the language he uses while reciting the text of the play. Obviously, our actor is helpless as there is no special language to denote reality other than the given language he uses while denoting the fictional fire in the play. And yet, it is clear that our reactions towards what is represented on the stage should be of a different kind than our 25 Davidson, D. "Communication and Convention." Inquiries into Truth & Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. 205-80. 49 reactions towards reality even though the stimuli we are faced with are of the same appearance. Would we say that what makes the scenes on the stage different than the same scenes in reality is the context of the scenes? That a fictional scene is due only to various environmental factors such as the building in which the theater is located, the fairly srtict rules of dress in the theater, the presence of a staff of ushers waiting to show us our seats, the customs of dimming the lights and raising a curtain? etc., etc. Are all these elements responsible for switching from one language game to another, for interpreting an action as an ‘as if action’ and not as a real action? Or should we search for an answer somewhere else? Now, I do not deny that we frequently interpret signs (art objects as well as realistic phenomena) in relation to their context, but I believe that identifying a context and being able to adhere to its rules, is not a simple matter and it requires the operation of a special cognitive faculty, a certain state of mind, an ability to screen the context we experience in relation to other contexts we conform to. In other words, a necessary condition for interpreting a sign is by identifying its context; Marcel Duchamp’s fountain is interpreted as a work of art because it is placed in a museum which defines its status as such. However, the context (i.e.: the museum, the theater house, the cinema, etc.), though it is necessary for interpreting the signs it exhibits and its existence is crucial for the tuning of our reactions accordingly, the context as such is not a sufficient condition for identifying the aboutness of art and for grasping its denotative content. 51 To make myself clear let me concentrate a bit further on the logic of pictorial representations. A portrait showing a bearded man conveys to a normal observer on the customary interpretation the property of being bearded, but the painting certainly does not itself possess the property of being bearded. Conversely, it possesses the property of being covered with paint, but does not convey this property in its symbolic function – does not tell the viewer that the man depicted is covered with paint. A picture is no doubt an enigma. It is considered the most common and most readily perceived means of communication, but as soon as we try to explain the reality it stands for, it becomes clear that unusual perceptual processes are involved. This polarity between the immediate automatic apprehension of the content represented by pictures, and the difficulty in explicating it, stems from the fact that pictorial representation is an extremely strange creature. On the one hand, its relations with reality are denotative, as is generally accepted for all representational systems. Being denotative, it reflects and frequently also preserves reality and serves as a convenient channel for the acquisition of knowledge, the shaping of public opinion, advertising, education, etc. On the other hand, pictorial representation raises the complex issue of understanding the visual perception of objects appearing in a picture; an issue that puts the normal channels of perception vis-à-vis problems that oblige us to classify pictures as a unique mediator. This equivocal understanding of pictures stems mainly from our dilemmas on how we are to treat the ‘aboutness’ of pictures. While pictures are made of paper, canvas, covered with paints, dots and lines, all to be perceived on their own merit, they are also, after all, vehicles of representation, in which we are presumed to identify other objects, and whose value we determine 51 according to established similarities between the said smears and the reality they bring to life. The same goes with an action taking place on the theater’s stage. The strangling of Desdemona is related to what we know or believe is a true strangling of a helpless woman in reality, and yet the difference is that a real strangling possesses the properties of this very action, whereas the ‘as if’ strangling represents the real action by exhibiting different properties which we as an audience should be able to identify. To take another medium – language, we can put it, as John Searle26 has nicely phrased it, “in the form of a paradox: how can it be both the case that words and other elements in a fictional story have their ordinary meanings and yet the rules that attach to those words and other elements to determine their meanings are not complied with: how can it be the case in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ both that ‘red’ means red and yet that the rules correlating ‘red’ with red are not in force?”. It is, therefore, crucial for us - art consumers - to be able to identify art’s aboutness, i.e.: the means art represents reality and the inner intricate artistic manipulations by which the artist transfers the real and the true into fictive string of signs. Because if we do not identify art’s aspects of illusion, we might find ourselves storming the stage theater, urinating into Duchamp’s fountain, ambivalently reading fictive stories, and mistakenly take the depiction of grapes as real like those birds in the Zeuxis story. 26 Searle, J.R. "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse." New Literary History 6 (1975): 319-32. 52 How, then, we come to terms with what Searle eloquently described as a paradox, and is there away to comply with the paradox. As you can expect, there is no a straightforward answer to the problem, and yet it seems that my question bothered a number of art historians like Gombrich,27 psychologists like Gregory28 and Asch, anthropolgists29 like Deregowski, as well as philosophers since ancient times. All of them share one basic assumption which was put forward by Immanuel Kant. In his first critique (The Critique of Pure Reason), in the beginning of the preface to the second Introduction (pp. 29 in the English translation), Kant distinguished between knowledge and belief: “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith”. In a first glance one can not believe one’s eyes: Kant 30 who is renowned as the philosopher of knowledge, advocates for the merits of faith and belief, however, reading the whole chapter written by Kant back in 1781, we would find he advocated for belief only in those cases where what is debated transcends our knowledge, such as the thing in itself (the rules of nature, the order of the cosmos, etc.), free will of moral judgment, and those aspects of mental behaviour which are not subject to experience. It would not be incorrect to say that since Kant there were no major changes in these concepts – between ‘I know that’ and ‘I believe that’; between the knowledge that tomorrow it will rain – an action supported by evidence and facts, and the belief that tomorrow it will rain – an action based on intuition or luck. 27 Gombrich, E.H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972. 28 Gregory, R.L. The Intelligent Eye. New York: McGraw Hill, 1970. 29 Segall, M.H., D.T. Campbell, and M.J. Herskovits. The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966. 30 Kant, I. The Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Macmillan 1970. 53 And yet, when we come to consider a problem close to the issue we discuss here, a problem raised by the British philosopher G. E. Moore,31 it is interesting to note that knowing something and believing in something are two interwoven actions one can not without each other. Since I am short of time I will not raise Moore’s question in detail, I will only say that he was concerned with the conditions of reality and in order to test it he asked how do we know we do not dream. To answer this question Moore had distinguished between the arguments given to support the evidence of reality, from the arguments we supply when asked how do we come to know that the evidence we support our knowledge is true. As to the first problem which has to do with the evidence of reality, Moore simply stretches his arms and kicks his table, saying that he is positive about these actions. When asked to justify his conclusion as to the evidence of reality, here he said that he can rely only on his belief that the rival interpretation, i.e.: that we dream reality and what we see around us is untrue - that assumption would face us with a much more complicated understanding of reality than the straightforward interpretation that what we experience is true. In other words, Moore has shown that we do not rely only on our knowledge, but we need to utilize our belief that the frame of reference in which we operate our knowledge is evidently true. Another and no less persuasive demonstration of the knowledge-belief dual, was put forward in S. E. Asch32 series of experiments on the 31 Moore, G.E. "Proof of the External world." Philosophical Papers. London: Allen & Unwin, 1959. 127150. 32 Asch, S.E. "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgements." Basic Studies in Social Psychology. Ed. H. Proshansky and B. Seidenberg. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. 393-401. 54 “Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments” . It is an experiment, which later was replicated in many other experiments, that has become a classic demonstration in social psychology for creating an environment detached from reality, within which a naive subject is required simply to evaluate the lengths of a line in comparison to 3 given lines. The other 8 subjects in the experiment who secretly collaborate with the experimenter precede the naive subject in their evaluation of the length of the line, and they intentionally evaluate it wrongly, far from the normal approximation of its length. As a result of the group pressure, our naive subject joins the group’s evaluation, though the line he is supposed to evaluate is demonstratively different than the other 3. If we apply this experiment to our case in art, we can understand why I claim that learning to respond to a context can not be apprehended from reality, but only from the context we are involved in. The same goes with the perception of visual illusions, such as the convergence of railways etc. We, the consumers of art, being exposed to an ‘as if’ reality by the arts, react similar to the above naive subject. We do not compare what we see with real phenomena, or with what we know from reality. Instead we, as experienced consumers of art, having knowledge as to the history of art, evaluate a particular piece of art with established conventions we have knowledge of. It was Saul Kripke,33 who has convincingly demonstrated that Frege’s theory of meaning which relies on reality is unworkable. His proposal takes another route and he prefers to use reference as a kind of a ‘chain of communication’, or as a genetic connection between singular terms and their respective referents, even the deeds and the properties that are 33 Kripke, S. Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. 55 related to them turn out to be false. As a result of turning our attention to the history of the referent or to its genetic ties with its name, the naming relation does not depend any more on any essential properties of the referent expressed by the name. In other words, we can go on using a name given to a referent, even if we are told that the properties related to it are false. For example, would it occur to us to use a different name to Moses the moment the deeds related to him in the Biblical stories turn out to be false, or to have been carried out by someone else; would he no more be Moses for us? Denying denotation its reference to reality was advocated also by Wittgenstein34 who coined the term ‘family resemblance’ as an answer to the question what is a language. His intention was to demonstrate that in spite of the great variety of language games, there nevertheless exists a criss-cross of mutual properties by which those totally dissimilar language games are all rightly considered as language. What is attractive in Wittgenstein’s terms is that he attaches to the dissimilarities of language games a role no less important than their similarities. With this he turns language into an open system, to which one can annex an endless number of language games. In view of Wittgenstein’s theory of language we can easily explain, each of us in his own natural language, the phenomenon of metaphors and other figurative speech including slang. Metaphors and slang do not necessarily demand a straightforward comparison with their literal meaning, or with any reference to the world. We use metaphors, and 34 Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1963. 56 acquire their meanings, in the frame of the language we use, and by doing it we extend its game. Now, if we agree or at least accept part of what I said, i.e.: that we can not learn about signs but from the system of signs itself, that language acquisition take place within the game of the language we learn, it should be clear why I am convinced that conforming to the aboutness of art does not necessarily rely on a natural connection between what we experience while interacting with art objects, and what we are exposed to in reality. The questions I raised at the open sentences of my paper as to the involvement of so many disciplines in the understanding of art, is an evidence to the fact that art’s reference to reality, is and will be in question. It is not easy to put on the operating table smears, dots and patches of colour and debate their resemblance to reality, unless we know to decode their inner and intricate structures. The same goes with theater – the play is about a murder, but is it indeed about a murder or should we say that the play is about the performance of a murder. One can not settle down these problems in one short paper, yet I hope I raised questions we all thought of but did not dare to ask. 57 A short note on the epistemology of the photographic image It seems odd to justify at the beginning of the third millenium the act of taking pictures by a camera. After all the camera accompanies western civilization since mid 19th century and took over as the major means of representing reality. And yet, even though we are not overwhelmed and shocked by the magic of the camera as did the pioneers of photography and of the cinema, among them were Antoine Claudet, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Eadweard Muybridge, George Méliès, the Lumiére brothers, and many others, who have skillfully constructed strange and extremely complicated machines, we are still up to these days amazed and fascinated by pictures produced by this technology. In contrast to the hand made, one-off, talented dependent traditional craft of representation by painting, photography is a technological, mass medium, each and everyone of us can produce by himself. The act of taking a picture by the camera, though mechanical and indifferent to the act of representing and to the subject depicted, is in fact a violation of traditional epistemology of perception. On the one hand a photograph is a pictorial representation, and it enhances visual information as paintings do, and yet on the other hand – a photograph is a real depiction, and as such not only that it deliberately brings to the open scenes traditional vehicles of representation could not portray; it also, or should I say – it primarily constitutes and molds a new, and sometimes even an unexpected, point of view on the scenes depicted. It was Walter Benjamin who taught us “that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert”35 or in other words, the aura 35 Benjamin, W., 1968, [1936] “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in his Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, New York, p. 231 58 attributed to traditional means of rendering, does not play a role in photography, and therefore we may consider ourselves experts in photography as well as critical observers. The camera, is indeed, an intricate agent – it serves as a vehicle of documentation, of memory, of preservation36 and by the same token it is a voyeuristic vehicle which invades the private and transforms the scenes represented into the spectator’s possession. The gaze, the seeing, the information retrieved from the photograph, is the essence of the Camera Obscura, and the bottom line of the photographic epistemology. One does not simply look and register a photographic scene; one sees and perceives a photographic scene in the same way a child, according to Jacques Lacan,37 recognizes for the first time its own image in the mirror – a stage which marks the child’s ability to reflect on his body and construct his own self. The reflection of the self by a photograph, a mirror, or in the water, as in the case of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image, is indeed one of the major problems Western civilization is preoccupied with. Painting, sculpturing, engraving, carving, were for centuries in the service of mimesis – the only pictorial vehicles denoting the real and the imaginary alike. With the penetration of photography in the midst of the 19th century, the rules of mimesis have been changed and with it the status of the observer: from a passive stance to an active, involved and critical observer. 36 Sontag, S., 1979 [1977], On Photography, New York, Dell Pub. Co. 37 Lacan, J., 1949 [1937] “Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je” Revue francaise de psychanalyse, no. 4, pp. 449-55 59 The same goes with the object represented by a photography – from an aesthetic experience as in the case of painting, sculpture, etc., we are faced with a reification of the object depicted by the camera, or to use Laura Mulvey’s38 term – the photograph is an agent of fetishistic scopophilia, since what is seen by the photograph is not only an aesthetic object, as it is an object which functions as a state of affairs, as a fact, as something without a photograph it would not have been registered in our reflective memory. To substantiate my statement we have simply to compare a painting done by a skillful painter, let us take for instance Goya’s The third of May 1808, and place it next to a photograph of a similar scene by Eddie Goya, The third of May 1808, (1815-16) Adams a street execution 1968 execution of a Vietcong prisoner (1968), to realize that being exposed to a painting is in many respects a different experience than being exposed to a photograph. Now it is true that both pictures depict horrible and horrifying scenes. And yet, if you disregard for a moment aesthetic values and artistic excellence, and concentrate on the information retrieved from the two 38 Mulvey, L., 1989 [1975], “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in her: Visual and other Pleasures, pp. 14-26, Indiana U. Press 61 depictions and reflect on the epistemological point of view each one of them demands from the viewer, you will agree with me that a photograph is a spectacle, a hyper-reality representation, as it complies not only with truth and objectivity, it complies also with what is eloquently defined by Guy Debord39 as the transparency of vision, and to what is labeled by Jean Baudrillard40 (Baudrillard 1995) as the precession of simulacra. In other words, a photograph is a transparent vehicle, and as such it may be considered as an icon facilitating the scenes it exemplifies. Practically speaking, a photograph is in the position of replacing reality, and as such it represents state of affairs we would not have been exposed to unless the act of photography. Moreover, in contrast to a painting which may successfully symbolize a certain scene, but may fail to become a symbol as well, a photograph has always a reference, and that is why it is always relevant either as a means of information, or as a means of documentation. This, in turn has an impact on the viewer. Since painting is an opaque medium, that is – it never refers to reality as it is but always to the values and virtues of reality, it would ipso facto never impose on the viewer the burden of justifying the act of perception – am I looking at a picture (period!), or am I invading by looking at the picture (into) the subject’s private world, am I a voyeur, an intruder; questions we may hear when exposed to a photograph. Now, if indeed a photograph is in the power of turning an intimate subjective scene, into an open public objective and sometimes an 39 Debord, G., 1992 [1967], La Societe du Spectacle, Edition Gallimard, nrf, Paris 40 Baudrillard, J., 1994 [1981], “The Precession of Simulacra”, in his: Simulation and Simulacra, trans. By: Glaser, S. F., pp. 1-42, Michigan U. press 61 alienated environment, would it be incorrect to say that a photograph is also in the power of molding our points of view, opinions and attitudes towards reality, politics, religion, and in a roundabout way, publicly test our beliefs, inclinations, stereotypes, etc. These are not simple minded questions, and the fact we raise them vis-avis photography means that the camera though a naive realist vehicle, is a medium that puts us the viewers in a reflective state of mind, compelling us to adjust the scenes exemplified by the picture, with our dissonant interpretations of the real and the quasi-real alike. This is indeed the crux of the problem I intended to raise in this short note. It is the unresolved “distinction between what we really see and what we infer through the intellect”.41 (Gombrich 1972, pp. 15). We all live in reality, and we are all corporeal, that is – we are all bodies we can look at, touch and feel, and we have a certain amount of knowledge as to how bodies are built and function, and yet when we talk about our bodies, paint them and photograph them, and try meaningfully to interpret their various manifestations, we consciously or unconsciously turn to use a different and a much more intricate language game; a language which stems partly from images we retrieve from their appearances exhibited by the culture we live in, by the beliefs we adhere to, as well as by various and diverse disciplines, among them the arts, photography, the cinema, etc. In other words, the fact that our bodies 41 Gombrich, E. H., 1972 [1960], Art and Illusion: A study in the Psychology of Pictorial representation, Princeton U. press 62 exist in space and time, has to do with the ways we interpret them in or by pictures we are exposed to. 63 Dedicated to the memory of Ita and Baruch Blich, my grandparents and children, who were brutally murdered by the Nazis in their hometown Rowne (Ukraine) in November 1941 Photography and photographers in concentration camps and ghettos during World War II Time has come to shed light on photographs taken during World War II by ordinary Nazi soldiers who were stationed in concentration camps and in or near various Ghettos especially in Poland. By shedding light on these photos and focusing on their visual qualities, I firstly intend to bring them to the open and point at their merits as an historical source of a period some of us in the last few years want to forget or even deny. My second aim which is no less important and vital has to do with the photos themselves – why and for what purpose the photos were taken, and how should we, after all these years interpret them. Would it be correct to say that the act of taking pictures in concentration camps and Ghettos, are not of the same character we ordinarily relate to photographing at large? Should the photos done by the Nazis be interpreted as a representation documenting scenes they were exposed to, or should we interpret these photos as a ritual identifying those who took them as members of a cult chosen to take part in a mission open only for few? Would it be, therefore, a far fetched assumption to say that unknowingly the photos were intended not only for private consumption and memory, but were considered unintentionally and unconsciously as a means for elevating those who made them – simple soldiers who were involved in deportation and killing, to the level of their leaders? 64 If my interpretation is correct then the very act of taking these photos and the discourse attached to them, should take into account not only the subject matters represented in the photos, but also their ontological status as vehicles of identification much the same as ranks and medals do in ordinary identification of soldiers. This is the line of thought I intend to pursue in my paper: photos of the kind mentioned above were photos which served for several purposes – for documentation, memory, etc., but their importance and to my mind their raison d'etre lies in their role for self identification and as a means for status recognition by their peers and leaders. To substantiate my thesis one has to read the inscription written on one of the photo-albums by one of the soldiers who photographed Warsaw Ghetto in 1941-2: Das Warschauer Ghetto: Ein Kulturdokument fuer Adolf Hitler (Warsaw Ghetto: a Cultural Document for Adolf Hitler). The album consists of 65 photos of the Jews in Warsaw Ghetto among many other photos and postcards placed side by side in one album dedicated for his Fuhrer. Photography as evidence Perceived nowadays, photography is no longer a myth. It has freed itself from the obscure darkroom, from Plato's cave, to become a medium that not only represents, preserves and artistically exhibits reality, but it also dramatically violates traditional epistemology by constituting new and unfamiliar attitudes towards the act of representation.42 The camera is an intricate vehicle – it serves as a means of transferring information, of documentation, of memory, of preservation and by the same token it is a 42 Blich, B. B., 2005, "The Epistemology of the Photographic image", European society for the history of photography, no. 8, pp. 27-29 (see also in this book) 65 voyeuristic invading apparatus which denies the private and the concealed in favour of open and free flow of information. One does not simply look and register a photographic image; one sees and perceives a photographic scene in the same way a child, according to Jacques Lacan43 (Lacan 1949), recognizes for the first time its own image in the mirror – a stage which marks the child's ability to reflect on his own being and construct his self. Being a means of reflection, a photo may become a simulacrum, an object through which we experience a frame onto reality, and yet that very frame as in the case of photographs of the Holocaust, may become an object in itself, replacing the so called 'real scene' of historical facts to become a discourse constituting our point of view, emotions, values and even some of our cognitive understandings. Susane Sontag's first encounter with Holocaust photos was for her "a kind of revelation, the photographically modern revelation: a negative epiphany…. it was photographs of Bergen-Belzen and Dachau… Nothing I have seen in photographs or in real life ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously. Indeed, it seems plausible for me to divide my life into two parts, before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several years before I understood fully what they were about. … When I looked at those photographs, something broke. Some limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten, something went dead, something is still crying."44 43 Lacan, J., 1949, "Le stade du mirror come formateur de la function du Je" in Revue francaise de psychoanalyse, no. 4, pp. 449455 44 Sontag, S., 1973, On photography, Delta books, pp. 19-20 66 Having such an impact, photos should not be considered only as instrumental mediators between us and the world, but in certain cases, as in the case of Holocaust photos, they should be considered as a simulacrum, i.e.: an entity connoting a scene evaporated into the chronological pages of history books – photos that "are not [only] 'denotative' (unambiguous) complexes of symbols (like numbers, for example), but 'connotative' (ambiguous) complexes of symbols providing space for interpretation".45 And indeed, being able to decode photos, comprehend its manifested and concealed manipulation, are in essence what is taken by Flusser as the 'phenomenological doubt' 1983, p. 38) of photography – "the extent that it [a single photo] attempts to approach phenomena from any number of viewpoints"… "a hunt in which the photographer and the camera merge into one invisible function… a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before". 46 Using the 'hunter' metaphor, we can say that the soldier in the concentration camp hides himself as a hunter behind the camera as if he himself is not present at the site but only his eyes looking through the camera taking pictures derogating the Jews to be dedicated to his leaders and probably for the sake of being decorated with medals. Barthes47 names this merge a punctum, that very moment which pricks us the viewers as a result of the photographer's unknowingly catching a moment of truth; a moment from which there is no return and which can not be repeated. By pinpointing the photographic punctum the subjects photographed are transformed into an object, and some say – continues Barthes – into a museum object (Barthes 1980 p. 13), and yet the 45 46 47 Flusser, V., 1983, Towards a philosophy of photography, Reaktion books, p. 8 Flusser, ibid. p. 38 Barthes, R., 1984, Camera Lucida, Flamingo (trans. By Howard Richard) 67 moment a scene in a photograph becomes an object, it ipso facto turns into a history, merging us the consumers of history with the trauma reflected by the photographs. "Photographs do not seem to be statement of the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire…".48 No wonder why Sontag uses the name of Plato in the first chapter of her book. It is not so much for the analogy – the camera as an agent of truth rescuing us from the darkness of traditional means of representation such as painting, etc., but for the idea that the camera teaches us to see and apprehend the world around. On the one hand the camera is a nonintervention vehicle, an indifferent means to what is depicted and seen through its lenses, and yet its power lies in its intricate abilities to change and sometimes even distort our understanding of the real presented. Amateurs on the one pole and propagandists on the other use the same apparatus for different and opposite aims with the intention to build up a series of values and beliefs. Having in mind that the camera is indifferent to the scenes presented, one can not leave aside and ignore the role of the photographer in representing scenes he or she is interested to show. It is therefore misleading to say that photographers simply push the button and the camera passively registers what it can or can not represent. It is especially true in the cases we deal here; photos which were taken not for memorizing the old days or as a documentary evidence of the job the Nazis were proud to accomplish. Walter Genewein's collection of slides,49 is a testimony to my intuition that the photos were made for private ends and not in the service of 48 49 Sontag, ibid. p. 4 Baer, U., 2002, Spectral evidence: the photography of Trauma, MIT press, p. 168-9 68 propaganda. Genewein was an Austrian, deceased not long ago, who served as a chief accountant in the Lodz ghetto till its liquidation around 1944. He photographed the ghetto for almost 3 years, starting in 1941, and used a Movex camera some say he confiscated from a Jewish prisoner. Genewein is an interesting case not only for the fact that he took the effort to take pictures and arrange them according to their dates keeping his collection intact; the case is interesting because he substantiates my thesis as to the sort of action taken by these photographers; an action hunting for recognition unknowingly 'using' their photos reflecting themselves as private anonymous people deserving attention in the overall war machine of the Nazis. Their photos served, therefore, as do medals or ranks do, and that is the reason why some of them bothered to dedicate their album to the Fuhrer, or kept it to themselves in their private houses, as in the case of Genewein, showing it once in a while to their closest ones to gain their recognition and appreciation. Known and unknown photographers in Concentration camps and Ghettos As mentioned briefly photographs were part and parcel of the war machine during world war II, most of them made by the Nazi propaganda authorities which I do not intend to address here, whereas others were taken by soldiers (of all ranks) for their private collection. To my mind most of the photos done by simple ordinary soldiers were taken for reasons of self recognition, as in the case of the commandant of Treblinka SS Untersturmfuhrer (equivalent to Lieutenant) Kurt Franz, who captioned his album with the sentence "The best years of my life". His album does not reveal much information on Treblink. His album includes photos depicting his holiday in Italy, the dog he possessed at the 69 time, animals in the zoo in the camp, and few photos which show the cranes used in 1943 at the liquidation of the camp to exhume bodies for burning. Placing his pet, holiday experience side by side with pictures of the camp in its last days, avoids any intelligible interpretation unless he desired to present his camp life along other photos on the same level 'saying' that he cherished both. Franz's album is not an exception. There were others who took the effort to arrange in a certain order their photos. One of them was Walter Genewein, mentioned in brief above. His case is interesting and appealing not only for the narrative of his photos but also for the fact that most of them were done in color. Taken in color the photos transmit a double message: on the one hand the color washes away the grey gloomy apocalyptic character most of the photographs have. The scenes look serene, quiet, as if normal, especially the photo showing the selection of ties in a shop within the Lodz ghetto. Yet, on the other hand the fact the photos are in color point at the efforts done by Genewein to produce as much as possible a realistic view of the ghetto. Color slides (negatives transformed to positive prints) were rare at the first half of the 20 th century and especially during the war, and his insistence on having pictures in color, preserving them while evacuating the ghetto, brings me to the conclusion that his interest in photography was not only for the sake of photography but for the sake of 'telling' a lively story of a place that would continue living at least in the photos, as simulacra do. One can discern in the photographs Genewein's conviction that the Third Reich would prevail and the job he carried out in the Ghetto should be appreciated and valued. By displaying the Ghetto Genewein appears as if he and only he was responsible for its prosperity and efficiency, a stand any factory owner 71 would take promoting his products. Implicitly it seems that by developing so many slides attaching them detailed captions, Genewein tried to convince first of all himself that he was doing the right job in the war efforts of the Third Reich and the photos were the only self appreciation he desired to receive from his superiors. Genewein's photos were mainly focused on the workshops in the Lodz ghetto producing all sorts of products, few other photos represented street scenes – people gathering, walking, etc. A small number of the photos relate to the infrastructure of the ghetto – the police, the fire brigades, stores, markets, with the intention to put the ghetto on the map as one of the industrious sites in the occupied territories of the Third Reich. Genewein did not ignore deportation of the Jews expelled from Western Europe – people to the hundreds carrying suitcases, pillows, some even carried bits of furniture for their new resettlement in the east. If we look at a selection of the enormous amount of photos, it is easy to trace the narrative Genewein desired to portray: a place worth paying attention to, of course in the context of the Nazi ideology of the period. The "Ghetto Schulausspeisung" (Ghetto School Lunch) shows an impressive number of school kids facing the camera with the sun in their eyes, fully dressed, smiling, awaiting in a line with buckets in their hands to receive their meal. 71 "Ghetto Schulausspeisung" (Ghetto School Lunch) The same serene atmosphere is transmitted form the photograph "Pabianice Untersuchung" (Pabianice Examination) in which a group of men examine clothes in an open area as if the owner decided that in a sunny hot day to let his workers the pleasure for some fresh air. "Pabianice Untersuchung" (Pabianice Examination) The same goes with the photo of the tie shop "Getto L'Stadt der "Handel"" (Ghetto Lodz "commerce") in which a civilian, probably a German or a Polish examines the texture and color of ties behind him a well dressed Jew with the yellow star. 72 "Getto L'Stadt der "Handel"" (Ghetto Lodz "commerce") As a tentative conclusion it is in place to say that all the photos taken by the Nazis as well as the footage in film they have produced are beyond dispute a primary source for the horrifying atrocities during the war. Albums compiled by soldiers serving in the concentration camps and in the various Ghettos, such as Lodz, or Warsaw, were private initiatives which were in a roundabout way influenced by Nazi Propaganda. One well preserved album is the one which bears the inscription "Das Warschauer Ghetto: Ein Kulturdokument fuer Adolf Hitler" (Warsaw Ghetto: a Cultural Document for Adolf Hitler") – an album in which a German soldier who passed through Warsaw with his supply unit of the Air Force, had taken photos in his spare time and placed them together with other photos and postcard he collected - almost 56 photos of the collection depict the life in the Ghetto. Arnold Becker, Heinz Joest, Willi George and J. Heydecker, are few names of German soldiers from several units who were stationed not far from Warsaw and for some inexplicable reason have decided on their spare time to take photographs of the Jews in the Ghetto. Paradoxically – the limited number of photos taken by the Jewish communities in the Ghetto had glorified Jewish life, rendering their leaders, their cultural life etc. Under the circumstances these were optimistic photos, or may I say – make belief photos. The 73 Nazi photos represented real harsh life: deportation, hunger and death and without them, so it seems, a vital and important information would not have survived. Starved children in Warsaw Ghetto The photo above was taken in Warsaw and found in the above mentioned album. The photo depicts a starved child collapsed near a wall, next to him his friend and in front of the photo a kid and a grown up person pointing at the kid. This and other photos represent scenes which bring to mind a question not so much about the composition of the frame, but as to the role of the apparatus in forming the information represented. Being present at this very moment is in no doubt a coincidence and the photographing action is "purely contingent"50 and yet it has a punctum – the point of effect which represents a moment of truth which can not be staged or repeated. "The essence of a photograph is to ratify what it represents"51…it does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only for certain what has been. This distinction – said Barthes – is decisive. In front of a photograph our consciousness does not necessarily take the nostalgic path of memory, but for every photograph existing in the world, the path of certainty" is consolidated by its very existence. If I understood Barthes correctly and apply his insights to the photos I analyze here, photographs which have historical merits and are often used, sometimes repeatedly again and again, may become – as Sontag 50 51 Barthes, ibid. p. 28 Barthes ibid. p. 85 74 rightly remarked52 – saturated and loose their shocking message, and yet their punctum does not fade – their virtual imprinting, their gestalt, the atmosphere projected by them, and the trauma transmitted are strengthened by being repeatedly exposed to them. If one asks what the Holocaust is all about – showing the picture will give him an answer, not only for what is seen through the photo but as much for the action taken by the photographer. To support my line of thought let us look at the following much more circulated photo which no doubt has become the icon of the Hollocaust. It is a photo depicting a child raising his hands as a sign of surrender. Though it is a photo exhibited all over in magazines, museums and television shows, it is one of the rare photos ever produced which has accumulated meaning beyond its historical context. The very moment of surrender caught by the photographer will never saturate, and will repeatedly invite us to see the photo and its connotations. Taken out of his hide in bunker, Warsaw Ghetto Moreover, with the assumption that the photo was not intended to serve the indoctrination machine of the Nazi regime, although later it was recruited by the authorities to serve as a propaganda photo, the question still remains relevant why and for what purpose the photo was taken. The 52 Hirsch, M., 2001, "Surviving images: Holocaust Photographs and the work of postmemory", in: Zelizer, B., (ed.) Visual culture and the Holocaust, The Athlone press pp. 216-217 75 child at the front and the commotion behind him, expressing total loss and trauma, was a photo which to my mind served for the soldier taking them as a recognition for his devoted duty he collaborated with. The same goes with a series of 16 photos done by Arnold Becker53 taken in Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. The photo exhibited here shows an officer sitting in his car and behind him the gate to the surrounded Warsaw Ghetto. The fact that the Wehrmacht officer opens the door of his car facing the fence to pose for the photographer next to the gate of the Ghetto, supports the thesis Arnold Becker's photograph near the gates of Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-2 (?) that the photos were meant not only for memorizing the glorious days of the past, as for self reflection and self appreciation for the job undertaken during the war. Amazingly from this picture, and lots of photographs taken in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, one can notice the close and even intimate relations between the Jews and their oppressors. And yet, 53 http://www1.yadvashem.org/heb_site/heb_exhibitions/From_our_photo_archive/heb_temp_from_our_photo_archive/temp_heb_i ndex_warsaw.html 76 in spite of that, the photos are meant to point at a built in hierarchy one can not deny. Photo taken by Ernst Hoffman, a photographer in Auschwitz The bulk of the photos portray almost each and every step from the arrival of the Jews by trains to Auschwitz, their selection by doctors, their daily work, and the endless rows of people on their way to the gas chambers. A transport of Jews arriving to Auschwitz 77 An inspection by a medical doctor in Auschitz A woman (a mother?) with children on their way to the gas chambers The photos were not only nicely preserved, they were taken by professional people – two SS men Bernhard Walter who was responsible on the identification service, and Ernst Hoffman who was a photographer by his profession. Both were assisted by few prisoners who helped them carry the cameras etc. The photos, as said, depict almost each and every stage in the killing of the Jews, and was carefully done with an emphasis on composition (there are photos which were made from the top of the water tower or from the roof of the train cars arriving to Auschwitz). 78 A photo taken from the roof of a car train after arriving to Auschwitz As said the photos shown above were made with the motivation and with compliance to the over all propaganda at the time and served as a token for loyalty and obedience. But what about the photos which depict executions and killing? After all the final solution program was kept in secret and was supposed to be known only to few. I want to end my paper with a selection of photos which are rarely displayed and with them sharpen my thesis expressed along my paper. Hanged hostages (unknown date and place) 79 June 18, 1943 Lithwaniya Tormenting Jews before their execution, Saniatyn may 11, 1943 The last picture shown here, as in the case of Susan Sontag referred above, opens Janina Struk's54 book describing the photo and raising the question what did the photographs strive to accomplish. "Three naked men stand on the edge of a pit. Another man and boy, also naked, are walking into the frame. Surrounding them are seven perpetrators, some armed, some not. A uniformed man in the far righthand side of the picture is standing on the mound of earth, presumably dug from the pit, seemingly directing proceedings, and appears to be gesturing towards the camera. ….. It was this photograph that marked the beginning of my research into photographs taken during the Holocaust – that is, photographs related to persecution and 54 Struk, J., 2004, Photographing the Holocaust: interpretations of evidence, Tauris books, p. 2-3 81 extermination of European Jewry…. The pitiful sight of the hunched figures thoroughly shocked me. The bowed heads of the two men in the foreground are facing the pit. The child is wearing a hat and the elderly man to his right appears to be wearing a shoe or a sock, as though made to undress in a hurry…. I felt ashamed to be examining this barbaric scene, voyeuristic for witnessing this nakedness and vulnerability, and disturbed because the act of looking at this photograph put me in the position of possible assassin. …But I was compelled to look, as if the more I looked the more information I could gain. …It was also difficult to know how to find a context for this photograph, in terms of either an historical event or a photographic genre". Struk's description of the photo displaying the execution of the 5 people in 1943 and her question how it should be classified – as an historical photo or as a genre in photography, supports my question as to the nature of action (genre in her words) is performed by taking the photo by the soldier witnessing the execution. Again, a simple minded answer to the question why these photos were taken would be that the photos served for the young soldiers as a memoir of their military duty they were in. Another answer has to do with the overall mood at the time which was dictated by propaganda and the photos reflect Nazi ideology prevailed in education, public affairs, communication, etc.55 A more sophisticated answer to the question why such horrifying photos were taken lies in the very act of the camera as a means not only to present reality and be able afterwards to see and examine it, but as a means by which one displays and represents reality with the intention to 55 Levine, J., & Uziel, D., 1998, "Ordinary men, Extraordinary Photos", Yad Vashem studies, no. 26, pp. 280-293 81 enhances it. Or as phrased by Rosaloind Krauss - "a photograph – within what discursive space does it operate?".56 In other words merely pointing and revealing that there are photos of the kind mentioned is one step towards uncovering the conditions that made these photos possible. Much the same as for Foucault an archive of historical facts is what he labels as an historical a priori for the understanding what made a specific archive possible. If we follow this line we will inevitably reach the conclusion Faucault57 makes vis-à-vis history and knowledge: photos rendering scenes are archeological data; they signify ideas inherent in them; they are products of motivations, interests etc., unintentionally constitute a discourse either for the individual who produces them, or even for wider circles who would come across them. With the help of the discourse the photographer unconsciously took a stand towards the objects photographed and rationalized his deeds not as a collaborator in the atrocities he was involved in, but as a photographer hiding himself behind the apparatus. It would sound a bit strange to say that photographers in concentration camps, who were involved in brutal killing, hid themselves behind the camera as if it was a wall or a trench, and yet if we read the photos uncovering their narratives we would inevitably come to the conclusion that the camera no less aggressive than the machine gun or the gas chambers was recruited by photographers mentioned here, as a means not only for memorizing the past, but as a vehicle with the help of which they constituted a cult of unity amongst themselves objectifying the atrocities they witnessed with their bare eyes. 56 Krauss, R., 1987, "Photography's Discursive Spaces", in her: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and other modernist myths, MIT press, p. 133 57 Foucault, M., 1970, The order of things: an archeology of the human sciences, Vintage books, chapter 5 82 Intrigued by Holocaust photos I reach the conclusion that those photographers used their images for "realizing themselves, either by making them feel their own power or by the recreation of the object represented",58 in other words photography of atrocities fetishistically reconstituted the objects depicted for re-examining them privately again and again as if to revive the first emotive excitement experienced at the past. Photographic Albums: - Grossman, V., 1984, The Treblinka hell: photographic album of martyrs, heroes and executioners, Tel-Aviv - Gutman, I., & Gutterman, B., (eds.), 2002, The Auschwitz Album; the story of a transport,Yad vashem and Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum 58 Bourdieu, P., 1990, Photography: a middle-brow Art, Stanford U. press (translated by Shaun Whiteside), p. 14 83 The Body as a Mirror Writing on a subject the main axis of which is the human body – the body itself, with all its implications in art, on the one hand, and its remnants pointing to its actual existence on the other – is no easy task. The main reason for this difficulty is the fact that the human body is not an historical object, and in contrast to most of the objects surrounding us, the body hasn’t undergone any radical changes over the years, nor has it transformed into a different shape. In the course of history, the human body has remained as it is: a complex set of organs, any deviance from its normative function is viewed as an anomalous event with, however, no overall bearing on the definition of the body as a whole. Any anatomical changes that have in fact occurred over the years were external and artificial and were enacted in order to police the body back to its normative functions. I shall not dwell on this point here, but will mention that it is the watershed between the real, ‘non-historic’ body and the one represented by the sciences, by religion and in the arts, and whose image has always been a function of respective zeitgeists. Herein lies the paradox of writing about the body: on the one hand we are conscious of the real, private body that hasn’t undergone and won’t undergo any future changes; on the other, we cannot overlook its representations by scientists, religious thinkers, philosophers, artists, playwrights, novelists and poets. To these we can add, in the last century, the cinematographers who have been impressively tenacious in reevaluating the image of the body again and again. In light of these efforts, some of which will be reviewed later, the seemingly innocent 84 question arises – where does the body lie? Which of the abovementioned institutions best describes and defines it? Whom from among this choir speaks the ‘Truth’? Another question that can be posited in the context of this exhibition is whether it would be one in a long line of such representations set up to examine the human body in an attempt to illuminate unknown, latent aspects of it, previously unknown to us? And if so, does this constant wondering speak to an uncontrollable and incomprehensible need that will never end? The human body, then, is an enigma. On the one hand easily accessible and known to each and every one of us; on the other, its definition in an historic context, its accompanying images, the philosophical and psychological deliberations woven around it, and the use made of it by the sciences, religion and the arts, testify to its being a ‘chameleon concept’. It can ‘act’ as both a platform for allegedly objective research and as metaphor. *** Searching for an era of Western culture that has discussed the human body from every possible viewpoint, we are likely to discover it in what is termed ‘Ancient Greece’. Here, the body was endowed with the endless meanings that have influenced its perception and description throughout the culture. The reason for this can be gauged in the fact that in Ancient Greece the disciplinary boundaries we are acquainted with since the Middle Ages, namely between religion, myth and mythology on the one hand and the arts of painting and sculpture, theatre and philosophy on the other, are nonexistent. The ancient Greeks had no pure 85 disciplines, free of mutual cross-pollination, and their mythology, which functioned as the central axis of the lives of everyday Grecians, was also essentially the ‘language’ shared by artists, playwrights, philosophers and scientists. Its influence on poetry, prose and even the visual arts is self-evident, but when mythological language appears in the sciences, especially in anatomy – a discourse that received its fruition in this culture – this demands some explanation: should the description of the anatomical body be free from the influences of the time? Should the scientist ignore the culture in which he lives – the beliefs of his contemporaries, the fundaments of their religion, myth and mythology – and discuss his research objects in an objective, non-biased fashion, with no affinity to seemingly external influences? Or can this demand for objectivity even be met? Our introduction will be accompanied by such question. Is the human body ‘just’ the physical body – a mechanical set of organs as claimed by thinkers of the 17th century – or is it an image, a concept habitually in flux with the changing extraneous factors governing its physical functions? And is anatomy, finally, supposedly free from these cultural constraints, or is it also entrapped by them? This dilemma was addressed by the first scientist to make substantial steps towards separating the science of medicine from extraneous influences, Hippocrates (450-380 BCE). As can be evinced from the corpus of texts published in his name, Hippocrates invested a great deal of energy in combating the prevailing religious mores of his time. Sickness, defects and death, he claimed, are not punishment conferred by angry gods or the outcomes of witches’ curses, but are rather the products of environmental factors, diet and living habits that in turn influence the internal balance of what he termed the four humors: blood, 86 black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. The healthy man has all humors in a state of equilibrium, just as the four elements of the Cosmos, namely heat, cold, dryness and wetness must be in equilibrium for its proper function. This equation between the elements of health and the elements of the Cosmos, anything but arbitrary, should be understood against the backdrop of the Greek culture of the period, which derived its fundamental concepts from mythology. Even a brief assessment of contemporaneous philosophy, arts, theater, prose and poetry would uncover other extensions of the mythological, with each and all media deliberating over the concept of equilibrium, any breach of which harbors catastrophe. The most prominent example of this trend is Sophocles’ tragedies: King Oedipus, although a Hero and a wise man, is himself the harbinger of a conceptual imbalance. As the mortal who solved the Sphinx’s riddle, he himself stood in breach of the status quo between the gods and mortals, paving the way to a series of subsequent such breaches. The human body is the platform against which the drama of the breach between godly metaphysics and reality, Cosmos and the mundane, takes place. Starting with his birth and abandonment, boundlegged, on a mountaintop; through his marriage to his mother and the birth of his four children; and culminating in his bitter demise – gouging out his own eyes and being thrown out of the kingdom. The binding of his legs on the mountaintop (hence his name, literally “swollen foot”), the death of all the babies in Thebes as a sign of the impure element in the midst of the Polis and of course his act of gouging out his eyes – all these are byproducts of an original imbalance. 87 The body’s central presence is also shown in the third play of the trilogy, in which the protagonist, Antigone, wishes to bury her dead brother despite a decree by King Creon, who has banned the burial following the brother’s treason of Thebes. The main conflict, between loyalty and treason, between a king’s decree and a sister’s disobedience, revolves around a dead body, the central image of an imbalance between Creon’s decree and Antigone’s conscience. Representations of the body can also be found in comedies. One of the better known of these is Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, written around 411 BCE, during the Peloponisian War between Athens and Sparta (430-404 BCE). Lysistrata campaigns to convince the women of the warring cities to abstain from sexual relations with the men in a bid to stop the war. In accordance with Greek writing traditions, Aristophanes does not shy away from vivid descriptions of the genitals of both the women and the men, ranging from the erotic to the almost pornographic. His is a display the frailties of man and an attempt to subsume the allegedly ideological conflict between the warring factions into the desire for physical consummation, entailing different body parts. The play utilizes many mythological stories, such as the creation of the world and the birth of the children of Gaea and Uranus, the story of the Amazons and of course stories of seduction and infidelity among the gods. Painting and sculpture were more readily accessible than the theater, and presented the bodies of men and women as more than mere ornaments or aesthetic expressions. Paintings of men and women were produced in a mythic context and depicted imaginary, impossible situations. This is apparently the reason why the ancient Grecian conferred the role of 88 intercessor between the mythological and the daily, between the metaphysical and the physical, upon the visual arts, and expected them to shield him as a kind of armor. It is no coincidence that Aristotle cites catharsis as one of the most important values of the tragedy – only through it are we able to view artistic scenes as real, as clues for our daily existence, and interpret them as relevant to our lives as human beings, even if they entail harsh material. “Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies".59 In other words, art should, perhaps must, represent to viewers allegedly fictional and improbable fragments of reality, which, although distant and improbable, would mimic it. Only a few of us, for example, have seen a real corpse or dealt with the sight of ignoble animal forms, and it is to be assumed that this is not a coveted experience, but when presented with such difficult situations – bodies, body parts and their remnants – in an artistic milieu, only a few would look away. More examples of this will follow, but for the time being suffice it to say that the art shown today in museums and galleries, which deals with the human body, often in very extreme fashions – Dinos and Jake Chapman, Cindy Sherman, Ron Mueck and Maurizio Cattelan spring to mind as examples, not to mention the performances of Ron Athey, Orlan, Franco B and many others – nevertheless attract record crowds. Poetics chapter 4, lines 3-4 in Samuel Henry Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, New York: Dover Publications, 1951 59 89 In this respect, Aristotle was the first theoretician, if not the most thorough, to have understood that art has pedagogical functions beyond its aesthetic ones. Indeed, its aim is to present a fiction, what is meant to be and not what is at the moment; according to Aristotle it should present the probable, that which transcends mere fact, or as Butcher puts it, art according to Aristotle must accentuate what should be, thus conferring on allegedly mundane reality an ideal dimension.60 Greek sculpture, and later Roman and Renaissance sculpture, all fit under the heading of ‘ideal iconography’: painting and sculpture representing athletic, young, perfect and godlike bodies. The most compelling examples in this context are sculptures depicting the mythological gods headed by Zeus, Dionysius, Apollo Belvedere (a Roman marble copy after a Greek original) and of course one of the most prominent sculptures created during the Hellenist period, that of the Laocoön. These sculptures – only the minority of which were mentioned here – as well as others created later in Rome, and even more so those produced during the Renaissance, all depicted the sublime body; against this rigid backdrop, new, subversive and unusual points of view on the functions of sculpture began being introduced, especially since the middle of the 19th century. To return to Aristotle and his dictums on the functions of art, it is important to notice an implied tone in his text: the artist should represent the Universal through the depiction of a singular occurrence, to base the concrete on a general Truth. This opens the door to metaphorical and imaginative representations whose mediation he thinks is necessary for the full presentation of the real. 60 Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory, pp. 182-3 91 Metaphorical representations are of their very natures partial, or to cite Butcher again, they relate to a certain singular, to an allegedly private case; in this way, alongside its depiction of the sublime, art can simultaneously represent the other, the ugly and the abject as a fictional, metaphoric reality.61 Since alongside the art of the sublime the Greeks are also credited with inventing the art form relating to intimate body parts, which we would nowadays call Pornography, we should not ignore, alongside our appreciation of that culture’s more august manifestations, its more daily aspects. For the ancient Greek, as mentioned before, this daily life was lived with an intimacy with mythological stories. The most popular of these were the ones depicting the War of the Heroes and the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women who campaigned to overthrow male domination and take over the world. Their name literally meaning “women who removed their breasts”, they were said to have had mastectomies to achieve greater prowess with their bows on the battlefield. The Amazons were, in the words of Eva Keuls, “the Universal Male nightmare”,62 and although only legendary, their figures speak to the anxieties of the ancient Grecian, that also spurred him to paint vase paintings depicting the warring women, shown pointing their spears to men’s genitals. In one of the most well known of these, we can see Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, pointing her spear towards a man’s genitals, in this instance Athenian Hero Theseus. For these men, the focus on their genitals in these representations had a therapeutic function: by highlighting their private parts they were flaunting their power and virility, in an attempt to express their constant 61 Ibid. , p. 192 62 Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens, Berkeley: University of California press, 1985, p.4 (a note by Phyllis Chesler) 91 anxiety of being removed from their privileged status. Perhaps they were also driven by the desire to “give back a good fight”, at least symbolically, to the mythological prophecy. Indeed, Keuls’ choice of term for this period (The Reign of the Phallus) was not arbitrarily chosen. We won’t dwell on the full range of the Ancient Greeks’ feelings of ineptitude here, but suffice it to mention that this was also represented in the tragedies of Sophocles, as well as in philosophy (Plato’s Symposium) and in mythology (the creation of the world would not have taken place if not for the cunning of a woman). All these are fascinating subjects indeed, and moving along we will only pause to briefly mention the fact that in this brief overview we have amassed quite a sizeable collection of paintings all dealing with body parts – though not in any anatomical way, but rather images of weakness, anxiety and ineptitude. *** We shall return later to another aspect of Ancient Greek culture, but before doing so I turn now to the Renaissance, to show that alongside representations of the perfect body in painting and sculpture, there was also an unusual use of the human body – in this case with the body of Christ. This was done in an attempt to present believers with physical attributes of the body, the more extreme expressions of which can only be experienced through passion. Even a cursory knowledge of the Renaissance conjures in our minds images that share a more or less similar narrative; even the figures we 92 see in painting and sculpture are not that dissimilar from each other, and as in Classical Greek sculpture, the main touchstone here is the existence of unambiguous artistic features. The body represented in these sculptures and paintings, as before, is a sublime, perfect body, in direct contrast to actual living humans, who mostly bear scars, wounds and other defects. Michelangelo’s sculpture of David (1511) placed in Florence bears no wound or defect; his young, lithe, athletic, nude body gives off no erotic innuendo. So, too, is Botticelli’s renowned Birth of Venus (1480), whose protagonist stands nude atop a seashell, leaving us gaping not just for her unblemished beauty but at the unmistakable eroticism of her near nudeness. These two works, as well as others produced during the Renaissance, represent in my opinion two interesting phenomena, one being the reticence from any direct erotic reference to the nude body, the other the relative scarcity of works depicting Jesus. However, in those works where Jesus is the center of the narrative focus, we find two distinct foci: the one stresses His wounds and the visible signs of His mutilation and physical pain, while the other highlights his erotic sides. The most blunt example of this can be easily seen in the wounds and suffering in the renowned crucifixion by Matthias Grünewald (1510-15), where Jesus is depicted on the cross, his body twisted and seeping blood, his legs rotting and his hands wounded. Alongside Grünewald’s painting and many others dealing with the passion, however, we find no few representations highlighting Jesus’ erotic side and focusing on his genitals, whether as baby, adult or dead body. These paintings and sculptures, that have been overlooked for many years, raise two important questions, namely why was it that they were disregarded and what they signify, if we take as a 93 working assumption that it wasn’t their producers’ aim to depict His genitals for their own sake. Leo Steinberg, one of the few researchers who have dared to touch on this subject, uncovers in a fascinating book Renaissance-era representations of Jesus as a child with his protective mother shielding his genitals with her hand and images of Jesus as The Man of Sorrows with a noticeable erection under his loincloth (like in a painting by Maerten van Heemskerck of 1550), and even with hands covering his genitals after the Deposition from the Cross.63 Why did these artists represent Christ, whose conception was immaculate and who was known for his lack of sexuality, in this manner? Are they subversive images, or were they produced with the church’s assent? While not going into the thick of the debate over Steinberg’s book, which has notoriously drawn fire from many quarters, we will stick here to his main argument, namely that highlighting Christ’s genitalia wasn’t accidental, but rather meant to reassert His consciousness of and relation to the situation of the everyman living a life of passion, lust and even debauchery. Putting His virginity to the carnal test was supposed to instruct believers to the fact that Jesus could withstand His desires while not detracting from his physical appearance. In simple terms, highlighting His genitalia means to claim that each and every one of us is Jesus and that He is within each of us, and just as He can overcome his desires, so can we. It is another example of the metaphorical use in art of body parts for transmitting ideological information rather than presenting them in and of themselves. *** 63 Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in the Modern Oblivion, Chicago, Mass.: University of Chicago Press, 1996 94 Ancient Greek culture, as earlier stated, laid the foundations for many of the cultural principles under which we still live, and among other thing was the first to address the presentation of the body in the arts and sciences. The exclusiveness of the Greek paradigm held sway until about the middle of the 17th century, when competing attitudes on the representation of the human body came into play. The watershed between Ancient Greece and the modern period is reflected in a number of points, one of which was Modernism’s abandonment of the Body versus Soul conundrum that had informed the treatment of the physical body on the one hand, and the represented body on the other. This polarity was first articulated in Plato’s Symposium, one of the best known dialogues in Western culture, which has influenced many areas of knowledge. Its subject is Love (Eros), with each participant of the feast at Agathon’s home trying to answer the question What is Love. When it comes time for Socrates to assess all their different arguments and present his own opinion, he shifts the debate towards the idea that since Love is eternal, it could reside in anything and is hence unattached to any individual who, by his very nature, is a transient thing. The passion for perfection and its pursuit he calls Eros, and his conclusion is that man’s physical body hinders the Soul on its way to the consummation of this perfection in eternity. This binary opposition between the immortal and the transient is a recurring theme throughout Socrates’ dialogues, and he was also extremely instrumental in cementing the opposition between Body and Soul, an opposition that has influenced the development of Western culture at large and the perception of Man by the church. 95 The mythic, binary dialectics – including the dialectics of Body and Soul – held sway up until the eve of French Revolution, which heralded among other things a different conception of Man, heavily influenced by the Materialist movement. From here on out, the body was to carry new significances that were uncommon both in antiquity and in the Catholic world, as well as new to the sciences and the arts. If we wish to be more precise, we should pin this paradigm shift to the beginnings of the dissemination of Protestantism by Martin Luther, and later Calvinism by John Calvin. Besides the crucial theological differences brought about by this new wave of radical Christian movements, they also exerted a noticeable influence on the sciences in general and on the representation of the human body, even in the arts, in particular. In the sciences we can see this shift in the work of William Harvey, who studied and defined the functions of the blood circulation system, the heart and its valves, and whose research stood in direct opposition to the prevailing attitudes up to his times, that had been informed by the writings of Galen. 64 This breakthrough, like so many others in the arts and the sciences, was a function of a paradigm shift that stemmed not from within the science itself but from external sources; in this case, the Materialist attitude manifest in his writings. One of the most influential trends at this time, Materialism, is usually viewed as an admixture of the above-mentioned religious rift and the philosophical ideas that were expounded at the time by Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the thinker I view as the most central in this context. 64 Galen had written about the human body and even made sketches of it, most of whom are now lost. Bound by Platonist dogma, Galen represented the blood cycle in spiritual terms, with oxygenized blood described as a liquid “with life spirits”, and the “exhausted” blood returning from the body described as lacking these characteristics. Most of Galen’s writings, now lost, are fortunately included in a famous essay by Andreas Vaselius, De Humani Corporis Frabrica (1530). 96 De La Mettrie actually mocks Platonic dogma, unequivocally declaring that man is a machine, as against the Cartesian belief in a dualism of Body and Soul in humans. The French philosopher seems to have thought animals had only bodies and no souls. This concept propelled de La Mettrie to publish his book l’Homme Machine in 1748, in which he expands the Cartesian body thesis, perhaps the first to suggest the machine as model for the understanding of the body. He even went so far as to brush aside Descartes’ two main rationalist stances – his clinging to the Soul’s function and to God’s preeminent role – pronouncing them a camouflage of the French master’s true beliefs and ascribing them to his fear of the Church. A physician, de La Mettrie also wrote essays on dysentery and asthma; but the publication of his book on man as a machine spurred the founding of a coalition of priests, both Catholic and Protestant, against him. He saw man as a complicated machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it. For this reason, all investigations have been in vain, which the greatest philosophers have made a priori, that is to say, in so far as they use, as it were, the wings of the spirit. Thus it is only a posteriori or by trying to disentangle the soul from the organs of the body that one can reach the highest probability concerning man's own nature.65 65 Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Man a Machine, La Salle Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1961 (1912, 1748), p. 89 97 In other words, being a Materialist, de La Mettrie wished to disassociate himself from the non experience-based, Platonist research methods that were used up to Harvey’s time, and constitute instead Materialist, scientific methods that would view the human body as machine, one that is not motivated by the existence of the Soul. It is hard to ascertain whether the Materialism of Hobbes and Descartes, and later that of de La Mettrie, directly influenced the artists working at the time, but it is a fact that we can find in this period’s painting references to the body that betray Materialist influences. While not able in this overview to do justice to the Baroque, in my opinion the period that most fully expressed the ideas of this movement, I should however point out that painting in this period shows the direct influence of Materialism in the representations of heavy, corpulent and anatomical bodies. Salient examples of this are paintings by artists like Caravaggio (Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601), Rubens (The Deposition, 1611) and especially Rembrandt (The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp, 1632), who seems to me to be among the first to represent the work of doctors in the operating theater. From this point, the road to Modern art – which uses the body and its remnants to make statements on the state of Man – is not long. Indeed, the entire 19th century and some of the 20th are among the most turbulent in any respect in Western culture. A chilling, if very succinct, expression of man’s existential experience at this time, Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis published in 1915, tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who has transmogrified into a cockroach. Although other writers had depicted the fate of an incomplete, suffering man before him, the 98 strength of Kafka’s prose lies not so much in the plot but rather in the visceral descriptions of his protagonist’s transformation. Kafka’s work – since received as a Modern milestone – has blazed a trail for Modern paintings, sculptures and the cinema to deal with Man through the metamorphosis of his body and its parts. *** The first instance of the body’s deconstruction and its representation in its dismembered parts that I am aware of is the work of French painter Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), who produced a series of paintings of severed hands, feet, heads and other body parts, strewn side by side like an anatomical display of lifeless members, with no context or overarching meaning to bind them. They are just unidentified organs, belonging to no one, provided with no history or explanation as to how they got to where they are. I am unaware of whether Géricualt had read l’Homme Machine, but if ever a visual representation of de La Mettrie’s ideas of the materiality of the human body existed, they are surely these morbid paintings. Let us also not forget that at the time Géricualt was busy painting his The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819), Mary Shelly published her Frankenstein (1818), which contains pseudo-medical, anatomical descriptions, alongside a passion for immortality that characterized the Romantic weltanschauung. The power of Géricualt’s works, however, lies not in the depiction of severed organs as such, rather in the articulation of an Absence, the absence of a real body, the only evidence of whose existence are its remnants. Could Géricault be seen as a precursor of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas on the Simulacrum? Could he be said to have prophesied in his 99 paintings the situation of Post-Modernist Man, whose life is guided by an unseen hand? It is doubtful whether these were the ideas that guided him, and yet it is hard not to notice in his work a premonition of things to come, of works by many contemporary artists like Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Gilbert and George, Maurizio Cattelan, Vanessa Beecroft, Sally Mann’s photographs of corpses, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sigalit Landau, Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as performance artists such as Ron Athey, Franco B and Orlan – all of whom represent the Simulacrum, the remnant or substitute of the Real, whose work leads up to a loss of a real connection (if such a thing can even happen) with the reality in which we are forced to live. Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, is therefore the link between Géricualt’s Absence and Baudrillard’s Simulacrum, the space between these two poles populated by many of the greatest thinkers of Western culture, who have interpreted Absence as a driving force. We cannot mention all of them in this brief context, but it would suffice for our purposes to conjure such names as Freud and his idea of the subconscious; Michel Foucault’s ideas of the Discourse and foci of power; Jacques Lacan and his Castration Complex; Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and their ideas on schizophrenia; as well as many more thinkers who formulated Absence in their writings. Baudrillard, the ‘inventor’ of the concept of the Simulacrum, addresses, among other things, Disneyland as a ‘place’ based entirely on substitutes or prosthetics, representing nothing but themselves.66 To this we could add Madurodam – the small-scale model that attracts crowds not by virtue of its being a real city but, on the contrary, for being an attraction unto 66 Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra, in Jean Baudriallrd, Simulacra and Simulation (translated by Sheila Faria Glaser), Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994 (1981), pp. 1-42 111 itself; and the desert town of Las Vegas, a ‘place’ that is nothing more than a pastiche of other ‘places’, from the Egyptian pyramids to the Eiffel Tower. This list would be incomplete unless we add to it the economic driving force of the 20th century, namely the stock market, which is based on the unseen forces of the Market, and which never fully represents a share’s true power. Communications in general and television in particular are two agents whose power lies in the production of information the truth content of which we can never actually verify. Advertisement, in this respect, would be understood as the most extreme media, since it could be claimed that it uses Absence as a marketing tool. All of these places share an ambiguity towards the ideas of reality and fiction, the object as it is supposed to be – whole, full, readily accessible – and the object as presented to us in reality, which looks, at least at first glance, partial, a remnant, a clue, from which it is our job to deduce a coherent narrative. We live the signifier and as much as possible experience the product of the signified, sometimes not even knowing whether the signified even exists, has any reality, or is just an idea. In many cases the Simulacrum is embodied in both signifier and signified, now inseparable. To return to Baudrillard and his famous essay The Procession of Simulacra, which is prefaced with a fable by Borges, the gist of which tells the story of a group of cartographers drawing the map of an empire that is gradually sinking, and finally all that remains of it are the remnants of the map. He continues: 111 Today the abstraction is not of the map, the Double, the Mirror or the Concept. The Simulation is already not of the Territory or any objective existence, noun. The Simulation is the occurrence of an original-free Real, or a Real through models: Hyperreal […] from now on the map comes before the territory – this is the Precession of the Simulacra: the map generating the territory […] Producing a Simulation means pretending we have what we do not.67 These short sentences from Baudrillard’s essay suffice for our purposes to illustrate the fact that any reference we make to our selves, whether mediated through mass communications, fashion, politics, religion, science or this exhibition – requires the mediation of the Simulacrum for us to look into ourselves (in many cases it is the only requisite). Without going into details, Gregor Samsa is the Simulacra of our selves, which allows him to penetrate into the midst of the self he’s lost; Gregor Samsa the cockroach is Gregor Samsa the man that, in the flash of a moment, has captured himself and understands himself only through the viewpoint of the Simulacrum. Is that how we are to understand the painters, sculptors, photographers and cinematographers that center on the body as their main subject matter? Is invoking the body, as in this exhibition, not a ruse to distract us from the uncontrollable desire to look at the Self, at a body free of cultural, social and political circumstances? To learn something from this sight about the body, and at the same time about the factors that divert us from an authentic, naked, interest-free gaze? Would it be a mistake to 67 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 1 112 claim that the ‘aim’ of this a constant prying into the body, its organs and its remnants, is to break through the Simulacrum and arrive at the Real? Is the Body just a means or an ends for the conjuring or production of memory, or perhaps both? Among the artists I am acquainted with, Cindy Sherman is the most obsessive in referencing the human body and address questions of the Self through it. Whether in a video documenting her early works (where she directed herself in scenes that alluded to 1951’s-era cinema) or in her later and more rounded works (where she masquerades as imaginary figures), the question ‘where is the real Cindy Sherman’ arises time and again. And indeed, where does the real Cindy Sherman materialize? Is it in the Simulacrum, in the mirror she creates artificially, or is it in the “real” (flesh and blood) Cindy Sherman, a woman living in New York? And where is the Simulacrum – is it in the art that exposes Sherman’s real passions and desires? Or perhaps in the daily reality that forces her to curb them and live according to rules that she didn’t make? Which of the arenas – the one we call art or the one we call reality – is the one that can be attributed with truth values? And where does the Body figure in this story? Is her interest in the Body due to the fact that it is a physical, real object that cannot be denied, and as such could be the subject of the same concrete treatment we give other objects in our vicinity, such as chairs and tables? Would it be correct, then, to claim that Sherman, like other artists addressing the body, expresses in one way or another the schizophrenia already formulated by Aristotle between Reality and Fiction, Existence and Simulacrum, the Real and the Imaginary? These dichotomies have troubled art at least since the Cartesian dictum of “I think therefore I am”. Who is doing the thinking here, and what is the 113 arena wherein we think of our selves? Is it the arena we call Reality? Or is it the arena we call Art? The disappearance of the Body and its substitution by dolls has featured in the works of many Modern artists. Among them were Man Ray, who in the 1941’s used wooden mannequins to depict scenes between a man and a woman (as in his piece Mr. And Mrs. Woodman), and Hans Bellmer, who as early as the mid-1931’s referenced the doll, its remnants and its different manifestations. I believe it would be correct to claim that this referencing of the doll to transmit social messages reached its apex in a series of mannequin-based works produced by Sherman in the 1991’s, which has been described by Elisabeth Smith as an attempt to present a feminist viewpoint on the place, status and functions of women in society.68 Utilizing mannequins, Sherman creates violent encounters between men and women and between social classes, coaxing the viewer into looking at the Simulacrum and reasserting the power of evidence as absence of the body. Another viewpoint on this subject is given in French performance artist Orlan’s work. Here there are no dolls, no photographs and no reconstructions of body parts. In her work, the body itself is the artistic platform onto which the act of the Simulacrum is enacted. Hardly the first performance artist to address the body as their main subject matter, she is however definitely the first (and perhaps best known) to publicly put her face under the surgeon’s knife and transmit the operation live. Focusing mainly on facial surgery in an attempt to transform her look, 68 Elizabeth A. T. Smith, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, in Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997, pp. 19-32 114 she goes through a Samsa-like physical transformation. Post-operation Orlan looks quite different than pre-operation Orlan, and this visual transformation is what makes her work simultaneously fascinating and repulsive to behold. To quote her, Carnal art opens 'a new Narcissistic space which is not lost in its own reflection’ […] So I can see my own body open and without suffering […] look again, I can see myself down to my entrails […] a new mirror stage!69 The use of the body as a mirror, a means for the simulation of selfawareness, is vital for understanding the loss, the fragmentary - the body in pieces, to be interpreted as a systematic destruction of all that is linked to tradition. Through its deconstruction, as an assemblage and as a collection of organs, the body still retains its primary identity as Body, an organ, with the help of which we explore “the notion of the self that is invisible, formless and liminal."70 Its partial presence in the arts as a fragmentary body, as an annihilated object, sometimes even mutilated and broken, does not of necessity mean that metaphors and images are void of meaning. On the contrary: in spite of art's metaphorical and subjective points of view, it broadens our understanding of what bodies are. What has been mistakenly labeled as Vandalism, repulsive and unaesthetic, should be construed as a route to the construction of new and unbiased mirrors. 69 Kate Ince, Orlan: Millennial Female (Dress, Body, Culture), Oxford: Berg, 2000, p.49 70 Tracy Warr (ed.), The Artist's Body, London: Phaidon, 2000 p.8 115 Would it be a fair conclusion to say that without art reflecting our bodies, we would not be able to grasp our own intimate image? Would it be a farfetched assumption to say that with the help of the arts we reflectively construct reality? There are no straightforward answers to these questions, yet we can say for certain that without the arts these irritating queries would not have arisen at all. 116 The Holocaust in comics * Introduction: the visual properties of comics In this article I would like to examine several comics books that depict the Shoa of European Jewry during World War II and, in the process, to highlight their unique rendition of historical events in general and of traumatic ones, such as the Shoa, in particular. I should note first that 'comics' will be used as a convenient term, though in fact I shall address the graphic novella, which has recently been enjoying great popularity among comics readers thanks to the genre's wide range of topics and its relevance to daily life. Unlike the familiar comics work, the graphic novella hardly deals with fictional topics, such as science fiction and stories about aliens and super-heroes such as Superman, Batman, etc. It tells, instead, stories related to the author's personal world, ranging from confessions and life experiences to political content. The graphic novellas that depict the Shoa do not differ basically from any other graphic novella, yet their uniquely nuanced narrative sways between the intention to depict historical events of World War II as they actually occurred and mostly fictional descriptions that are meant to serve as a living memory of those events. But before I proceed to analyze some of these graphic novellas, I would like to discuss several properties of comics as a medium that blends text and pictures and, furthermore, to examine the value or, rather, function, of comics in the transmission of historical information. The birth pangs of comics Unlike other visual media, such as painting, drawing, sculpture and even 117 caricatures, comics have a short history. Nevertheless, their biography is fraught with vicissitudes and paradoxical events. Comics as we know them today were born simultaneously with photography in the first half of the 19th century. The latter, which has changed visual culture, challenged autographic skills71 (painting, drawing, caricature and, of course, comics) with an unsurmountable barrier, forcing them to find new, uncommon expressive channels.72 That is, the immediate difficulty artists faced those years was the need to cope with the new mimetic conception introduced by photography. For, until the late 18th century painters earned their living partly by painting portraits and landscapes but also religious subjects, yet with the advent of photography they lost the small income they could count on. Visual culture therefore looked for something new--an Archimedean fulcrum that would compete with photography and highlight the power and virtuosity inherent in autographic skills. One response to this rift was the artistic avant-garde, which offered an alternative to the frozen moment touted by early photographers. Indeed, toward the middle of the 19th and throughout the 20th century Western art experienced a new, extraordinary creative burst that transformed the then prevalent artistic view on the artist's position and, even more so, the value of an art work. All the arts--plastic arts, theater, architecture, design, music and dance--sloughed off the traditional artistic model in favor of an approach that stressed both the artist's subjective, personal, biographical expression and his social and political environment. Photographers, on the other hand, claimed to create a realistic experience by capturing through the camera the crucial 71 Nelson Goodman distinguishes between autographic representations that cannot be reproduced and copied--among which he would no doubt include comics, painting, drawing and caricature--and allographic representations, such as printed text or photography, which easily lend themselves to reproduction without any detriment to the information they contain. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), pp. 113, 121. 72 After Louis Daguerre's invention of photography, made public in June 1839, a saying attributed to the French academy painter Hyppolite-Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) began to circulate: "From now on painting is dead." 118 moment that would constitute private and collective memory. Comics were thus born into this melting pot that produced modern art, which, from its earliest stages, blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture, dance and music, theater and performance, generating hybrid arts and, thereby, new, surprising visual and narrative experiences. Comics didn't lag behind and, like other arts that joined forces for the sake of new expressive channels, created an artistic genre running along two parallel tracks: the written word and the picture or, more precisely: the written story and the visual illustration, though without privileging either as the story's driving force. However, since comics, unlike other artistic media, could not boast an artistic tradition and history, their legitimacy as a proper, respectable artistic expression was far from self-evident, despite the fast growing number of comics artists since Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), still considered the father of modern comics. The art of comics has long suffered from a low reputation and was often even viewed as children's art aimed exclusively at a young public not graced with high cultural values. This image was based not only on ignorance and lack of openness in academic research, which dismissed comics, at least when they first emerged, but also on the difficulty comics had in defining themselves as an artistic genre. As a medium without an "ID" they fell between two stools, as opposed to most arts, which enjoyed in the 19th century recognition and resonance among the public at large and certainly in the academic community. One of the hurdles comics faced was their name. Since the 1950s the term comics has become entrenched, though not for too long, as Art Spiegelman, whose work we will discuss later, proposed the term comix 119 for this hybrid (mixed) art of words and pictures, which would remove the comic meaning associated with this genre. Before comics became the established term, the genre was known in French73--the official artistic language in the 18th and 19th centuries--under a motley range of names. It was Töpffer who suggested the first term--histoires en estampes (stories in etchings)--as a reference to the technique he used (etching) and to compete with the word 'printed,' which was already taken up by printed literature. Later terms referred to the property of comics as a visual medium: histoires en images (picture stories ), récits illustrés (illustrated stories), films déssinés (drawn films), bandes déssinées (comic strips, literally: drawn strips) and, of course, comics, the best known term of the genre. But not only the identity tags of comics have changed extensively; their target readership has also undergone several dramatic shifts. Comics were first conceived as an artistic medium for an adult readership, but only in the early 20th century did they begin to appear in children's and young adults' magazines. Later, around 1960, the trend reverted to an adult readership, giving birth to the graphic novella. The various audiences somewhat affected the genre's format. For example, the works of Rodolphe Töpffer and Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) were published in book format. But once comics were addressed to children and young adults, the format changed into popular mass produced brochures printed on plain paper and sold at newspaper stands. When comics once again sought adult readers, the graphic novellas were printed on quality paper with masterful color separation, and the final product was published in hard cover. These changes explain the objective difficulty of including 73 Thierry Groensteen, "Why Are Comics Still in Search of Cultural Legitimization?," in Comics Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, eds. Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Press, 2000), p. 30. 111 comics among regular artistic genres. As a result, the academic establishment entirely dismissed comics as a subject worthy of research until the late 1960s. Since Töpffer had written the first academic article on comics74 100 years went by before Bartholomeo Amengual75 published a similarly comprehensive book in 1955, where he analyzes, in Töpffer's vein, several elements of French comics. Rodolphe Töpffer: the father of comics Rodolphe Töpffer is rightly considered the founding father of comics. There is no solid information that explains what attracted him precisely to the genre of pictures illuminated with words or, in his definition, 'etched stories'. For example, David Kunzle, who wrote several articles about him and edited, annotated and translated into English all of Töpffer's comics books, conjectured that Töpffer's vision was severely impaired. Although he wished to be a painter like his father, the young Rodolphe had difficulties painting in large formats and therefore chose to draw small, fast sketches to which he appended stories that expressed his thoughts and ideas.76 His defective vision prompted him to draw on medium-size paper strips of small drawings that constitute a series (panel), which are the very foundation of comics works. Töpffer wrote eight comics books and several sections he did not complete into books. None of these were meant to entertain or distract from daily life. On the contrary: under the guise of apparently naive stories, Töpffer thrust thin, sharp needles into the frivolous values of his time, thus expressing, in amusing, paradoxical, incisive, at times even scathing stories, his 74 Rodolphe Töpffer, Essai de Physiognomonie (Geneva, 1845), in Enter: The Comics, ed. and trans. Ellen Wiese (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), pp. 2–36. 75 Barthélémy Amengual, B., Le Petit Monde de Pif le Chien: Essai sur un "comic" français, (Alger: éditions Travail et Culture, 1955). 76 David Kunzle, Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), p. 3. 111 opposition to monarchy, militarism, excessive decorum, social iniquities and many other issues he found reprehensible. As I cannot present the gamut of his comics stories, I will only show that they were not merely fantastic and removed from reality. Here is, then, the summary of one story he wrote in the 1830s, which was published with slight changes around 1840. Titled Mr. Pencil, it features in the background the revolution sweeping Paris at the time77, which echoed in all the neighboring countries of France. As a liberal, Töpffer did not participate in these revolutions, some of which even reached the outskirts of Geneva, his city, but, as this work indicates, he did not remain indifferent either. The story opens with a painter, Mr. Pencil, who sees a playful naughty wind blow away from his easel the paper on which he was planning to paint the surrounding landscape. Later the wind assaults a couple leisurely rowing on the river, then reaches the scientist of an unnamed city who was studying the underground currents of the four winds. As the story unfolds we discover how the wind's force drives the masses to rebel against the regime and how the latter attempts to quell the rebellion. Mr. Pencil, a satirical story about scientific pretentiousness and illusions78, was probably inspired by the disenchantment from 19thcentury rigid political structures and as a warning against reactionary forces opposed to social change. 77 The July Revolution of 1830, commemorated in Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, toppled Charles X of France, forcing him to flee to England. On Lafayette's advice, he was replaced by Louis-Philippe. 78 There is no definite information in this regard. One should note, though, the nature of early-19th-century science--for example, in his book Natural Theology (1802) William Paley argued that the social structure of both the animal and the human world were designed by God. That is, whoever is born a worker was meant to be one by divine decree. Charles Darwin challenged Paley's theory with the concept of natural selection. 112 Rodolphe Töpffer, Mr. Pencil, 1840 Facial expressions: a comics innovation Töpffer is considered the father of comics not only because he was a pioneer in the medium but also because he addressed the theory of comics. As already mentioned, he wrote a groundbreaking article, the first of its kind to suggest certain basic assumptions. Ernst Hans Gombrich (1909-2001) was probably among the first to mention Töpffer in many articles, and in the chapter on caricatures (nr. 10 in his book Art and Illusion) he discusses him at length and presents the gist of his innovations. With his simplistic, grotesque, direct drawings devoid of superfluous intricacies, Töpffer was able to create a 'life-like illusion.' He wrote explicitly: "There are two ways of writing stories, one in chapters, lines, and words, and that we call 'literature', or alternatively by succession of illustrations, and that we call 'the picture story'." 79 Töpffer further claims that the advantage of a story's sequence in pictures lies in a greater terseness and relatively greater clarity as it presents itself more vividly to many more people, and also because in any competition, whoever is able to use such a direct method will precede those who 79 E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Chapter 10, "The Experiment of Caricature" (London: Phaidon Press, 1950), p. 337. 113 speak in chapters; a storyteller in pictures needs one thing: knowledge of human facial expressions.80 To represent the characters' feelings, experiences and character traits in pictures and to elicit in the reader identification or repulsion, the picture must, so he believed, distort the person's face and surroundings, a move entirely contrary to the naturalistic painting prevalent during his time, which represented nature and humans as they appeared, without any reference to their personality and inner world. Pictures must therefore study facial expressions, which Töpffer divided into two categories: permanent traits, which indicate character (arrogance, pride, suspicion, stinginess, etc.) and varying traits, which indicate feelings (joy, sadness, pain, etc.). The classification of facial traits and their interrelations, such as laughing eyes and a crying mouth, a high brow as opposed to close eyebrows and many similar observations, is not merely an artistic technique or trick. The catalogue of facial expressions is the raw material of the illustrated story, which not only offers a visual depiction of the characters but also claims to offer a glimpse into their soul and unravel their hidden intentions. Here it should be noted that 19th-century scientific methodology was based on sorting and classification. Töpffer, who sorted and classified human facial expressions, is understandably no exception among Franz Josef Gall (phrenology--the pseudoscience of human skull structure), Charles Darwin (The Origin of the Species), Dmitri Mendeleev (the periodic table), Gregor Mendel (genetics) and Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis)-to mention just a few names. 80 See Gombrich's reference to facial expressions in his "The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art," in Art, Perception and Reality, eds. E. H. Gombrich, Julian Hochberg and Max Black (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972 ), pp. 24-25. 114 Töpffer's intuition to see in facial contortions an important parameter through which the comics artist conveys his ideas was empirically confirmed in an article by Ofer Fein and Assa Kasher. 81 To analyze facial expressions in comics the authors use the concept of pragmatics82 elaborated in linguistics and the philosophy of language, specifically in the language theory of Austin, Searle and others, who postulated that natural language does not only denote, describe and argue about reality, as many linguists and philosophers had previously claimed, but is also a working tool whose very use is a "speech act" rather than mere speech devoid of practical effects. Fein and Kasher apply this idea to facial expressions in comics. They argue that the facial contortion in comics does not only passively reflect the character's feelings but is charged with intention and could thus be viewed as an act meant to express feelings and, therefore, to affect the unfolding plot. The gesture acts in comics are intended to frighten, humiliate, threaten, greet and to express feelings and thoughts. As such they can change attitudes, they can embarrass, threaten, elicit feelings of guilt and laughter in both us, the readers, and the comics characters. Like caricature, facial expressions are a comics technique that endows them with the appearance of an active medium capable of 'doing things.' The special combination of picture and text and the presence of words 81 Ofer Fein, and Assa Kasher, "How to Do Things with Words and Gestures in Comics," Journal of Pragmatics, 26 (1966): 793–808. David Novitz, "Pictorial Illocutionary Acts," in David Novitz, Pictures and Their Use in Communication (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), pp. 67–84. 82 Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics that examines how we understand language (phrases) in our regular conversations with people. Language was thought to mirror reality, but since the emergence of pragmatics the philosophy of language has considered language a working tool with which we do things in the world. Pragmatics distinguishes two intentions in the use of language: 1. informative, that is, language transmits information, and without understanding the words' meaning or intention we would have trouble understanding the message; 2. intentional, that is, does the speaker's statement intend to warn, humiliate, promise, etc.? Thus, pragmatics views linguistic expressions not only as a means to utter statements but also as a speech act. 115 and even sentences within the drawings was not new to Töpffer. In many works of art, especially those with religious contexts, texts probably added an indispensable informative dimension. Still, these texts were always ancillary to the picture and never enjoyed the same status as the work's visual content. Comics innovated therefore precisely here by conferring on the text a status equal to the picture's, thus creating two parallel tracts--reading and viewing--that the reader must follow with equal attention. Seeing words, reading pictures At the beginning of Alice in Wonderland, Alice complains that her sister is reading a book without pictures: "...once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?"83 This sentence has garnered many interpretations that are beyond the scope of this article, yet I should note that Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) opens his book with a sort of critique on the artificial separation between text and picture. We do not know whether Carroll was familiar with Töpffer's work, which had been published some 20 years before Alice in Wonderland.84 Still, Carroll's intuitions resemble Töpffer's, according to which pictures and words are to be seen as cooperating limbs. Indeed, Carroll himself made sure to illustrate Alice in Wonderland and only after the first edition was published did he delegate the task of illustration to John Tenniel, one of the period's best known illustrators. Since Carroll and Töpffer, thousands of children's and adults' 83 84 Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (New York: Bramhall House, 1960). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865, whereas some of Töpffer's books appeared around 1840. 116 books have been written where the picture is an inseparable component of the story's presentation. The relation between word and picture was addressed by Scott McCloud in chapter six of his book85 on the history of their ambivalent relationship in general and the place of both in shaping the comics genre in particular. McCloud believes that where as Western art deliberately separated between words and pictures, but when they were nevertheless connected, the result was seen as a harmful alliance with propagandistic or commercial intentions: "traditional thinking has long held that truly great works of art and literature are only possible when the two are kept at arm's length… Words and pictures together are considered at best, a diversion for the masses, at worse a product of crass commercialism"86 Only when Töpffer's works appeared (mentioned also by McCloud), and when avant-garde movements, such as Dada and Surrealism, emerged the connection between the verbal and the visual representation has become common and even acceptable. McCloud goes on to list the many advantages of this alliance in conveying information and as an important means of building the story in comics. Töpffer, it should be recalled, argued that the combination of words and pictures trims and clarifies the story, allowing the reader / viewer to better understand it. McCloud, who continues this line of thought, outlines further possibilities available to the comics artist, from placing the text at the bottom of the picture panel to the bubble method, introduced after Töpffer. Indeed, in the early 20th century (1906), comics artists like Winsor McCay (1867-1934) considered setting text below a picture "an 85 86 Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994). Ibid. p. 140 117 irrelevant gloss on the action"87 that misses the intention of the visual scene. Thus, by transferring the text from the bottom of the picture to bubbles within its space McCay was able to entwine the written word with the pictured event. His work Little Nemo is among the first comics to combine words and pictures within the same frame, as opposed to the separation common thus far. This was no doubt a groundbreaking revolution in the definition of the concept 'narrative' and in the transmission of abstract information on ideas, thoughts and feelings through the combination between visual and verbal representations. It is not fortuitous that one of Wittgenstein's well-known claims resonates here,88 namely, that there is a common logical relation between the structure of language and the structure of the picture. Will Eisner (1917-2005), rightly considered the high priest of contemporary comics culture, drew parallel lines between reality and comics as a pretext for using words in bubbles within the picture frame. In his book89 he offers an eloquent example of the bubble's logic, arguing that if we see steam coming out of the mouth on a cold day, why shouldn't we draw such bubbles in comics to represent the characters' words? David Carrier90 picks up this idea, making an analogy between the Italian term for comics, fumetto (literally: smoke exhalation), and the text bubble as an inseparable component of the picture. Therefore, he argues, we cannot posit the word-picture duality as two contrary media, 87 M. Thomas Inge, Comics as Culture, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), p. 33. 88 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Frank P. Ramsey and C.K. Ogden (London: Paul Kegan, 1922), statements 1.2-3. 89 Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art (Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press, 1985), p. 25. 90 David Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics, (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), p. 29. 118 commonly conceived as such in Western thought, since neither is within nor without the pictorial space. Though the bubble has an independent status that resonates with the pictured figure, it is nonetheless an element with visual properties that enhance the experience of reading comics. Since bubbles were first used in comics by McCay, they have been increasingly refined and finally became a regular component of the genre. The words in the bubble are neither inside nor outside the picture91, but at times emerge from places 'in our heads' without any real location in space. Descartes taught us that we cannot directly access the other's words; we can deduce his thoughts and intentions from his visible behavior. Here is, then, a special technique by which the artist can reveal and illustrate the character's hidden world of intentions and desires, though not to him or to the characters next to him but only to the reader. When one reads the bubble's content one obviously pays attention to the text's verbal meanings, but the bubble's design, too, contributes significantly to the text's meaning and intention. The bubble can contain a variety of texts (question, order, hesitation, etc.) but it can also remain empty, thus reflecting the character's sense of emptiness and helplessness. The bubbles allow, furthermore, typographical variations, and the transitions from bold or italic style to handwritten script or to an especially large font size or even to inverted text reflect the bubble's highly active role in transmitting the scene's content. The bubble also 91 Ibid., p. 30. 119 defines the narrator's place, especially in comics based entirely on bubbles. The narrator, usually conceived of as the figure that directs the story, is sidelined by the bubbles, as in a novel based on dialogues without the narrator's connective and clarifying text. Such comics, of which there are many examples, require the reader's utmost attention. Here the author's only involvement may be expressed with an explosive sound (boom!) or noise between dialogues in order to provide the plot's environment with a dimension that defies expression in dialogue bubbles. Comics are, then, a visual medium that does not cold-shoulder the verbal medium, and the combination of these two channels, once considered contrary and contradictory, assigns to the genre an important role in structuring the story's narrative consciousness. Comics and history Hendrik Willem van Loon (1882-1944) opens The Story of Mankind92, his by now legendary history book first published in 1921, with the motto from Alice in Wonderland mentioned earlier: "And what is the use of a book... without pictures?" His choice of this motto was not fortuitous, as throughout his text he inserted his own illustrations to match the historical context. Before him, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga used to draw on the blackboard in class historical events to enhance the students' learning experience. In recent years history has been impressively represented in film, and the combination between normative historiography and film has even generated a new concept: historiophoty93, which suggests that one can represent historical events in 92 Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Story of Mankind, (first published 1921. New York: Pocket Books, 1973). 93 White, H., "Historiography and Historiophoty", American Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 5 (Dec. 1988), pp. 1193-1199. See 121 photography, film and, I should add, comics, no less than in a written chronicle. Comics are, therefore, on a sound footing in the description of historical events such as the Shoa, 9/11 or even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This phenomenon is not accidental but derives from the very nature of comics, that is, the blend of pictures and narrative, on the one hand, with the temporal dimension, on the other. Offering examples on how the temporal dimension is embedded in the story and the picture, Will Eisner argues that "the phenomenon of duration and its experience - commonly referred to as 'time' - is a dimension integral to sequential art".94 Unlike the real event or its representation in film, comics are based on a principle Eisner calls 'timing,' that is, the pace by which events are displayed in the story's panels. Most comics that deal with history or traumatic events, such as the Shoa, invented special temporal concepts95 of past, present and future concurrence, at times even within the same panel. Comics artists had two options: one, to present a fictitious reality in which time plays no role whatsoever. For example, Coleman 96 reads comics as a reconstruction, in surrealistic, at times even abstract, language, of values and events unrelated to reality. The other option argues that even if the comics narrative is fictitious, it is actually a subversive point of view that disassembles reality into its components. This approach was proposed by Schmitt97, who presents comics as a 'meta-text' or 'meta-story' that transforms its historical subject into a also: Maly, I., "Is History Photogenic? The Historical Film in the Post-modern Era," Zmanim 39-41 (1991): 74. (Hebrew) 94 Eisner, Comics & Sequential art, p. 23. 95 Joseph Witek, Comic Books as History, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), p. 4. 96 Earle J. Coleman, "The Funnies, the Movies and Aesthetics," Journal of Popular Culture 18/4 (1985): 90. 97 Ronald Schmitt, "Deconstructive Comics," Journal of Popular Culture 25/4 (1992): 153–161. 121 story, since serial historical facts are converted into serial illustrated events. The words accompanying the pictures enhance the dry factual chronicle with a visual interpretation that allows the reader / viewer to see and experience history as though it were an element of his personal biography. The comics I will analyze further below address the Shoa of European Jewry during World War II. These works do not give historical events a central place and they hardly discuss the Shoa's background. The occasional references to this background and to facts are sparse and meant to clarify only. Still, we cannot dismiss such comics works as irrelevant or as devoid of historical consciousness. For the question is not only what is and what is considered history, what does and what does not deserve admission into its province but also how we (re)present and write history--whether in documents, prose and poetry or in painting, caricature, comics, photography and film. Though the choice of comics may seem inadmissible at first glance, it is precisely this choice that endows historical facts with an unexpected, personal and dramatic dimension, enhancing the comics characters' concepts of personal time that appear along the historical time outside comics but which resonates indirectly in the story. Indeed, the Dutch Ministry of Education, in conjunction with the Anne Frank House and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, published two booklets for the teaching of the Shoa in schools, which we will discuss here later. These booklet-manuals present the rise of Nazism and the Shoa through a personal story. The pictures and the text are an 122 "objective," unbiased, unsentimental depiction of the history of a woman who escaped the horrors of the Shoa. Here is an extreme example of detached, expressively and emotionally restrained writing and pictures. The learning material prescribed in Holland is quite similar to science work booklets (for example, the frog's life cycle). Still, the comics genre does not come across as an unfamiliar medium, and the reader does not feel that it is unsuitable to describe Shoa events. The reason lies both in Eisner's definition of comics as a serial art and in the development comics underwent toward 1986-7, when the first graphic novellas were published: The Dark Knight by Frank Miller (b. 1957), Watchmen by Alan Moore (b. 1953) and Maus by Art Spiegelman (b. 1948). The publication of Maus constitutes a turning point in the history of comics in favor of complex, sophisticated, profound, richly plotted and historically conscious works. In most graphic novellas, be they on the author's personal life or on political issues, such as Persepolis and Palestine, the presence of the historical background cannot be dismissed. The Shoa in comics The most famous graphic novella about the Shoa has been written and drawn by Art Spiegelman. He had initially addressed the Shoa in 1973 in a short comics strip that he later included in Maus under the heading "Prisoner on the Hell Planet."98 Many graphic novellas on the destruction of European Jewry have been published since the first sections of volume I of Maus appeared in the magazine Raw in 1980. In this chapter I would like to discuss several of them, present their content and probe the capacity of comics to depict the experience of the Shoa. 98 In this chapter, which originally appeared in Short Order Comix, Spiegelman tells about his mother's suicide in 1986. As already mentioned, the chapter was published before he wrote Maus, and unlike in the latter its characters are not animals. 123 a. Horst Rosenthal (1915-1942) in the Gurs concentration camp Only few readers are aware that before Spiegelman, Horst Rosenthal, an inmate at the Gurs concentration camp, had written and drawn three small booklets on his life in the camp. In Gurs, the largest of 15 concentration camps in the free zone of Vichy France, were corralled stateless Jews who had fled to France when Hitler came to power, Jews who were German citizens or of German descent and opponents of the regime. In 1940 the camp numbered some 40,000 Jews. A native of Breslau, Rosenthal was in France when World War II broke out. He was arrested by the Vichy authorities, imprisoned in Gurs and later died in Auschwitz. His partial available biography does not indicate whether he was known as a comics artist before his imprisonment in Gurs, if his style had always been ironic, as reflected in his camp comics, what his cultural background was, who his family was, etc. Except the information contained in the drawings from the Gurs camp, many details on his arrest, his daily routine in the camp and his death in Auschwitz are unknown. The scarcity of information about him shrouds his few remains in mystery: when did he draw his comics booklets, which was the first, were they circulated in the camp during his stay there, what was their reception among the inmates and the camp authorities, the latter of whom were mostly Spanish republicans imprisoned after Franco came to power? The three short booklets lay bare Rosenthal's life in the camp. The first, and most riveting, Mickey au Camp Gurs [Mickey in the Gurs Camp], tells about the circumstances of Mickey's arrest and imprisonment, the 124 sights he encountered in the camp and how he was finally liberated. The second is written like a tourist guide (Petit Guide à Travers le Camps de Gurs [A Small Guide Through Gurs Camp]) and reveals the camp's sinister aspects and how it functioned. The third, La Journée d'un Hébergé [A Day in the Life of a Camp Resident], is a sort of personal, somewhat detailed journal that describes how an inmate like him spends his time in the camp. Horst Rosenthal, Mickey au Camp Gurs, published without Walt Disney's permission Mickey au Camp Gurs was written, then, without Walt Disney's permission. Rosenthal's choice of Mickey Mouse and his statement that he does so without Disney's permission were meant to unsettle the reader by means of the discrepancy between the concentration camp routine and the connotations elicited by Mickey Mouse, the familiar character in Walt Disney's animation films. The use of Mickey Mouse without its creator's permission underscores the sinister gloom prevailing under the Vichy government, from the violation of civil rights to the inhuman incarceration in a concentration camp, where conditions were unbearable. Rosenthal addresses the reader as though he were asking: imagine Mickey Mouse, the well-known and beloved culture hero, as a concentration camp inmate. How would you react? The projection principle Rosenthal uses, whether deliberately or intuitively, was constitutive of comics already at their early stages in 125 Töpffer's work, though also in such popular comics as The Funnies and The Yellow Kid from the late 19th century and, of course, in later comics literature. In all these we witness the creation of a main character who carries the plot as a representative agent of good or evil values and conduct rules, and through whom the reality we live in unfolds. In most comics works the hero has superhuman capacities, he is a deus ex machina, or, if we wish, Nietzsche's Übermensch. He does not obey regular rules and entrenched traditions but observes the world around him critically and is even able the change it.99 Superman is not only a nice story for leisure hours; it is the perfect expression of a deus ex machina who emerges from nothingness in order to change us, even to save us from ourselves, and returns to nothingness. In other words: Superman is the desire for change, for the dramatic shift we sorely need in order to lead a better life. It is not fortuitous that The Yellow Kid, Superman, Batman and many others have become icons of Western culture that thrive on the romantic belief in salvation brought by God, a strong leader or revolution. Mickey au Camp Gurs follows the same formula. As a creature that does not dwell in Rosenthal's world, he may not be able to change the reality in which he lives except, of course, at the end of the story, when he erases himself from the concentration camp, hoping to reach the United States. Yet until the end, when Mickey Mouse vanishes into thin air, he functions like the familiar comics characters who witness human trauma, evil and cruelty. Mickey Mouse's entrance into the concentration camp 99 Cheryl Alexander Malcolm, "Witness, Trauma and Remembrance: Holocaust Representations and X-Men Comics," in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, eds. Samantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), pp. 144–160. The article discusses the comics X-Men and its main character Magneto (from the word magnet), a Shoa survivor whose sole role is to reveal evil and eliminate it. 126 and Rosenthal's story are not accidental, despite the absence of Walt Disney's permission. As a super-hero, Mickey Mouse needs no one's permission, not even his creator's, Walt Disney, and this is his code of conduct from his arrest and imprisonment in the concentration camp. Since we have no verified information about Rosenthal, we cannot determine how familiar he was with Walt Disney's films and whether his choice of Mickey Mouse was swayed by Steamboat Willie (1928), Disney's first short film with a synchronized soundtrack. The short's plot is simple: Mickey Mouse is serving aboard Steamboat Willie under captain Pete. The boat stops for cargo and picks up animals--a donkey, a cow and a duck--and sails on as the animals convert their roles into musical instruments, with Mickey conducting the orchestra. A simplistic approach reads an amusing, cheeky, mischievous story in this six-minute short, but a more in-depth reading reveals that Mickey liberates the animals from slavery at the peasant's farm, offering them a new, cheerful life filled with music on the boat, which symbolizes a utopian place devoid of national identity and attribution. The short presents two spaces: at the peasant's farm on land the animals are yoked to a harsh daily routine, whereas the boat represents a no-place place sailing on the river, where Mickey Mouse gathers the animals and offers them a life of music, merrymaking, mischief and license. Here Mickey Mouse is portrayed as a non-conformist figure that defies deeprooted social values, and in this sense it is not surprising that he was Rosenthal's hero. 127 Walt Disney, Steamboat Willie (1928) There is yet another reason why Rosenthal harnessed Mickey Mouse to his world. But I should first qualify the following, as the information on Rosenthal is incomplete. Nazi ideology considered Mickey Mouse, the mischievous mouse, a negative figure, as evident in the following quote from a 1930 editorial in the newspaper Pomerania: "Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed… Healthy emotions tell independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal… Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!" 100 Fritz Hippler, The Eternal Jew, 1940, rats Once again, we do not know whether Rosenthal chose Mickey Mouse 100 This passage is printed on the inside jacket of the second volume of Maus by Art Spiegelman. Furthermore, there is a reference to this quote in an article by Lisa Naomi Mulman, where she analyzes the connection between Horst Rosenthal's Mickey and Art Spiegelman's Maus. Lisa Naomi Mulman, "A Tale of Two Mice," in Baskind & Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel, pp. 85–93. 128 precisely because he was negatively perceived by Nazi ideology, 101 and it is equally difficult to ascertain whether he was influenced by the ratmouse figure in Fritz Hippler's 1939-40 film The Eternal Jew. Either way, a comparison with these two sources is certainly justified here, as the mouse-rat in Hippler's film is a metaphorical image of the infecting, mendacious, subversive, wandering Jew, that is, the visible and invisible enemy of society and culture. The mouse-rat was thus chosen precisely because of its negative image. Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse did not have these negative qualities, and yet, in Steamboat Willie the mouse Mickey Mouse displays a range of negative qualities that disappeared only later, when he began to wear white gloves that alluded to the change he had undergone.102 The three components visible on the front page of Mickey au Camp Gurs--the figure of Mickey Mouse, the barrack, the barbed wire fence and the note on the deliberate copyright violation--define the story's time and place, whereas all Walt Disney's films feature timeless and placeless plots. The concentration camp Gurs and the plot deployed in defined time and place appear already as the story opens, when Mickey Mouse is arrested and comes to know the new place. Horst Rosenthal, Mickey au Camp GursGurs!!! 101 Ibid. Interestingly, Mulman notes that Hitler liked to watch Walt Disney movies, including, of course, the adventures of Mickey Mouse. 102 The mouse recently starred in Brad Bird's animation film Ratatouille, both as the mischievous, seasoned, witty kind and as its less likable kin. 129 My first impression was rather bad. As far as one could see, hundreds of dog kennels were aligned, among which a swarming crowd was busy with mysterious jobs. But I had no time to look more closely because I was taken to an office at the center of which I saw a big pile of... But even before Mickey arrived at the camp, when he was stopped by a policeman and asked for his papers, the dissonance between Disney's Mickey Mouse and Rosenthal's Mickey was already obvious. For Disney's Mickey Mouse is a non-national creature and does not even live in a defined time and place, whereas Mickey, who is hard put to prove his international status when asked for his ID by a Vichy policeman, is therefore imprisoned in a concentration camp. Here he is taken to the housing barracks, and his neighbors ask whether he has cigarettes, white beans and other commodities for sale, in stark contrast to the nonmaterial nature of Disney's Mickey Mouse, who has never been engaged in worldly affairs, let alone in commerce. Depriving Mickey of his freedom and international status eviscerates the existence of Mickey Mouse and is at odds with his essence as a cultural icon but also suggests that under the Vichy government even the free and happy Mickey Mouse may have found himself in a concentration camp like Gurs. After discovering his surroundings, Mickey finds himself up against a harsh life. The most extreme example is the distribution of bread, described as a secret ceremony in which Mickey pulls out a magnifying glass to examine the slice he received, as without it the latter could not acquire the size of a real slice of bread. Mickey is subjected to a wide range of experiences in the concentration camp, all of which allude to Rosenthal's grim, inhuman living conditions. Despite the droll, adventurous tenor of a naive, direct, apparently innocent children's story, 131 this is a tragic Kafkaesque story, 103 and only a fantastic ending can extricate Mickey from the time and place of Gurs and from his prisoner identity. The story's surprising end is funny but also filled with pain and sorrow. After spending some time in the concentration camp, Mickey reaches the conclusion that the Pyrenees air no longer agrees with him, and, "since I'm only an animated drawing I erased myself with one eraser stroke and hop! The gendarmes can keep looking for me in the country of freedom, equality and brotherhood (I mean America)." Rosenthal reviles France, the cradle of freedom, equality and brotherhood, and points toward the USA, the country of unlimited possibilities, as the only place where a person can be international without the identity tag attached to him in France, to which he had immigrated to escape German fascism. Moreover, he uses a technique applicable only in comics and animation-the statement about self-erasure. Of course, one can interpret the selfobliteration of Mickey Mouse from the Gurs camp also as suicide, and, indeed, it is plausible that while in the camp Rosenthal was exposed to cases of suicide. Horst Rosenthal, Mickey au Camp Gurs 103 Pnina Rosenberg, "Mickey Mouse in Gurs: Humour, Irony and Criticism in Works of Art produced in Gurs Interment Camp," Rethinking History 6/3 (2002): 279. 131 However, since suicide is inconceivable in comics characters, Mickey Mouse's move to the United States serves as an obliterating ruse. As in animation, in comics, too, there is no need to commit suicide, nor is such an act possible, since comics are based on the principle of possible worlds.104 The transition from one world or reality to another is a 'logical' possibility, and the obliteration inherent in real suicide is meaningless. Mickey saves himself by erasing himself from the Gurs Camp because, as a drawing, he can choose any possibility, which, given the circumstances, was not available to Rosenthal himself, who died in Auschwitz. Rosenthal adopts a similar move in the other two booklets: Petit Guide à Travers le Camps de Gurs 1942 and La Journée d'un Hébergé 1942. As in the first booklet he uses a simple, naive language reminiscent of children's stories, yet barbed, unsettling and tinged with black humor. In Petit Guide à Travers le Camps de Gurs 1942 the text appears after a picture that shows several camp buildings, yet instead of windows Rosenthal drew laughing eyes and turned the door into a nice smile. The Pyrenees are visible in the distance, and in the foreground a man, the tourist guide, is welcoming the visitors to the camp with open arms. On the following page a handsome couple, while waiting for the train, is reading on the bulletin board: "Visit Gurs, if you wish to lose weight, go to Gurs! The cuisine is well-known, for information contact the police." As the story unfolds our tourist guide changes his identity into a certified academic who shows a group of students the camp's residents, the food they consume and the enforced separation between men and women, which is meant to prevent the residents from reproducing--all in a lofty 104 See my article "Animation and Possible Worlds" Protocols: History and Theory, 8. (Hebrew) http://bezalel.secured.co.il/zope/home/he/1209439536 132 scientific language interspersed with Latin allusions. Rosenthal's hints at the racial laws and the Vichy government's treatment of the camp inmates as biological specimens without any human identity are selfevident, and any elaboration on this subject may be superfluous. Still, one cannot dismiss the shattering impression these hints leave even though they seeped into the comics medium. A similar spirit infuses Rosenthal's third booklet, which depicts a day in the life of a concentration camp inmate. He opens with a sentence typical of children's story: "Once upon a time there was a little resident... He had no status whatsoever and he wasn't even the barracks' manager. Would you like to know what the little resident did all day long? Then go to the next page." As in the previous story the language is apparently childish, naive and simple, but it is an enticement ruse prevalent in comics and children's literature. The enticement "go to the next page," where the great secret will be revealed, generates an adventurous experience that, according to Will Eisner constitutes the foundation of the serial art of comics. Indeed, Rosenthal shapes his story as an adventure even in this diary where the 'little resident' reveals details about his craving for boeuf bourguignon while eating murky turnip soup, or toward the end of the story, where he tells about the lovers' time in the camp. Horst Rosenthal, La Journée d'un Hébergé 1942 133 Come, evening has come Now's the time to escape but also the time of lovers Thanks to a fake ticket the little resident strolls until midnight with his chosen one, a young girl from block L who has three kids in Brussels and whose husband has disappeared without leaving any trace. As already noted, Rosenthal remains an enigma; we don't know much about him except the three booklets he produced in the concentration camp. These may not meet the criteria of comics as we know them today, but they are no doubt a direct sequence to the picture story that emerged with Rodolphe Töpffer and, therefore, their classification as comics is not arbitrary. b. Art Spiegelman and Maus We do not know whether Spiegelman was familiar with Rosenthal's booklets, especially Mickey au Camp Gurs, but a comparison between the two is justified. Indeed, Lisa Naomi Mulman105 examines the place of the mouse Mickey as opposed to the mouse that represents the Jew in Maus. Unlike Spiegelman's mouse, Mickey admits he's Jewish during interrogation, but his identity is defined as international, therefore he does not represent a specific figure, let alone a Jew. Rosenthal presents his catastrophe as the collapse of the values of freedom, brotherhood and equality rather than the specific catastrophe of the Jews. Mickey's story is not an allegory on human beings, and the story told through animal eyes is not a literary ruse. On the contrary: unlike Spiegelman, Rosenthal tells the story of Mickey, the well-known character, and his life in the concentration camp without attributing to him a Jewish or any other national or ethnic identity. As a cultural icon, Mickey represents, in his 105 Mulman, "A Tale of Two Mice," in Baskind & Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel, pp. 85–93. 134 very internment in a concentration camp, the contradiction between his values (freedom, brotherhood and equality) and their negation in the concentration camp. Through comics Spiegelman reveals another aspect of the depiction of the Shoa. The book's title Maus (Mouse) and the mouse itself were chosen not only because Maus resonates with Raus (Out), which needs no further comment on its connotations, but also because the mouse symbolized the Jew in Nazi ideology. Spiegelman, however, infused it with its opposite meaning. This trick of reversing meanings, which is widespread in comics, acquires here a double meaning. One is the Jewish mouse presented by the Nazis as a parasite that indefatigably saps Europe's economic, political and cultural foundation. The other meaning in Maus refers to the persecuted mouse caught in circumstances that often compelled it to act against its nature and common civilized norms. Either way, both volumes of Maus do not present a story of cats and mice, nor are they a 'historical chronicle' in the standard sense of the term, as one could mistakenly think. Furthermore, Maus is not a memoir or a biographical document on Vladek, Spiegelman's father. Maus should be read as its author's introspection about his father, his mother, who committed suicide, and the Shoa resonating through them. The first volume's title, My Father Bleeds History, and that of the second, From Mauschwitz to the Catskills are not fortuitous; they remind the reader that although Maus is about cats and mice, it is not an allegory, that is, a timeless and placeless story. Maus is the very opposite. The opening of the first volume informs the reader that the work deals with father-son relations of love and rejection and not at all with a story that harbors general, universal lessons. Nevertheless, Maus is also a typical secondgeneration story, as well as the personal story of the Spiegelman family. 135 On the one hand, Spiegelman tells about the Shoa, on the other hand, he tells about family life, stressing his relationship with his father. It is understandable, therefore, why he uses abrupt transitions between trauma depictions that include precise drawings of concentration and death camps and apparently random, yet certainly representative, scenes of father-son relations in daily life. The son's admiration for his father as Shoa survivor does not conceal his blame of the man he considers responsible for the mother's tragic death. Spiegelman's relationship with his father no doubt thrives on his belonging to the second generation; he perceives his father as both a hero and a persecuted person who has been unable to free himself of the Shoa's horrors but has remained under unrelenting threat. Spiegelman lavishes fondness and admiration on his father, exposing, in the same breath, the latter's negative qualities, present already before the war and which probably helped him survive. One example refers to the father's treatment of Lucia, his girlfriend before the war, whom he abandons to marry Anja, who came from a wealthy family. Another example is his mistrustful treatment of his second wife, Mala (whom he married after Anja, Art's mother, committed suicide), whom he suspects of stealing his money and starving and abandoning him. But not only the father's relationships with women were problematic. He was probably a stiff-necked, detached, callous man who lacked selfawareness. The motto to these traits can be read already in the first lines of Maus, when Artie, the son, complains about his friends who poked fun at him for losing in a competition they held in the park. The father doesn't take the time to listen to his son but asks him to help with sawing 136 a wooden board and, as though to add fuel to the fire, scolds him, telling him that these are not friends. Friends, he says, are tested only under pressure, and to support his claim he proffers a strange example: "If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week... then you could see what it is, friends!..." This short passage, which appears already on the second page of the first volume, before the first chapter, tells of an apparently trivial, utterly meaningless incident, but its placement at the beginning of the story turns it into a sort of compass for both volumes. Art Spiegelman, Maus, 1973 Vladek, the father, does not comfort his son when his friends abandon him but sees him as the victim of his own naiveté. He is not presented in the role of a protective and comforting father but as someone who has experienced human relations based on the victim-executioner dichotomy: distant, insensitive, not listening, who associates friendship and loyalty only with extreme circumstances, such as hunger. This trivial everyday incident among small children acquires the magnitude of selfflagellation; the lesson the father imparts to his son is that life is cruel and that loyalty and sacrifice are not common, let alone natural among people. If loyalty and friendship do exist, they are measured when the 137 earth cracks open and undermines daily life. This is one of the many examples throughout the novella that illustrates how Spiegelman understands the Shoa and its proper (re)presentation. The two-volume graphic novella Maus tells, then, a survivor's tale. The first volume's subtitle is My Father Bleeds History. The second volume, From Mauschwitz to the Catskills, is subtitled And Here my Troubles Began. The entire work seems to be a historical description of the destruction of European Jewry, but the two volumes actually deal with Artie, Vladek's son, with Vladek and his survival during the Shoa, and with their relationship. The recurrent trinity in each chapter--the father, the son and the Shoa--is relentlessly confounding. Without the father-son quarrel, the story would function as a historical description, but since the discourse is personal throughout the entire work--Artie's ruminations as he draws the comics, his relationship with his father, the father's treatment of his wife who committed suicide and of his new companion--Maus is perceived as a document that unravels a personal case with the Shoa as historical background. The entwinement of this Shoa chronicle with the personal story nips in the bud the potential voyeurism inherent in this type of story on personal relationships. Moreover, the voices of this polyphonic story sway like a pendulum between the personal and the general, from a war event to moralizing, from the murky relationships between the characters to psychological observations of the families of Shoa survivors, from an allegory on cats and mice to facts of the Shoa--all these with hardly any connective background text, as opposed to non-comics stories. 138 a b For example, the double spread of a+b presents, on the verso, the father complaining that Mala, who has been living with him since his wife's suicide, is a spendthrift, that she is planning to steal his bank account, that she goes shopping and leaves him alone at home without even a slice of bread. On the recto we are immediately faced with a series of panels that exactly depict the gas chambers and the crematorium ovens. This leanness, most probably unequalled in other artistic media, is tossed at the reader as it invokes his imagination and the culturally established store of images. One could say that, metaphorically, comics are a reminder medium, like chapter headings that prod the reader to imagine and complete inexplicit gaps in the story. In our case, the reader is asked to infer the feelings of Vladek, the father, his difficult nature and, of course, Artie's feeling when he visits his father, from two stories: the one that deals with Vladek's second wife (Mala) and the series of panels that depict the gas chambers and the crematoria at Auschwitz. Another example: chapter 5 (Mouse Holes) in the first volume opens as the phone rings at Artie's home early morning. It turns out that his father 139 intends to climb onto the roof to fix the drainpipe. In an anxiously hysterical voice Mala informs the son on the father's doings and asks him what she is to do. While she is talking the father grabs the receiver and orders Artie to come help him with the task, adding: "I'm telling you, Mala makes me meshugah! I want that maybe you could come now to Queens to help me." Artie replies that he'll call back later and, indeed, in a subsequent phone call the father reluctantly gives up on the son's help, but not before instilling guilt feelings in him. A week later (on the next page) Artie visits his father as the latter is sorting long and short nails in the garage under his apartment. Since the son refused to help his father with fixing the drainpipe, Vladek now rejects his attempt to get closer and help him sort the nails. When Artie goes upstairs and asks Mala why his father is upset, she shows him the comics Artie had published, Prisoner on the Hell Planet. Spiegelman published this comics, which tells about his mother's suicide, in 1973, before Maus, in the magazine Short Order Comix No. 1. This four-page work was woven into the first volume on pp. 98-103. When the father comes upstairs after sorting his nails, an activity reminiscent of the classification of Jews during the Shoa, he admits that, though he had never been interested in comics, he did read this story and was horrified, he even cried. On the one hand, the transition from daily life (sorting nails) to the remote past (the mother's death) and immediately to Shoa events places the mother's loss in the wider historical context of the Shoa. On the other hand, this transition sets at the center the apparently routine life after the Shoa, which overshadows the relationship between Artie and his father. 141 An analysis of Prisoner on the Hell Planet can also underpin an analysis of Maus as a whole. As in the latter, in these four pages there is no correspondence between the text and the picture either, and in many cases the frames do not feature any text, especially when Spiegelman presents close-ups of a face or of a dramatic event. In Prisoner on the Hell Planet this device is especially prominent in order to highlight the trauma Spiegelman experienced when he found out about his mother's death, which elicited deep guilt feelings in him. The short story opens with a photograph of Artie and his mother at Trojan Lake, NY, in 1958. The next frame, which follows Art in a prisoner's uniform, tells that in 1968, when he was 20, his mother committed suicide without leaving a note. Spiegelman sharply moves from an idyllic mother-and-son photograph to the drawing of a prisoner focusing on a light and surrounded by heavy darkness. The next frame shows the father entering the house, and the text above says that it was he who found the dead mother. While this chain of events is typical of comics, in this case it functions as a series of road signs that point to the course of Spiegelman's life: the scanty happiness within the family, his hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital (probably because of his troubled relationship with his family), and the blow of his mother's death. To convey this experience to the reader Spiegelman distorts the face of the doctor who informs him of his mother's death and, of course, his own face, stressing the tears running down from his eyes over four frames, with, in-between, a vague face accusing and screaming: "She is dead! A suicide!" Later, during the prayer at the funeral home, a family friend lectures Artie: "Now you cry! Better you cried when your mother was still alive!" At the end of this series of frames Artie finds himself in 141 prison--an image of his emotional prison--and in the last frame another prisoner screams at a crying Artie: "Pipe down Mac! Some of us are trying to sleep!" This short scene, which unfolds over a mere four pages, is the essence of both volumes of Maus, in which we witness two opposite points of gravity: one pertains to his parents, Shoa survivors, who project their victimhood on young Artie; the other is Artie himself, weighed down by guilt feelings for being unable to understand his parents and for having failed to save his mother. These two points of gravity, which emerge from opposite directions, generate conflicts in each encounter between Artie and his father. Because of their special nature, these conflicts do not stem only from father-son relations, as in many families, but touch on metaphysical problems, such as fate, free will, truth and the question whether one can learn any lesson from history. The intertwinement of history and metaphysical questions is uncommon in comics. No wonder, then, that most articles on Maus consider it an important milestone in the history of comics and certainly a masterpiece whose main importance lies in presenting the Shoa, which had thus far been taboo in a medium seen as neither documentary nor literary. As it embodies several narratives--the father's, the mother's, the son's and, of course, the unfolding of Shoa events--Maus is perceived, on one hand, as both testimony and confession, and, on the other, as a historical document that no other familiar medium could have created. Without the narratives on the mother's suicide, on the father as a difficult, stingy, insensitive person and on the son groaning under the weight of his 142 father's whims, the Shoa narrative would have lacked any sense and meaning other than that of the familiar historical chronicle. At the junction between two media types--visual and verbal--comics can present several parallel narratives whose encounter creates between the lines 106 an experience of reading a history book from the point of view of real people. It is doubtful whether film, photography and even literature could present the detailed structure of a concentration camp, including the barracks, gas chambers and crematoria, from a variety of angles simultaneously with panels from the father's apartment as he tells about the Shoa events while deliberating about his daily life. Along the narrative content of Maus resonates Adorno's famous statement that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Eli Wiesel's wrath waxes even more when he claims that "there is no such thing as a literature of the Holocaust, nor can there be".107 The question is, then, whether a literary, artistic approach like Spiegelman's does not aestheticize the Shoa, since the text and the picture interpret it artistically, and only later, if at all, is the work examined as a possible contribution to a deeper awareness of the Shoa as a historical event, as a 20th-century fact, as a trauma that no narrative of any kind will be ever able to grapple with. Or do we witness a new type of historical writing based on a principle of reflexivity unrelated to the traditional historical chronicle? If so, that is, if Maus is a special type of documentation of historical events, how should we read and classify it? Given its historical dimension, should we read it as a document or as comics that, at most, deal with a historical event, in this case--the Shoa? Furthermore, what do 106 Assa Kasher, "Reading Between the Lines, Seeing Between the Lines," Kav, an Art Periodical, 1 (1980). (Hebrew) 107 Elie Wiesel, E., "For Some Measure of Humility," Sh'ma 5/100 (31 October 1975): p. 314. 143 we, as readers, learn from Maus? Is the lesson narrative, does the work's achievement lie in offering a historical chronicle in comics format or a new comics language? And did Spiegelman win prizes for writing a history of the Shoa or for his achievement as a comics artist? These and other questions108 arise in any discussion on Maus, especially since the question on how effective comics' are in presenting historical events has yet to be settled. Indeed, throughout both volumes of Maus we witness this conflict: on the one hand, we see Spiegelman interview his father, trying to extract from him not only is personal story but also facts based on dates, documents and other findings whose importance is obvious to any beginning historian; on the other hand, Vladek, Art's father, tells a personal story, refusing to address other issues raised by his son, whether deliberately or because of his historical shortsightedness and conscious scorn for the importance of testimony (since events took place on his own flesh and, therefore, he himself is the only history). Thus, Spiegelman's request for authenticity and objectivity is not the father's guiding virtue nor something he would respond to at all. Spiegelman constantly tries to rescue his father from the abyss of the personal story for the sake of documentation, whereas the father refuses to be rescued, wrapping himself, throughout Maus, in the personal story, the private language and the bitter consequences of the Shoa, visible in his treatment of his son, Artie, and of the woman he lives with. The demand for objectivity vs. the father's psychologism is the name of the game in Maus, which functions as an arena where these two forces are wrestling with each other. Spiegelman therefore scored a double achievement: Maus no doubt tells the story of the Shoa, and its very existence is evidence for the Shoa's occurrence. Moreover, the device of telling the 108 Joseph Witek, Comic Books as History, University press of Mississippi (1989) p. 98. 144 Shoa story through cats and mice indicates an intention to present the Shoa in universal terms and steer clear from depicting the characters as they actually looked. His father, he himself and, of course, the Nazis are all wearing a mask, which redeems the story from the intimacy typical of ethnic stories. At the same time, one cannot avoid seeing Maus as a personal story and Spiegelman as the one who writes and documents the father's personal story. Paradoxically, the proper classifying term for Maus may be the German word Geschichte, whose double meaning is both story and history. But Maus articulates not only history, the Shoa and the father-son relationship. It is also a pretext to address the concepts of time and space within comics. In the second chapter of the second volume, "Auschwitz" ("Time Flies"), on p. 41 Spiegelman the artist, wearing a mouse mask, is dozing dejectedly at his desk because he is not making any progress in his work, and dead mice are piled up around him. While the text tells of Vladek's death of cardiac insufficiency, Spiegelman goes on to tell of the production difficulties of the first volume and the success it garnered. The drawing, too, alludes to these transitions: Spiegelman is sitting at his desk next to a pile of dead mice while through the window the watchtower and barbed wire fence of Auschwitz are visible. If we examine each temporal dimension in this and many other scenes we will discover the capacity of comics to constitute an unusual or unaccepted temporal dimension in art. McGlothlin109 (who quotes Spiegelman in this context) dubs this temporal dimension super-present, 109 Erin McGlothlin, "When Time Stands Still: Traumatic Immediacy and Narrative Organization in Art Spiegelman's Maus and In the Shadow of no Towers," in Baskind & Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel, pp. 94–96. 145 that is, time whose development lies (but is also 'stuck') in the Shoa trauma, and any development, if possible at all, derives from the time fixated by the Auschwitz trauma.110 A discerning eye must have noticed the words "Time flies..." above the first panel to indicate the time elapsed since Spiegelman started working on his book, but the time featured in the panels themselves is Auschwitz time measured by the dead bodies next to him and the watchtower visible from his window. It is, therefore, all too understandable that Maus should be perceived as a historically important document and a milestone in the chronicle of Shoa testimonies.111 As such it mediates between the Shoa events and the personal memory of the father as Shoa survivor, with, in-between, the son who represents the second generation. The memory of history or the history of memory are the two poles of testimony in Maus: the father and bleeding history, and the son coping with the mother's tragic death, with the Shoa serving as third side in the Gordian knot between father and son. c. History, testimony, story Some ten years went by after volume II of Maus was published (1991) before other comics works appeared that revolved around the Shoa. Unlike Rosenthal or Spiegelman, the authors of these novellas did not experience the Shoa yet were profoundly affected by it. 110 Erin McGlothlin, "In Auschwitz We Didn't Wear Watches: Marking Time in Art Spiegelman's Maus," in Erin McGlothlin, Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration, (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), pp. 66–90. 111 Michael G. Levine, "Necessary Stains: Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Bleeding of History," in Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust, ed. Deborah R. Geis, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), p. 63. 146 Joe Kubert's112 (b. 1926) Yossel: April 19, 1943 may be the graphic novel closest to Maus. His parents were spared the horrors of the Shoa because they had immigrated to the USA before the war, but most of their relatives who had remained in Poland perished. As a witness to whispered conversations behind closed doors about those murdered, Kubert wondered 'what would have happened if his family had not immigrated to the USA but had remained in Poland?' The relief of not having become a victim of that inferno, as well as the sense of guilt for having escaped while his relatives and others perished, prodded Kubert to write Yossel. In narrative terms Yossel is a simple story that lacks both the depth and the temporal and spatial layers of Maus. Nevertheless, its uncommon visual representation, which sways like a pendulum between graphic novel and illustration, is innovative, as the figures and scenes are reminiscent largely of an initial drawing or sketch in pencil before the work's completion. The pencil's roaming over the paper as though looking for a reference point in the story and its figures conveys a fleeting and somewhat stammering mood, which dovetails the trauma Kubert means to present in his story. Furthermore, Yossel defies the common structure of the graphic novel, which is based on strips of panels with text and pictures. The internal division of the page seems random, as though the pictures and the text were tossed onto the paper without any deliberate order. The text itself, which features fonts Kubert designed, is equally surprising, and its uncommon placement within the 112 Joe Kubert, Yossel, April 19, 1943: A Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ibooks Inc., 2003. 147 picture suggests that the story is primarily a document of real events.113 The text seems to remind Yossel of the picture's context and, thus, it allows him to insert it properly later. The visual aspects highlighted against the text, as well as the scenes spilling over the entire page infuse the story with the quality of an underground work or an intimate diary written under grim circumstances of minimal lighting and scarcity of paper and writing implements, in a place where updated, continuous, systematic reporting is impossible. Yossel takes place on April 19, 1943, the second day of Passover. The opening page introduces the reader to Yossel. He and several people, among them Mordechai, who plays a central role in the story, are making their way through the sewers to escape the Germans. While fleeing Yossel is checking whether he lost his pencils and drawing papers, consoling himself that he still has several sheets left to draw the burned down ghetto. Only on the second page does the reader realize that Yossel is actually in the Warsaw ghetto and that the story deals with the uprising of a handful of Jews, among them Mordechai (probably Mordechai Anilevich, although the full name is never spelled out), up to the ghetto's final moments and the insurgents,' including Yossel's, death. Like Spiegelman, Kubert deliberates how to render the Shoa trauma with pictorial means and throughout the novella asks 'what would have happened if I, Joe Kubert, had been really Yossel, and I and my family would have ended sharing the fate of Jews during the Shoa?' This 113 The story features events from the uprising chronicle but also many fictional scenes. For example, on the first page Yossel meets the Jewish underground in Warsaw and its leader Mordechai. Similarly, on page 37, on his way back to the underground's cellar, Yossel runs into a Jew who had escaped from Auschwitz--an implausible occurrence, given both the distance between the concentration camp and Warsaw and the impossibility of running away. 148 question is equivalent to Primo Levi's remarks114 that the treatment of the Shoa cannot be viewed as historical reporting free of subjective influences, since the true witnesses, the dead, will never be able to speak about it. A collection of the survivors' personal points of view is all that has been left. The Shoa chronicle discussed here is a sort of reflective history (allohistory)115 of 'what would have happened if?' based on the memories of authors who were not physically present during a certain event such as the Shoa but address it as though they had experienced it. The traces of Kubert's lost memory documented through Yossel's pencil drawings of what he sees, that is, of Kubert's own imaginary landscape, are meant to hone Yossel's memory and, with hindsight, to remind Kubert what the Nazis inflicted on the Jews during World War II. This is how one can understand quite a few chapters of Yossel, which depict the details of the extermination camps, the victims' arrival, their execution by gas and the bodies' cremation in the crematoria, even though Yossel does not leave the burning ghetto in Warsaw but gets the information on concentration camps from a refugee who escaped and reached the ghetto by a circuitous route. Joe Kubert, Yossel The story is replete with many points of view. For example, at a certain 114 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal, Vintage, 1989, p. 83. 115 Brad Prager, "The Holocaust Without Ink: Absent Memory and Atrocity in Joe Kubert's Graphic Novel Yossel: April 19, 1943," in Baskind & Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel, p. 116. 149 stage Yossel's point of view is replaced with that of the refugee who escaped from the concentration camp. Later we even witness the point of view of the body about to be burned in the crematorium. All these transitions are based on isolated words and fragmented sentences Kubert heard stealthily while still a child in his parents' home, but which he understood only later when he studied history in school. Such words as deportation, annihilation, concentration camps, crematoria, gas chambers were seared into Kubert's memory, leaving traumatic marks, and it is these words he seeks to draw as visual stations of the Shoa. Joe Kubert, Yossel, depiction of the crematoria The story of the Jew who slipped out of the concentration camp and astonishingly reached the ghetto, the conversations among the handful of insurgents in the ghetto and the testimony of Yossel, who occasionally leaves the ghetto to paint portraits of the Nazis and in the process smuggles food into the besieged ghetto--all these are not the memories of Kubert's parents, as they did not experience the Shoa. The scraps of information presented in this story are actually the post-memory of Kubert the child who eavesdropped behind closed doors on conversations meant for adults only, which he later translated into drawings. One could say, then, that Yossel is Kubert's childhood story, and the what-if question--if his parents had not immigrated to the USA in time--resonates throughout the novel up to the last line, where Yossel 151 dies and one of his papers flutters in the cold morning wind. Bernice Eisenstein's (b. 1949) I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors116 is another graphic novel by a second-generation author. Unlike Maus and Yossel, Eisentein's novel features memory and association layers that exceed the documentary level and considerably extend the contexts to such topics as the Old Testament and American cowboy movies. One of the drawings depicts Moses breaking the tablets of the law, while another shows her father marching under the concentration camp gate topped with its infamous Arbeit macht frei sign, a gun dangling from his belt and a Star of David reminiscent of a sherif's badge pinned on his vest. Bernice Eisenstein, I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors Eisenstein various levels of awareness, whether high and popular culture, or allusions to Chagall's painting, to the figures of Groucho Marx, Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt, to Yiddish culture (Fiddler on the Roof, or American street culture--all these call on the reader to reconstitute nets of signs that would remain enigmatic without their proper context. Eisenstein's representation of the Shoa is entirely different from those addressed thus far, as only a small portion of the text relies on pictures, unlike in most comics. It is not surprising, therefore, that her work is perceived as an illustrated story rather than a graphic novel. Because of her somewhat wild associations, which constitute a sort of defense mechanism, her presentation of the Shoa circumvents trauma and horror, 116 Miriam Harris, "Releasing the Grip of the Ghostly: Bernice Eisenstein's I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors," in Baskind & Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel, pp. 129–143. 151 leaving the story to unfold as a legend or, at most, a fairytale. Pascal Croci, Auschwitz, page 1, depiction of the fate of the Jewish people A direct glance at Auschwitz, with emphasis on trauma as a historical event, can be found in Pascal Croci's (b.1961) graphic novella Auschwitz, based on a series of interviews he conducted with survivors over five years, on his own initiative. The novella's quite surprising opening differs from the novellas discussed thus far: three vertical panels present a building, not exactly a Christian worship house nor a historically valuable archaeological detail, in gray-and-white monochromatic colors that remain with the reader throughout the entire book. Within these are three rectangular frames with inscriptions that probably guided Croci in (re)presenting the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Shoa. These are historiosophical remarks on Jewish fate, which he believes led to the annihilation of European Jewry during the Shoa. Does he allude here to the fate of the Jewish people and their persecution by Christians throughout history, does he associate between Nazi antisemitism and Christian antisemitism? The novella provides no answers. Auschwitz opens in 1993 in former Yugoslavia, when the civil war and brutal ethnic cleansing were raging in that Balkan area. And elderly Jewish couple, Cessia and Kazik, flee their home lest they be suspected 152 of helping Bosnia's enemies. On their flight they recall their experiences during World War II. The civil war and its dangers occasion a frank conversation between them on their ordeals at Auschwitz. Like many other Shoa survivors who bolted their heart and never spoke about that time, they, too, had never spoken. In these conversations Cessia and Kazik reveal their past, the death of their daughter, Anna, of typhus just before the end of the war, and, of course, Auschwitz with its forced labor, food distribution, selections and extermination. Pascal Croci, Auschwitz, the Jews arrive at Auschwitz Croci collects countless testimonies, turning them into a terse mosaic on Auschwitz, yet he brings no human experiences and, except for the elderly couple, he follows no other figures in their ordeals in the valley of slaughter. Instead, he depicts a concentrate of plausible events that may have even happened at Auschwitz, but their trimmed down presentation devoid of human background is largely reminiscent of texts verging on kitsch, perhaps even on the pornographic tenor of the stalag books published in Israel in the 1960s. Croci's raw realistic depiction of Auschwitz, the gaunt figures, the dramatic close-ups of executions, the victims' terrified eyes next to the eyes of brutal Nazi soldiers, the gaping mouths, the watchtowers, the dogs, the crows and rats gnawing at the 153 dead bodies, the gas chambers--all these are very skillfully rendered in black, white and gray and instill in the viewer a sense of the apocalyptic trauma of the Shoa. Yet it seems that another, hidden, intention lies at the edge of Croci's visible intentions: to 'vindicate' the opening lines on the bitter fate of the Jewish people. Indeed, Auschwitz ends with the execution of Cessia and Kazik for treason against the Serbian people. Their flight from the Auschwitz inferno did not rescue them from themselves and their Jewishness. Does Croci suggest that Jews will always be persecuted? Does he see the Jew as a tragic figure that will never be able to escape its fate? Did the case of Bosnia serve as a pretext to deal with the Shoa? The text offers no answers to these questions, yet it is noteworthy that the graphic novella Auschwitz is not based on a personal point of view like those discussed thus far. Thus, the absence of a doubting, deliberating human dimension flattens the story and dwarfs its place among the other novellas. An unusual work in the corpus of graphic Shoa novellas is Die Suche117 (The Search). Published by the Anna Frank House and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, this educational brochure imparts information on the Shoa to high school students. Still, one cannot avoid reading here a moving story narrated like the novellas mentioned in this article. The text authors of Die Suche are Ruud van der Rol, Lies Schippers and Eric Heuvel, a well-known comics artist and illustrator in Holland, who also provided the pictures. Surprisingly, these pictures are reminiscent of the Tintin series by Georges Prosper Rémi (aka Hergé) (1907-1983), probably to make the Shoa story more accessible to young readers 117 Eric Heuvel, Ruud van der Rol and Lies Schippers, Jewish Historical Museum, 2007). The Search (Amsterdam: Anne Frank House & The 154 through pictures, which have become an inalienable asset of comics culture. Eric Heuvel, Ruud van der Rol and Lies Schippers, Die Suche, 2007 For pedagogical reasons, the voice narrating the Shoa events is personal. Here is the story of a family, one of whose daughters was able to hide and after the war looked for her family. Following the history of the Hechts, most of whom perished during the Shoa, is in fact the authors' search for the guilty parties. In this sense the speaking voice belongs to the contrite--the German and the Dutch peoples. The rather stereotypical plot resembles many stories of Jewish families who experienced the horror of the Shoa. The stations the Hechts went through until their arrival in Auschwitz resemble those of many Jews; in this respect the booklet reveals nothing new. The Hechts, who lived in Germany, sought refuge in Amsterdam after the Nazis rose to power. When the Germans occupied Holland, the Jews were transferred to a camp and from there to Auschwitz. Esther Hecht, who was not home when the Jews of her neighborhood were rounded up, thus escaped by chance and found a hide-out in a village. After the war she placed an ad in search of her family. A Jewish neighbor, who was with her parents at Auschwitz told her about their death. She moved to the USA and years later, when she told her grandchildren about the Shoa, one of them located that neighbor in Israel through the Internet. Only then did she find out about her 155 family's ordeals. Again, this is a stereotypical story: Germany, Holland, Auschwitz and Israel are intertwined in one bundle meant to evoke in German and Dutch students a net of associations that unravel the events and the involvement of their country in the destruction of German and Dutch Jewry. Before he wrote Die Suche Heuvel published another booklet, A Family Secret,118 which also tells about Dutch Jewry during the Shoa. Interestingly, in neither of these two booklets do the survivors themselves tell the Shoa story; it is the second and third generation's voice the reader hears. In one booklet the family's story comes to light when one of Esther's grandchildren finds, through the Internet, his grandmother's neighbor, who had witnessed Esther's her parents' deportation. Similarly, in the second booklet, Jeroen, another grandson, goes up to his grandmother's attic to look for old objects to sell on Queen's Day in Holland. He finds his grandmother's diary where she writes of her and her family's tribulations during World War II. In both stories, the grandchildren--the third generation, like the students for which they were written--assumed the task of revealing the events, and it is they who are meant to learn from them. The art historian and journalist Rolf Lautenschläger119 has stated that Die Suche has become a popular text and to a certain extent has even raised the level of information among Germany's young generation, most of whom are not familiar with this sinister chapter in their country's history. The comics genre thus expanded both the knowledge and the interest in the Shoa among 9-13-year-olds. But Die Suche raised yet 118 119 Eric Heuvel, A Family Secret (Amsterdam: Anne Frank House & Resistance Museum Friesland, 2005). http://www.goethe.de/ins/fi/hel/ges/pok/en3955257.htm 156 another question: is it appropriate to (re)present the Shoa in art in general and in comics in particular? The preoccupation with the legitimacy of art to depict the Shoa and the public debate kindled by the emergence of an uncommon artistic medium--comics--that tries to cope with the trauma reflect the unrelenting questions of how and to what extent the Shoa can be documented. Die Suche raises these questions, which, among students are a way of preserving awareness of the Shoa. Conclusion The comics artists selected here belong to a wide range of authors who addressed the Shoa from angles both personal, like those of Rosenthal, Spiegelman, Kubert and Eisenstein, and general without personal involvement, as visible in Croci and Heubel. Noteworthy also is Martin Lemelman,120 whose graphic novella expands the scope with his perspective of Jewish shtetl life prior to Nazi persecution. The approach of all these novellas to the Shoa is serious and considerably faithful to historical facts. Another genre of Shoa comics offers an imaginary, even bizarre, perspective, and some of these works use the Shoa theme to convey social messages that are not necessarily specific to the events of World War II. The first in this category is the series Desert Peach by Donna Barr,121 which tells about Manfred, the fictional homosexual brother of Rommel (aka 'desert fox'). Nicknamed 'desert peach,' Manfred does all he can to prevent the war's horrors. He finds out about the Shoa and the atrocities committed by the SS from a soldier who returns to his base 120 121 Martin Lemelman, Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2007). Donna Barr Desert Peach, Thoughts and Images, 1988. 157 after a recovery furlough in Germany. Adolf, a series produced by Osamu Tezuka,122 tells of three Adolfs: a German-Japanese Adolf, a Jewish Adolf and, of course, Adolf Hitler. The meandering story deals not only with the Shoa but also with all the events of World War II in Europe and the Far East, with the resistants against the Nazi regime and even with Middle East events, when the Jewish Adolf enlists in the IDF. Noteworthy in this genre is also Dudu Geva's 123 Kofiko at Auschwitz (published in 2004 in Haaretz), a story about Kofiko's adventures and about the Heinz the kapo, who hopes to set the two dobermans Max and Moritz on him and to hang him by his tail on the electric fence. Kofiko, the little monkey, pokes fun at Heinz, who admits he is unable to contend with the Jews,' including Kofiko's, pranks. After the war Heinz loses his mind, and on Purinm he jumps into a burning stove, followed by his dogs Max and Moritz. The highly ingenious Kofiko secures an illegal immigrant boat for his friends, and they make it to the ceremony of Israel's declaration of Independence, where Kofiko pinches Ben-Gurion's buttocks. Like Adolf and Desert Peach, Kofiko at Auschwitz is also a strange, imaginary story totally unrelated to the facts of World War II and the Shoa. Still, these three works close a circle started by Horst Rosenthal at the Gurs concentration camp. Although none of these three series intersects with those mentioned earlier, they do share the (re)presentation of the Shoa by the other, whether the homosexual in the North African desert, the three Adolfs, the animal that speaks a human language (Kofiko) or Rosenthal's Mickey. Jews too have addressed the Shoa with 122 Osamu Tezuka, Adolf, Cadence Books, Inc., 2001. 123 After Geva's death the Hebrew text was uploaded at http://e.walla.co.il/?w=/1000/671429 158 humor, cynicism and satire;124 black humor did not stop amid slaughter. The comics authors discussed here continue the tradition of looking at trauma through humor and satire, though with one difference: they not only condemn Nazism and its terror regime but also express the deep pain that only a popular culture, by its nature meant to entertain and delight, can (re)present. One could say, then, that comics penetrate historical events, remove their wrapping of authenticity and forge a mostly personal and private reality in order to transmit the story of the Shoa survivor to the next generations. This new writing of history, presented from a personal angle, elicits in the readers identification with the figures and their ordeals, unlike the concrete presentation of the Shoa in photography and documentary film, which blocks the reader, preventing identification with the victims. As a written and illustrated chronicle, comics unravel before the reader-viewer a relatively more digestible reality than a realistic presentation of the horrific facts. Still, comics are also a document that attests to the necessity of (re)presenting the Shoa in any possible medium, including comics. English version: Beatrice Smedley 124 Itamar Levin, ed., Through the Tears: Jewish Humor Under the Nazi Regime (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, Yedioth Ahronoth, 2004). 159 Twisted bodies: annihilating the aesthetic125 Introduction The claim that architecture is designed for people is not extravagant, as they both occupy architectural spaces and serve as the scale for their design. That is, the human being and body "consume" and, at the same time, delineate architecture. Vitruvius (1st century BC) is rightly believed to be the first theoretician who saw in the human body not only the means but also the aim of architecture. In architectural practice this body has since been perceived as a paragon of excellence and presented mostly as an analogy of perfection and beauty, of a good gestalt and coherent form. However, in this article I will raise questions about the maimed body in pain, its twisted and not-beautiful shapes. Has the contemporary idea of architecture addressed this body as well? I will introduce the problem, examine its origins and bring examples where the body is analogous to what is abject, distressed and in pain--all this in an attempt to argue that abjectness is inseparable from our lives. The body-architecture analogy In recent years various disciplines have shown a resurgent interest in the human body. Always at the forefront of scrutiny, mainly in the arts and sciences, the human body has become a topic of intense debate today also in other fields, such as fashion, industrial design, communications, architecture and, of course, in the classic disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics; even literary studies and 125 I want to thank Beatrice Smedley for translating and editing this paper. 161 philosophy resound widely with questions about the status of the human being and body. This emphasis on bodily aspects raises a vast range of questions. Is the rekindled debate merely a revision of what was once debated but later somehow neglected and forgotten, or is this our natural, yet to be exhausted, curiosity eager to probe deeper at a propitious time? Does the preoccupation with the body spell discontent with its roles in many of the disciplines that should have highlighted its share in the definition of the modern human being's status? Or does the return to the body represent a refreshing, previously unknown, point of view after longstanding, deeply ingrained sexual stereotypes have been discarded? Though we will be unable to offer an unequivocal answer to all these questions, facts seem to defy arguments. Thus, one cannot deny that today the body stars in more disciplines than 20 years ago, and even architecture, which boasts a long tradition of focus on the body, has returned once again to this topic, raising new speculations that seemed fantastic and inadmissible a mere generation ago. Architecture is, indeed, a special case. It does not examine the human being as a body, nor does it claim to present the human body as do the visual arts, fashion, photography, film, and certainly not as do postmodern theories on the connections between the body and sexuality. Still, architecture does deal extensively with the human being, in particular his body,126 and the publications honoring the body and its connections with architectural values are not fewer than in other disciplines. If this is how matters stand, and analogous lines run between architecture 1. A broader scope of the issue is discussed in Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western Civilization written by Richard Sennett, W. W. Norton and company, 1994. See especially chapter 8 'Moving bodies' in which William Harvey's revolution in anatomy and its influence on city planning, is presented. 161 and the human being, what is, then, the connection between architecture and the human body or, to refine the question, is the reference to the body immanent to architecture, a sine qua non if we are to understand its intentions, or does this analogy serve the pedagogical purpose of better explaining the architect's working process? I would like to argue that the analogy between architecture and the human body is not fortuitous and certainly not trivial, nor does it merely teach us how to read an architectural work. Architecture and the body are two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, architecture views the human being as its purpose, that is, people populate architectural spaces-cities, their squares, streets and buildings that make up the human environment--and, as such, are the natural consumers of architecture, which plans, designs and builds for them. On the other hand, architecture uses images of the human body to justify its contents as paragons and examples of harmonious and proportional structures, but also as a measure for creating a proper and commendable environment suitable to human needs. Notable examples that address the human body include, of course, Vitruvius, whom I will discuss further below, and Le Corbusier who has designed numerous buildings in Europe, mainly during the fifties collaborating with Nadir Afonso (an architect and an eminent artist) using the 'Modulor' - a 'housing unit'127 as a principle of proportion. In these two examples,128 although distant in both time and their visions of the human being, the body and architecture function on two distinct levels, with a one-way analogy stretching from architecture to the human body, which serves here as a sort of schema for the 2. In French 'Unite d'habitation' also literarily translated as 'housing unity'. 3. One more example worth noticing is Orlan's MesuRAGEs project in which she lies on a floor of a building, marks with a chalk her body, repeating her action till the floor is full with a display of Orlan-corps. See a detailed review in Carnal Art: Orlan's Refacing by: C. Jill O'Bryan, University of Minnesota press 2005, p. 8. 162 architectonic structure. Against this example one can pit the post-modern architectural conception that refers to the body's connotations and not only its limbs, as does Ayn Rand in her novel The Fountainhead. Rand describes the limbs of the toned, virile body of the architect Howard Roark as though they were quarried from rock; it is on them he models his buildings. Although there is no direct connection between architecture and bodily features, the very drawing of such an analogy points to a reversal in the architectural view of the human body: from the body as a model--for Vitruvius and Le Corbusier--to an interpretation of the body as a metaphor for the building's power, as evident in the collection of projects Stud: Architecture of Masculinity,129 which discusses images of the masculine body in architecture. The "affair" between architecture and the body, isn't new, then, and Vitruvius was, as noted, the first to refer to the human body and the human being himself as a means that offers architects working methods he deemed crucial if architecture was to serve its aims properly. His treatise On Architecture features a hefty compendium of instructions on how to build well-proportioned and properly scaled buildings. The following quote eminently describes the classical architectonic paradigm, which, trickling into the discipline, has become a timeless model: Proportion consists in taking a fixed module, in each case, both for the parts of a building and for the whole, by which the method of symmetry is put into practice. For without symmetry and proportion no temple can have a regular plan; that Is, It must have an exact proportion worked out after the fashion of the members of a fine-shaped human body".130 1. Joel Sanders (ed.), Stud: architecture of masculinity, Princeton, 1966. See also George Dodds and Robert Tavernor, Body and Building: essays on the changing relation of body and architecture, MIT press 2002. Susan Bordo, The Male body: a new look at men in public and in private, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York), 1999 130 Vitruvius, On Architecture, translated into English by Frank Granger, Harvard U. press, 1932, p. 159 163 Let us examine Vitruvius' central claim implied in this passage. First, however, I must refer the reader to a similar position held in the 5th century BC by Aristotle, who claims that an indispensable code underpins a well turned out tragedy that imitates well the characters' lives. The tangents drawn between art and an external factor aren't new, then. Vitruvius is following an already paved road when he uses the human body to establish standardization in architecture. Let us consider the analogy Vitruvius draws between architecture and a 'fine shaped human body' rather than the human body as such. The emphasis on 'fineshaped' raises the question of what underlies the choice of such a human being, rather than any other, as analogous to architecture. Are only the proportions of a fine-shaped human being suitable to the temples the Roman architect envisions? What about the person who does not diet and work out every morning, whose bodily proportions are not those Vitruvius set down in his treatise? Are the proportions of an unattractive person not sufficiently human? Furthermore, did Vitruvius' world teem only with perfectly proportioned people, and, therefore, he required the architect to imitate the perfect body as a basis of standard proportions? Or did Rome display the very opposite, people with regular human rather than ideal proportions, and, to correct this flaw, at least in architecture (as Renaissance painters were to do later), Vitruvius set the ideal body as a model, shunning the body structures of regular people. All these questions share yet another question, namely, why Vitruvius chose the human body at all rather than another external factor for his architectural instructions. Vitruvius' analogy, certainly not trivial but informed by the view that set the human being and his body at the center, was already drawn in the 5th 164 century BC by the ancient Greeks. They addressed the human body from every possible point of view, investing it with a wide range of meanings that were to animate its perception and description throughout Western culture. Quite plausibly, ancient Greece played this role because, unlike in the Middle Ages, no distinct disciplines had yet emerged, such as religion, myth and mythology on the one hand, and painting, sculpture, theater, philosophy and science, on the other. No pure disciplines free of mutual influences existed in ancient Greece, and the myths, the central axis of daily life, were actually the language of artists, playwrights, philosophers and scientists. In poetry, fiction and even the visual arts, such as painting and sculpture, this self-evident influence requires no justifications, but when the language of mythology is used in the sciences, especially anatomy, a rather developed field in ancient Greece, an explanation is called for: must an anatomical description leave the body untainted by defining and descriptive concepts of the period? Must the scientist ignore the culture he lives in, the beliefs of his contemporaries, their religious principles, myths and mythology and examine the object of his study objectively without any apparently external connections or influences? Is the demand for objectivity possible or an unquenchable yearning? These questions, which inflected the attitude of ancient Greeks toward the human body, defined the latter much as did Vitruvius, although his conception of the body transcended its mechanical system of organs and invested it with a metaphoric meaning. To illustrate this point we will return to ancient Greek art, theater and mythology, which illuminate the human body from two angles: the concrete body moving within the space and time of the play's characters and the eternal body transcending concrete time and space as a symbol of balance (or imbalance) between the human being and his fate. 165 Sophocles' tragedies are a case in point. The first play in the trilogy tells of Oedipus the King, the cause and effect of the moral imbalance that stems from his very existence as a human being, despite his bravery, wisdom and cleverness. A mortal who solves the riddle of the Sphinx, he unsettles the status quo between the gods and people, paving the way for a chain of transgressions that began with his birth, his abandonment, feet bound, on the mountain, his marriage to his mother and the birth of his four children, and up to the grim end when he plucks out his eyes and is banished from his country. At each of these stages the human body is the ground where the drama of unsettled mythical balance unfolds: between the gods' metaphysics and human life, between the cosmic order and the triviality of earthly events, between the concrete body and the metaphoric body. Nor is the human body absent in the trilogy's third play, where Antigone asks to bury her brother in defiance of King Creon's decree that forbids his burial because he betrayed Thebes. This is not the place to examine the complex conflict between loyalty and treason, between the king's decree and Antigone's flouting of the law, though we should point out that the entire play revolves around a dead human body that functions as a central image in the disturbed balance between the royal decree and Antigone's conscience, between death and Antigone's fate. Not only tragedies but comedies, too, address the body. Aristophanes' Lysistrata, written probably in 411 BC during the Peloponesian wars (430-404 BC) between Athens and Sparta, is among the famous. In the play Lysistrata tries to convince the women of Sparta and Athens to abstain from sexual relations with men to make them stop the war. In the best of Greek writing tradition, Aristophanes does not forgo graphic descriptions of both male and female sexual organs and erotic scenes 166 verging on pornography in order to portray human weaknesses and steer bodily passions into the ideological conflict between Athens and Sparta. Many mythological stories flash through the lines, such as the myth of creation and the birth of Gaia's and Uranus' children, the story of the Amazons, and, of course, all the stories about the gods' seductions and betrayals. But the ancient Greeks looked at and learned about themselves not only in the theater. The much more accessible arts of painting and sculpture presented the bodies of women and men not only as ornaments or aesthetic expressions. Set in a mythic context, the paintings of women and men depicted impossible imaginary situations. This may be why for the ancient Greeks art mediated between mythology and daily reality, between the metaphysical and the physical, serving as a sort of shield for the individual. It is not fortuitous that Aristotle lists catharsis as an important element of tragedy, as it is the only way to see in art allusions to daily life and so-called realistic scenes, even if these are hard, though relevant, to our lives. In this sense Aristotle was the first, if not the most rigorous, theoretician who understood that art was not only an aesthetic but also a pedagogical activity. Art seeks to present the imaginary, the desirable rather than the extant at a particular moment, to highlight the probable131 rather than only concrete reality as such. Art, then, infuses an apparently trivial reality with an ideational, sublime dimension that rhymes with the gods. The implied tone in Aristotle's claim that the artist must present the universal through the particular and set down the concrete as he 1. "It is evident, however, from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, - what is possible according to the law of probability or nescessity." Aristotle, Poetics IX 1, translated by: S. H., Butcher, Aristotle's theory of Poetry and Fine Art, Dover publications, 1951. 167 highlights the general truth is noteworthy, as it opens the door to metaphoric representations--key mediators in the complete presentation of the concrete. Vitruvius was well aware that art played this role, whose application in architecture was not fortuitous nor devoid of historical context. His argument isn't, therefore, trivial, if only because in those times, too, the body's arena was not exhausted by the circumscribed field of anatomy but symbolized, more than anything else, the Zeitgeist that was to peak in the Renaissance. After all, ancient Greece, Rome and Renaissance Florence, too, were swarming with fat and thin, tall and short people, not to speak of the variously disabled. Nevertheless, Vitruvius and the architects of the following generations ignored these variations and exhorted young architects to learn from the image of the perfect, ideational human body that thrived in their wild imagination or, at least, in the world of Platonic ideas. Surprisingly enough, the theories of Vitruvius resonate even today among contemporary architects, despite the shifts the images of the human body have undergone in art and science. An unusual example in this context is the fascinating work of the architect Le Corbusier who, unlike his colleagues, boasted he was able to and really did infuse the theory of Vitruvius with a modern meaning when he built, inspired by him, what he termed "the Modulor"--a house adapted to the average human body--with the intention of harmoniously organizing his environment inside and outside his home. Located in Marseille, the apartments feature units with proportions adapted to each family member: the rooms for adults are larger than those for children, the proportions of the family living room differ from those of the bedroom 168 and kitchen, etc. Yet for Le Corbusier, says Anthony Vidler, "the body acted as the central reference"132 and is considered the last, to some extent even pathetic, if not tragic, survivor among a community of architects who remained loyal to the model proposed by Vitruvius, and although some architects look to the human body for inspiration, most, certainly unlike Vitruvius, perceive the body as a metaphor. Vidler attributes the rift between classical architecture, in which the building's adequacy is based on the analogy to bodily proportions, and an architecture free of Vitruvian anthropomorphism, to Edmund Burke, the 18th-century Irishman, known also for his religious stance precisely during the Enlightenment, which has tried to throw off the shackles of religion and tradition. Despite his religious-ethical world view, Burke sees in the human being a limited creature subject to the evolutionary laws of nature rather than to divine powers. There is a reason why we hear Burke anticipate the later Charles Darwin, who saw nothing sublime either in the human being but studied him as yet another link in nature's random evolution. Against this background, as general and sketchy as it may be, Vidler's quote from Burke's famous treatise Philosophical Inquiry expresses staunch opposition to the analogy between architecture and the human body. Burke disdains the Vitruvian human being, claiming that To make thus forced analogy complete, they represent a man with his arms raised and extended at full length, and then describe a sort of square… It appears very clearly to me, that the human figure never supplied the architect with any of these Ideas…. Men are very rarely seen in this strained posture; it is not natural to them; neither it is all becoming… Certainly nothing could be more unaccountably 132 Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: essays in the modern unhomely, MIT press,1994, p. 90. 169 whimsical, than for an architect to model his performance by the human figure, since no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than man, and a house or a temple".133 Burke's rejection of the analogy dear to Vitruvius and the advocates of proportion who walked in his footsteps unsettles the foundations of the Aristotelian theory that evaluated art by its ability to create sublime, imaginary realities. Instead, art is to be grasped through the human senses, that is, it passes muster as good art if it elicits feelings. If we apply this claim to architecture we realize that Burke does not remove the body from the debate on the discipline's nature, but against the perfect, sublime body depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, he pits the body as it is--the subjective body moving through architectural spaces, with its sensations and impressions as the measure for the building's nature and value. The advent of the ugly and distorted Burke's critique of Vitruvius seeped deeply into architecture, whose quest has shifted increasingly to emotion and surprise, often at the expense of functionality. Salient examples would be the works of such architects as Daniel Libeskind (The Jewish Museum in Berlin), Frank Gehry (Bilbao), I. M. Pei (Javits Convention Center in New York), to mention only a few of the current star architects who seem to have carefully read Burke's brief observation that the test of art, including architecture, is its ability to call forth emotions: fear, anxiety, dread and, of course, empathy, joy, etc. In this context Robert Venturi's well-known 133 Burke, E., Philosophical Enquiry, p. 100 cited from Vidler 1994, p. 72 171 book Learning from Las Vegas134 (1972) is noteworthy, as it takes issue with Bauhaus sterility in favor of an architecture that conveys the spirit of the place and, therefore, strikes deeper chords than the universal pretentiousness suggested by buildings aiming at the proportional and the sublime without any reference to their time and place. It is in this vein that we are to read many theoretical works on architecture with ample references to theoreticians who, were it not for the turnabout in architecture, we would have hardly seen their traces in this discipline: Sigmund Freud, Luce Irrigaray, Judith Butler, Andrew Benjamin, Anthony Vidler, Umberto Eco, Tali Hatuka and Rachel Kallus,135 who have ushered in a new approach to the twisted, ugly, aching, sexual body. As a gambit to all these, I must refer to Freud's famous essay The Uncanny (1919), where he analyzes a feeling that is neither fear nor anxiety but a special emotion that stems from the repression of a childhood experience of dread. Among the many examples he includes the dread triggered by automatons moving in space, the recurrent appearance of an object, event or person in our regular surroundings or on our itineraries, such as a certain number in various contexts, or the sudden looming of a person we just thought about, getting lost in an unknown city, and even identical twins, who offer no apparent reason for the discomfort and even dread such identical doubling elicits. Finally, Freud lists as uncanny also certain literary and dramatic characters and events. The ugly, the distorted and the disproportional encountered in art do not elicit fear or anxiety but, rather, discomfort and at times even an 134 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form, MIT press 1092 135 Tali Hatuka and Rachel Kallus, "Body", Rachel Kallus and Tali Hatuka (eds.), Architectural Culture: Place, Representation, Body, Resling, 2005, pp. 243-254 (in Hebrew) 171 uncanny sense that they are about to unsettle the social order. To continue Freud's idea, we could say that the sense of uncanniness is contrary to the emotion elicited by the beautiful, the sublime, the harmonious and the proportional. The latter offer an experience of pleasure and tranquility, whereas the crippled, imbalanced, wounded call forth discomfort and even dread without any apparent reason. Still, in many cases, something beautiful and harmonious can also provoke dread if presented exaggeratedly with surprising elements. I have chosen to open with Freud because two brief passages in his essay refer to architecture. I have already mentioned finding oneself in an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar city: here the dread stems from the tourist's sudden disorientation as he is looking for his hotel yet returns over and over to the same street he wants to leave behind. The second example is our own home when the lights suddenly go off and we grope in highly familiar hallways but are hard put to find our way in the dark. Both cases elicit a sense of uncanniness and disquiet, not because a figure or an object suddenly appeared in our environment or because a jarring sound burst from an unknown source. We experience uncanniness because our place has become distorted and different, and the familiar and predictable are suddenly unclear. In line with Freud's concept of the uncanny, we could say that from the mid-19th century modern art has aroused feelings that had certainly not been experienced by art viewers in previous centuries. The very reference to non-sublime body images flouts every aesthetic principle prevalent thus far. The aching, the ugly, the dismembered, the bleeding-all these defied the symmetrical, harmonious body, shedding a critical light on the past with a slice of concrete life in all its grotesque and tragic 172 aspects. This transgression also meant to constitute a new but actually familiar image of the human body ever since--ailing, aching and bleeding--though art, literature, theater and architecture had blurred, if not concealed, its representation. Does this omission stem from the dread elicited by gruesome sights? Has the body in pain been hidden by the fear that it might be perceived as trivial and banal compared to the unequalled sacredness of Jesus' martyred body? Could the image of the sick, distorted body have changed the very order of such fields as architecture, which used the healthy, harmonious and symmetrical body as a paradigm for a gestalt worthy of imitation? With these questions in mind, let us examine the body images that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution and whether modern architecture has been mindful of the shift in body images or has remained loyal to the Vitruvian vision of architecture as an imitation of the beautiful body. Images of the fragmented body in modernism I first became interested in body images in art after reading Linda Nochlin's136 short book The Body in Pieces. Its much more enticing subtitle specifies what the title implies, who the body pieces belong to and in what context they are discussed. Indeed, The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity not only reveals the book's tenor but also explains how to spot modernity, which, the author claims, "invented" fragmentariness. That is, the consummate expression of modernity can be found in the body's depiction in art: the greater the fragmentariness, the firmer the body's status as image and metaphor, and, as such, it 136 Linda Nochlin, The body in pieces: the fragment as a metaphor of Modernity, Thames and Hudson, 1994 173 enhances modernism. Nochlin locates the rift between traditional art and modern art during the French Revolution, and, strange and morbid as this may sound, she considers the guillotine a device that "ushered in the modern period, which constituted the fragment as a positive rather than a negative trope".137 Loss, fragments, the dismembered body are the most apt counterarguments against "the nostalgia for the past," Nochlin writes, and, in this sense, the emergence of body parts is to be interpreted as the deliberate destruction of whatever is connected to tradition and to what we wrongly perceive as vandalism in the creation of new, unbiased images in art. The guillotine was the first modern mechanical means of execution that stripped the execution of its punitive aspect, turning it into an icon of modernism that purged society of the burden of the old world. While we shudder at the sight of the guillotine and the executions during the French Revolution, in those years they were perceived as a dramatic change in the politics of punishment. If, up to the revolution, the treatment of the convict's body was driven by fundamentalist motives, that is, the restoration of the old order, as in Socrates' case, or selfish motives (kings executed political rivals), never had people been executed, as during the French Revolution, in the name of the Enlightenment and the promotion of humane values, such as freedom, equality and brotherhood. Not surprisingly, artists from all the arts praised and documented the guillotine as the first soldier fighting for lofty values, and the results of executions--heads, hands, legs, etc.--were presented as symbols of progress rather than mere expressions of cruelty or terror. Indeed, many paintings feature a severed head held by a revolutionary, 137 Ibid. p. 8 174 recalling paintings of David holding Goliath's head or of Judith beheading Holofernes (the latter by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1635). Despite the time gap and horror, in both cases the severed limb is meant to elicit not only revulsion or dread but also positive connotations. Once the dismembered body settled as a legitimate display in art, the door opened, mainly from the 19th century onward, for many artists who saw the body in general, but also their own, as a ground to express social, national and existential values. Let us recall that during the French Revolution, when both France and Europe were plagued by social and political disorder, quite a few members of the middle class used the circumstances to tout libertine ideas. Contrary to traditional society, which venerated the family and social status, the revolution granted, mainly to men but also to quite a few women, the freedom to meet in cafés, bars and pubs. Free to consume, among others, luxury, fashion and pornographic literature, many, as noted by Margaret C. Jacob138, became aware of their erotic body, of their passions and appetites, which could at last be quenched. People suddenly discovered that life was not underpinned only by ideas, values and religion, that there were bodies and objects, that the human being had a body whose behavior did not depend on the soul only. The body turned out to be a historical entity but, unlike most other objects, not to speak of the ideas, values and laws by which we live, it has not undergone changes and upheavals in its appearance and functions, nor has it become more sophisticated. Throughout history the human body has remained constant: a complicated, complex system of organs and 138 M. C., Jacob, "The materialist world of pornography", in: Hunt, L., (ed.), The Invention of Pornography: obscenity and the origin of Modernity 1500-1800, New York 1993, pp. 157-202, See especially p. 159 175 limbs, whose deviation from normative functioning is perceived as an unusual event, leaving us powerless before the body's overall definition. If anatomical changes did occur, they were external and artificially introduced in order to police the body and restore its normative functioning. Our insights about the body's essence call for, then, the solution of the following paradox: on the one hand we are aware of the concrete private body, which, as noted, has not changed and will most probably not change dramatically in the future; on the other hand, we cannot ignore the body images depicted by scientists, theologians, philosophers, artists, playwrights, writers and poets, but also architects, who do look at the physical body yet build around it images that do not dovetail its concrete existence. Given this paradox between the concrete body and its images, we cannot but ask where the body is, and which of the above possibilities describes it better. The human body seems to be an enigma: since we have a body, it is accessible and familiar to everyone but its definition in a historical context, the attendant images, the philosophical and psychological dilemmas it raises in the arts and sciences indicate that the body is a "chameleon-like concept" that functions in our discourse as both a physical object and a metaphor. It was Théodore Géricault, in the fledgling years of modernism, who offered the most arresting metaphorical expression of dismembered, scattered human limbs. In a series of paintings of severed limbs he underscored absence, setting hands, legs, heads next to each other as though in an anatomical display of lifeless body parts devoid of context and meaning, as though they were mere limbs bereft of any address or identity, limbs that belonged to no one in particular, lacked history and could not explain what they were doing and how they entered the painting. 176 Théodore Géricault, Severed limbs, 1818 Many artists who came of age with the French Revolution, among them Théodore Géricault, painted the maimed human body. Without memories of the revolution, these paintings would have hardly been accepted. In 1816 Géricault painted also an execution in Italy, wounded soldiers lying on a cart (1818) and a man with a leg prothesis standing in front of a Louvre guard. As noted, these paintings offered harrowing depictions of the guillotine and of France's status and situation in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, as though to remind us that against Napoleon's imperial image (he had been painted by Géricault himself) were pitted human shards as a historical warning of a leader's hubris, a leader who disdained no means to glorify himself. These paintings, says Nochlin, are a reminder for art historians who address the human body only from the iconographic point of view, ignoring its physical, aching and tormented corporeality, which represents, as in the above example, events in the history of France. Nochlin's claim would have been tenable had Géricault been the only one to paint such sights at the time. In this case we would have had to interpret his paintings as historical documents rather than as a metaphorical expression of the human condition. But since Géricault did not work in a vacuum, and since quite a few artists of that period and even later used the body as a central theme in their work, we could hardly accept uncritically Nochlin's claim that this is not iconographic painting. The artists of the French Revolution, as well as those of the 20th century, such as Cindy Sherman, Franco B, Orlan, the Chapman 177 brothers and others, whose work we will examine further below, would not have won such acclaim and legitimacy were it not for the shifts in the vision of the human body with the emergence of scientific materialism several years prior to the French Revolution. This is not the place to expand on this subject, yet it should be noted that scientific materialism emerged concomitantly with the spreading of Protestantism and, later, Calvinism. There were not only essential theological differences between Catholicism and the surge of Protestantism and Calvinism. The new radical Christian movements, in particular, exerted a marked influence on science and, therefore, on the definition of the human body in the arts. Science saw this turning point in the work of William Harvey139, who studied the function of the blood vessels, heart and heart valve structure and defined them contrary to the then prevalent approach influenced by Galen, who had written about the structure of the human body and even drawn sketches, now lost. A Platonist, Galen had described the circulatory system in spiritual terms--oxygenated blood carried "vital spirits," whereas the blood returning from the body lacked them. As it often happens in science and, of course, also in art, the paradigm for a turning point does not originate in the field itself but is animated by external factors. One influential paradigm was philosophy, which, at least in the period under discussion, was closer to science than it is today. Indeed, materialism is usually seen as straddling the religious turning point and philosophical positions, from Thomas Hobbes, through René Descartes and up to Julien de la Mettrie140 (1709-1751), a physician and 139 See an extensive discussion on Harvey's contribution to the understanding of the cardiovascular system in: Jonathan Miller, "The Pump, Harvey and circulation of the blood", in: J. M. Bradburne (ed.), Blood, Art, Power, Politics and Pathology, Munchen 1990, pp. 149-155 140 Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Man a Machine, La Salle, Illinois 1961 178 philosopher who is, I believe, the most pertinent to our context: in his book L'Homme Machine (1748) he mocks the Platonic view, stating that the human being is a machine. De la Mettrie expands here the thesis about the human body elaborated by Descartes, who may have been among the first to propose the machine as a model for understanding the body but, as a rationalist, he remained loyal to the soul's role and God's centrality. De la Mettrie bypasses these two elements but, fearing persecution by the Church, he uses Descartes' reference to God as a ploy that would enable him to publish his work. De la Mettrie wrote works on dysentery and asthma, and when L'Homme Machine was published a coalition of Protestant and Catholic priests protested his view that Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get clear idea of the machine before-hand and hence impossible to define it. For this reason, all the investigations have been in vain, which the greatest philosophers have made a priori, that is to say, in so far as they use, as it were, the wings of the spirit. Thus it is only a posteriori or by trying to disentangle the soul from the organs of the body, so to speak, that one cam reach the highest probability concerning man's own nature, even though one can not discover certainly what nature is.141 In other words, the materialist de la Mettrie seeks to replace the Platonistic, non-empirical research methods prevalent until Harvey's time with scientific materialist methods that treated the human body as a machine not driven by the soul. It is not clear whether Hobbes', Descartes' and, later, de la Mettrie's materialism directly influenced the artists of their times, but the very 141 Ibid. p. 89 179 circulation of this theory in many intellectual venues at the time must be given its due in a discussion of the body's place in the visual arts. I cannot review here the entire baroque period, which seems to have responded more than any other to materialist principles, but paintings by such artists as Caravaggio (The Crucifixion of St. Paul, 1601), Rubens (Descent from the Cross, 1611) and, especially, Rembrandt's painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632, which depicts a guild of surgeons headed by Dr. Tulp operating on the just executed young criminal Aris Kindt, leave no doubt about the sharp divergence from the Vitruvian, that is, beautiful, human being worshipped 150 years earlier, during Renaissance. Rembrandt, Doctor Nicolaes Tulp's Demonstration of the Anatomy of the Arm (1632) It is in this vein that we are to look at the works of Géricault, and although I don't know whether he had read de la Mettrie's L'Homme Machine, the very reference to the human body and its parts indicates that the physician's work was known and had somehow reached the painter's doorstep. Because, if any visual representation does loyally depict de la Mettrie's thoughts about the body's materiality, it is in Géricault's morbid paintings. Let us recall that in those years, when he painted these paintings and The Medusa's Raft (1818-19), Mary Shelley published Frankenstein (1818), which blends pseudo-medical anatomical descriptions with the typically romantic desire for immortality. 181 Still, the force of Géricault's works lies not only in the depiction of severed limbs but in the highlighted absence, the disappearance of the concrete body, with the remnants as sole testimony to its existence. Do Géricault's paintings anticipate Jean Baudrillard's idea of simulacra? Do they foresee the condition of the postmodern human being, whose life is steered by an invisible hand? Though these were probably not Géricault's thoughts, one can easily read his works also a prologue to the works of many artists, such as Man Ray, Gilbert and George, Cindy Sherman, Maurizio Cattelan, Vanessa Beecroft, Sally Mann's corpse photographs, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Sigalit Landau, Robert Maplethorpe, and such performance artists as Ron Athey, Franco B and Orlan. All these represent the simulacra, the remnant or the ersatz of the concrete, so much so that the real connection with the reality to which they are doomed is lost. They all share, then, the dilemma between concreteness and fantasy, between the object as it was meant to be - complete, full, apparently extant - and what the artist actually presents, what seems, at least at first sight, partial, a remnant, an allusion from which we are to infer the complete narrative. Does not the reference to the body in the works of these artists conceal an unruly desire to look at the I, at any I, even the homely, and don't the gaze at the distorted and ugly, the scouring of the body and its remnants aim to breach body images in order to reach out to the concrete, to the true? To answer these questions I will examine three notable artists whose work features the body as a central theme. While their place in postmodern art and their influence on many other artists is indisputable, I would like to show that individually, and certainly as a group, they created body images that resonate in other fields as well, including architecture. 181 Cindy Sherman, Franco B and Orlan The artists Cindy Sherman, Franco B and Orlan may not be innovative in setting the body at the center of their work. Already in the 1960s and 1970s quite a number of artists, such as Marina Abramovic, Chris Burden and Joseph Beuys staged similar body performances.142 Still, there is something new in Sherman, Franco B and Orlan, manifested in their vision of the body not as a means to rebel against earlier, traditional, art, which dealt with the beautiful, the aesthetic and the artistic object. On the contrary: unlike the artists of the 1960s and 1970s, which were the first to use the body to chart a new artistic path, Sherman, Franco B and Orlan have been seeking a new reading of the body itself or, rather, to restore a long since abandoned reading of the body and to present what is abject, aching, rejected and twisted as an inextricable part of our lives. Of these three Orlan is the most extreme with the live broadcast of her surgeries.143 The various objects inserted under her facial skin distort her image in a sort of simulation of plastic surgeries people undergo to improve their looks. On the other hand, Franco B, who also cuts into his living flesh, offers once every few months a performance of blood dripping from his veins. In this sense Cindy Sherman is the only one of the three not to slash or change her body through real bodily intervention; at most, she disguises herself in her works, creating a fascinating gallery of figures from the repertoire of Hollywood films and sights glimpsed in New York. 142 An extensive overview of the subject can be found in Tracy Marr and Amelia Jones, The Artist's body, Phaidon 2000 143 Quoting Orlan: Carnal Art open 'a new Narcissistic space which is not lost in its own reflection… So I can see my own body suffering … look again, I can see myself down to my entrails… a new mirror stage', in: Kate Ince, Orlan: Millenial Female (Dress, Body, Culture), Oxford 2000, p. 49. For a broader discussion on Orlan's works, see C. Jill O'Beryan, Carfnal Art: Orlan's Refacing, University of Minnesota press, note especiallychapetr 2: 'Looking inside the Human Body'. 182 In a video of her early work, in which she stages herself in scenes reminiscent of 1950s films, but also in later, more mature, works, where she disguises herself as imaginary figures, Sherman repeatedly raises the question: "Where, then, is the real Cindy Sherman?" Where is the real Cindy Sherman realized--in simulacra, in the artificial look she has created, or in the flesh-and-blood person living her daily life in New York? If so, where, then, is the simulacra? In art, which reveals Cindy Sherman's real passions and desires, or in daily life, which forces her to curb her passions and desires and abide by cultural principles set down by others? To which arena--the one called art or the one called reality-are we to ascribe truth values? And what is the body's place in this story? Is it invoked because it is physical, a concrete object that cannot be disowned and, as such, enables concrete reference, as to other objects surrounding it, such as a chair, table, etc., or does this object's ontological status differ from that of others and, therefore, raises questions about identity, memory, consciousness, which are not the share of regular available objects? Would it be correct to say that Sherman, like other artists who address the body, expresses dichotomies that haunt contemporary culture but were already discussed by Aristotle: concreteness / fantasy, reality / simulacra, true / imaginary? These questions emerge more poignantly in Sherman's last works from the 1990s, in which she has replaced costumes with dummy parts--hands, legs, faces--to stage morbid scenes reminiscent of horror movies. I will first address her work and show that the body images she has created are neither fortuitous nor trivial, and that their influence on the conception of the human being as a whole and on disciplines touching on the visual arts, such as architecture, helped shatter several mainstream views. 183 Throughout her artistic career Sherman has used herself as the central theme of her works. In her early works from the 1970s she photographed herself in urban environments, her attire evoking film noir and Hollywood classics. Only in the 1980s do we notice a shift with her imitations of horror film scenes, later echoed in the dramatic scenes featuring medical dummies and twisted dummy parts. Indeed, after presenting herself as a pig, she photographed vomit and scraps of used clothes; starting in the 1990s she has used dolls as a sort of simulation of the human being and his condition in modern society. Cindy Sherman, untitled, 1992 While Sherman was not the first to include dolls in her work--Man Ray preceded her with a series of dummies in erotic, at times rather provocative, postures--the very reference to the body as a still life, and not just any but a doll imbued with all our cultural connotations, paints its use in somber colors. Sherman replaces the concrete body with slashed, twisted, maimed, injured dolls. In some works the dolls look at us, laughing madly and grimacing, at times they look at us straight, horrified by what is happening around them. Almost all the works refer explicitly to sex, pornography and death, with special emphasis on the face, sexual organs, severed hands, legs and gaping bellies. Here and there figures wear masks sported in S&M clubs and marginal 184 communities, flaunting body parts with various accessories inserted in them. The abject, disgusting, repulsive, compounded by distortions and crippleness, offer a highly painful visual experience reminiscent of Géricault's, Man Ray's and even Maplethorpe's works. Still, there is a vast difference between Sherman and other artists who address the body in their work, if only because she uses artifacts rather than real body parts, which animate her work with a hysterical aspect that reflects sweeping despair and loss of humanness brought about by the nihilism we are steeped in. In an interview she stated that her works are not meant to please and comfort. On the contrary, they seek to wake up, "to bite" and elicit self-awareness about the place of the distressed, tormented, aching body as an archetype of modern life and its demands for considerable level of alienation. The shocking effects and added value of this series stem from its intensity, which elicits in the sensitive viewer familiar with art history a self-reflexive response about the body's and his own place vis-à-vis the raw erotic images of these staged photographs. Elizabeth Smith rightly compares this series to Francisco Goya's wellknown work The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1797), which depicts what may happen when human logic falls asleep: the sinister forces hidden just beneath the surface would burst out and settle among us like familiar family members. It is generally assumed that in this work Goya meant to herald the advent of surrealism, but in our context, g despite the distance in time, there is no doubt that Sherman, too, also sees the rotesque as a faithful expression of our Zeitgeist. The twisted body is a metaphor for the culture, politics and fragmented life typical of modernity and its nihilism, cynicism, competitiveness and lack of values. While Sherman expresses her insights through the fantastic realities she 185 builds with dummies, Franco B144 goes one step further. In his performances he exposes abjectness, distortion and ugliness with his own body, as though sacrificing himself in the very presentation of what is despised, bleeding, wounded and maimed. Franco B 1998 Most of Franco B's works are very hard to watch, as they touch on sights we would rather avoid. In a television interview he said that his performances touch the raw nerves of the bourgeois who averts his gaze from wretched cripples, beggars, AIDS patients, homeless, refugees from the East, foreign workers, singers and musicians in subway stations, servants, home cleaners and cab drivers who roam the streets of the big cities in the thousands yet are hardly noticed. In Franco B's work, the bruised, wounded, twisted, aching, punctured, tortured body wallowing in its own blood functions as a lighthouse whose beacon reaches out to our bleak culture. Perhaps, through his performances, he wishes to help us, the viewers, to imagine the evil that may be yet our share in the future. Perhaps he is writing the looming 144 See Susan Hiller's paper "Part of what art is about is to find ways of beginning to say things about the darkness of culture" in: Franko B, Block Dog Publishing, no pages indicated. For a much more elaborated analysis of Franko B's works in the context of Carnal Art, see Fransceska Alfano Miglietti "About wounds", in Extreme bodies: The Use and Abuse of the Body in Art, Skira, pp. 17-41 186 apocalypse on his body, now that the illusions about the eternity of Western culture--with everything it implied about the future of the human species-- were shattered. Franco B's performances are unsettling and haunting, his chalk-white painted body casts a spell on the viewer, its shocking self-sacrifice recalls ancient myths in which humans and their body parts were sacrificed to appease the gods. To top it all, Franco B the Catholic believer grants his body sacred status, evoking Jesus' body, and his bleeding veins raise associations familiar to every Westerner. All these elements dialogue with the familiar past and the alienated present, with quite a few clichés about the tragic axis of the modern human being who, despite progress, is unable to escape his body in pain. The very use of the body as a medium, with emphasis on pain and abjectness, is certainly not the only factor that has influenced postmodern architecture, but I have no doubt that the legitimacy Franco B has enjoyed in presenting the ugly and the twisted has sent ripples through other disciplines too, including architecture. Orlan, The second mouth, 1993 Franco B's self-flagellation and Orlan's surgeries function not only as metaphors, they have also deeply affected our conception of human essence. Invasive body performances have triggered an epistemological upheaval not only in the concept "body" but also in the latter's very way of being. For Orlan the body is not a means of artistic practice; she has 187 turned her body and public surgeries, broadcast live throughout the world, into the very purpose of her artistic practice. Facial changes made with a surgical scalpel (it should be noted that only Orlan's face, but never her body, is operated on) offer, on the one hand, a new reading of the concept identity when surgical metamorphosis "grants" a new identity. On the other hand, Orlan's work suggests that the body is flexible and can be changed any time, that the face is not cast in stone, it is neither sacred, nor beautiful, nor something wrongly perceived as the ideational blueprint of the human body, but a sort of appearance, a battlefield that teaches us about our life. The predilection for pain and distortion in art, for ugliness and the body's decay, its presentation by Sherman, Franco B and Orlan as an assemblage of fragments, a random, trivial collection of limbs--all these indicate to what extent the body, though deemed sacred, is actually a material like any other, and hurting it desecrates nothing but only offers a new channel of addressing it. As noted, Orlan is far ahead of the others, as she uses plastic surgery to create natural distortions permanently marked on her face. Instead of correcting and embellishing, as the consumption culture of plastic surgery urges us to do, Orlan uses the same technique and surgical scalpel to offer a subversive reading of the hankering after beauty, perfection and eternal youth. This inversion reflects a cultural ambivalence: people sway between the desired imaginary body and the material body living here and now or, specifically, between Orlan's slashed face expressed in art and the yearning for the perfect face and beautiful body touted in ads. Orlan is, then, the mirror image of our consumption culture and, showing the ugly and distorted other, even if deliberately and artificially created, she offers an alternative to what is perceived as beautiful and perfect. 188 Epilogue Can we translate Orlan's, Franco B's, Cindy Sherman's and many other artists' vision of the body into architectural language? Can the twisted and ugly be applied to architecture? Is the Vitruvian analogy valid also when body images do not even skirt the ideational body? Would it be correct to say that the conception of space, envelope and structure in postmodern architecture has been influenced by the aforementioned artists' vision of the body? If so, can the Vitruvian analogy between the body and architecture predict, over and over, architectural "fashions," or is it a pedagogical tool meant, at most, to elucidate and help us better understand architecture without claiming that it deals with factually determined laws? I cannot offer a reply to these questions within the scope of this article, but there is no doubt that Vitruvius' intuition is neither trivial nor lacking implications for contemporary architecture. A considerable number of buildings sport an innovative, revolutionary expression of architectural principles--structure, space and envelope--that challenge prevalent views. It is enough to look at the buildings of Frank Gehry, I. M. Pei, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and many others, who, even if they have not been directly influenced by the sweeping shifts in artistic body images, have, for the most part, defied traditional conceptions in architecture and created dissonances that could not have been realized during Vitruvius' times, when body images were slanted toward beauty, harmony and perfection. 189