Features

Sublime Marin
guy callan Sublime Poussin
louis marin translated by catherine porter
Stanford University Press 1999 $18.95 11.95 267 pp. 12 mono illus isbn 0-8047-3477-1 UK and US dist Cambridge University Press

his is a fascinating book, a kind of dialogue between the images and words of a great painter Nicolas Poussin and the penetrating mind and truly remarkable pair of eyes of a fine scholar Louis Marin (who died in 1992). Combining the intellectual clarity of a philosopher and the intuitive sensibility of a poet, Marin explores such problems in Poussin as the nature and limits of pictorial representation; the relationship between verbal description of a painting, including ekphrasis, and the visual experience of it; the underlying grammar of pictorial represention, both in terms of its generation and in terms of its being deciphered; the more general relationship between language and the non- or preverbal; the nature of the gaze and the nature of desire, and the sublime, that is the attempt to represent the unrepresentable, in Poussin and in seventeenthcentury French aesthetic theory. There is also a short, but very relevant, methodological excursus on Panofsky's work on Poussin, analysing the considerable differences in approach between his two studies of 1936 and 1955, both of which deal with the Louvre Bergers d'Arcadie. The presence of Panofsky is not fortuitous, since much of Marin's work on the visual arts can serve as a very useful corrective to a key problem in even the best work of Panofsky and his followers: the fact that the exhaustive tracing through of images, the learned search for sources and the building up of cultural contexts are almost never connected with a serious theoretical understanding of how signifying systems represent or how they are received, either in the general sense, or in the more specific sense of the visual arts. (The same could also be said of a great deal of the more modern type of art historical research that focuses on social context and patronage). In part, Marin went behind Panofsky, as it were, to the philosophical tradition that moulded him, that of Cassirer, and even more that of the Kant of the Critique of Judgement (Kritik der Urteilskraft), a work dealing with aesthetic problems that has been far more important in the history of Continental philosophy than in that of the Anglo-Saxon world. However, Marin was also thoroughly conversant with more recent developments in semiotics, structuralism, ideological analysis,

narratology and modern linguistic theory. This provided him with a sophisticated range of heuristic tools and epistemological insights, which he applied to a wide variety of interconnected areas within the cle theological, political, linguistic, narrative Grand Sie and visual always, though, fundamentally examining the nature of representing systems in an age that has served as a particular touchstone for classicism and orthodoxy to succeeding generations, and normally regarded as a key period of mimetic representation and transparency of the signifier. There were also imporcle, in which tant excursions outside the Grand Sie similar problems were explored, such as a semiotic, structuralist and narratological analysis of the Biblical miotique de la Passion accounts of the Passion in Se -Descle e (Aubier Montaigne-Cerf-Delachaux & Niestle de Brouwer, 1971), problems of representation in de la peinture Quattrocento central Italian art in Opacite (Usher, 1989) and aspects of autobiography and representation of the self, particularly in relation to Stendhal, in L'Ecriture de soi (PUF, 1999). cle, it was an interest in the Within the Grand Sie current of thought associated with Port-Royal that was particularly central to Marin's work, an interest that he shared with Chomsky and Foucault. He dealt with the ideas of Arnauld, Nicole and Pascal on the nature of language, discourse and the sign in La Critique du discours (Minuit, 1975 and 1991), and he examined the niste', Philippe de Champaigne, work of the `peintre janse sence cache e (Hazan, in Philippe de Champaigne ou la pre 1995), exploring how, influenced by the thought of Port-Royal, Champaigne tried to convey a mystic presence, something unrepresentable in the mimetic sense behind an art that was essentially mimetic. Moving from there to much wider considerations on seventeenth-century painting and mysticism, Marin explored the relationship between the mystic body of the power of the State (in an age of highly personalised absolutism) and the body of the divine, and how the representation of a sacred subject can be transformed into an image that in itself becomes sacred. (This is an extraordinarily rich book, which definitely deserves to be translated into English, as quite a number of Marin's other works have been, including The Semiotics of the Passion Narrative, Portrait of the King, Food for Thought, Utopics and To Destroy Painting). cit est un pie ge Two of Marin's other books Le Re (Minuit, 1978) and Le Portrait du roi (Minuit, 1981) examined the relationship between the absolute personal power of Louis XIV and various ways in which it was projected or represented. In the first book, the tools of semiotics, structuralism and modern linguistics are applied to a number of narratives by seventeenth-century authors, exploring

The Art Book

volume 7 issue 4

september 2000

bpl/aah

Features

the connections between political power and the power of narrative and its narrator, centring on Racine's work as official historiographer of Louis XIV. Le Portrait du roi covered a wide range of material the official historical writing of the period, the royal tes, and the portrait of medals, the royal palaces and fe the king all of which represented or expressed the absolute power of Louis XIV, effecting the transubstantiation the theological term is used deliberately and precisely by Marin of the individual human being into absolute monarch with unlimited power. Marin also wrote about three hundred articles, twenty-two of which were brought together by a group of his former students in the collection De la sentation (Hautes Etudes-Gallimard-Seuil, 1994). repre Among these articles were quite a few on Poussin, about whom Marin intended to write a book, the plan of which is given in an appendix to Sublime Poussin. Aspects tuire la peinture (Galile e, of Poussin are discussed in De 1977/Flammarion, 1997), which explores paradoxes of representation in the work of Poussin and Caravaggio, taking these two artists in a certain sense as opposed cas limites at each end of the spectrum of Baroque painting. (The title of the book is in fact taken from Poussin's famous comment on Caravaggio.) Sublime Poussin, originally published by Seuil in 1995 in the series `L'ordre philosophique', is not, strictly speaking, a book by Marin it is a collection of ten of his articles, nine of which are on or connected with Poussin. The last deals with seventeenth-century

French aesthetic theory and the sublime. These articles were assembled by the same group of former sentation. As they students that put together De la repre say in their introduction, Marin's book, had he lived to write it, would have been much more conceptually interconnected with his book on Philippe de Champaigne and would have included further material on other aspects of Poussin, especially on the Quatre Saisons. Nevertheless, Sublime Poussin is a remarkably coherent book as it now stands. This is partly because of highly intelligent editing, but it is also because of the very real underlying unity to Marin's work, where most of the problems he pursued were interrelated at a conceptual level. He tended to return to previous work in his books, always, though, blending it into a new, more refined, theoretical synthesis, often with contrapuntal digressions that turned the garment he was stitching inside out, as it were, and revealing its lining. Sublime Poussin is divided into two parts `Read the Story and the Picture' and `Great Theory and Practice Allied' both of which contain five articles. The sense of unity in the first part comes from the three articles which discuss four major landscapes by Poussin in par un great detail: the London Paysage avec un homme tue and serpent, the Frankfurt Paysage avec Pyrame et Thisbe the two landscape pendants painted for Pointel: Le Temps calme from Sudeley Castle (given as being from the Art Institute of Chicago in both the Seuil and Stanford editions of the book) and L'Orage from Rouen.

Nicolas Poussin, The Arcadian Shepherds. e du Louvre, Muse Paris.

volume 7 issue 4

september 2000

bpl/aah

The Art Book

Features
colte de la However, it is the article on the Louvre Re lites, and Poussin's letter to Chantelou manne par les Israe concerning it, that establishes the intellectual territory of the first half of the book. Once Marin has made the distinction that he is dealing with a particular type of narrative painting within the Western classical tradition, he explores the implications of Poussin's `instructions' to Chantelou on how to look at/read the painting, simultaneously employing modern critical theory, especially modern ideas on linguistics and the nature of representation and the sign, while making reference to other writings by Poussin himself a remarkably articulate visual artist and by his contemporaries, in particular Le Brun and Richeome. Broadly speaking, we have to start by precisely delimiting the painting as visual space/object by adding a suitable frame to it. Then consider it with attention remembering Poussin's famous distinction between simply seeing and considering with attention, that is aspect and prospect while reading the Biblical story on which it is based. It is assumed that quite a sophisticated form of reading is intended, one that is open to the narrative structure and thematic possibilities of the story. Between these two fairly precise cognitive processes an area of meaning can emerge, stimulated by various specific details in the painting: a figure group alluding to the motif of the Caritas romana, with an admiring onlooker standing in for the spectator of the painting; and the figures of Moses and Aaron that either indicate or give thanks to God, who has provided the manna but is outside the field of representation. The unrepresentable mystic, theological, eucharistic meanings of the gathering of the manna are thus demonstrated or marvellously displayed by the painting. It is hard to convey in a short description how fascinating Marin's exposition of this mechanism of viewing and perception of meaning is how clear, rich and subtle his arguments are. It is above all his grounding in philosophy, in particular in the problems of epistemology, a major concern in modern philosophy, that makes this type of work possible. It is also perhaps a paradox that philosophers, trained to think and to think about thinking, can often be better equipped to unlock the modalities of thought or Foucault's epistemes of earlier periods than many historians, at least those that are more conventionally trained. One should add that Marin's work often has the quality of good anthropology, in that not only does it `conjure up its subject convincingly', it also enriches one's general understanding of human modalities of thought through its very detailed analysis of the modalities of thought of another world, in this case an earlier historical period. The other articles in the first part do not disappoint. There is a rather extended and very important one on par un serpent, a the London Paysage avec un homme tue painting whose subject, if there is one in the strict sense, has never convincingly been identified. In a way vi-Strauss's treatment of myth, rather redolent of Le Marin superimposes various verbal descriptions of the nelon and Fe libien, to eventually painting, mostly by Fe evolve an underlying visual grammar for it, pretty much based on structuralist principles. There is another rather extended and extremely beautiful article on the Frankfurt Paysage avec Pyrame et , where Marin to an extent reads the painting and Thisbe the story, in this case the account by Ovid. (It is worth noting that Marin's extensive experience in the structuralist and semiotic analysis of narratives was an enormous help to him when he dealt with the literary sources of paintings). He also discusses Poussin's letter to Stella describing the painting, the attempt to represent the sublime in it, and how it demonstrates aspects of Stoic philosophy, most interestingly the Stoic concept of the unity of time, where Poussin is greatly helped by the specific nature of pictorial time, at least in relation to narrative time. All this is carried out in the context of exceptionally detailed and perceptive visual observations, and a highly sophisticated approach to the nature of representation and the role of the painter and spectator. The remaining articles in the first part are one on Panofsky and Poussin, already referred to, and one on the pair of landscapes painted for Pointel: Le Temps calme and L'Orage. In this the sublime is explored in much more detail, both in landscape painting in general and in Poussin's landscapes in particular. Marin juxtaposes two very long and detailed analyses: libien of a walk at one of a `realistic' description by Fe Saint-Cloud on a fine day that was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a storm; the other of the landscape pendants painted for Pointel. The descriptions, one of which is narrative, the other pictorial, are closely interconnected Poussin's L'Orage is specifically libien's text. The combined analyses mentioned in Fe permit Marin to explore problems of representation and the sublime, the point being that the sublime is by its very nature unrepresentable in mimetic terms, which is why its representation is the ultimate challenge within an aesthetic of mimesis. Marin pursues further ideas on the sublime in the second part of the book, this time in a more general way, with no particular reference to painting. The ideas of various seventeenth-century writers are discussed, especially those of Boileau, the thinkers of Port-Royal (supplemented by Kant) and Bouhours. The sublime is now defined as that which lies beyond the confines of representation, but because of that very position, it both delimits and completes representation. In order to deal with Le Temps calme and L'Orage as a pair of contrasting landscapes, Marin introduces the concept of the schematism or schema of variation, as well as a brief reference to Poussin's theory of modes, described in his famous letter to Chantelou of 24 November, 1647. The key text for schematism, that is the use of schemata, is to be found in the first chapter of the second book of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Put briefly, a schema is an intermediate term, both intellectual and sensuous, that permits in fact it is

10

The Art Book

volume 7 issue 4

september 2000

bpl/aah

Features
the only true way of doing so the application of pure conceptions or categories to objects or the phenomenal world. Again, these ideas the schema of variation and Poussin's theory of modes are further explored in the second part of the book in an essay on Poussin's two self-portraits, the Berlin one sent to Pointel and the Louvre one chosen for Chantelou. Although the article was written some ten years before the removal of the inscription on the spine of the book in the Berlin painting, which in fact happened after Marin's death, its arguments are still perfectly valid. There is the usual subtlety of visual analysis and the application of modern linguistic theory, but there is also an immense clarity in the identification of different levels of representation, which reminds one of Genette's work on narrative. One feels, however, (mostly on the basis of his book on Philippe de Champaigne and the indications that one can draw from the outline of 1988), that had Marin lived to complete his book on Poussin there would have been a much fuller exploration of the schema of variation and Kant's ideas on the sublime, probably in combination with what Marin saw as the related ideas on language of the thinkers of PortRoyal, in particular aspects of the thought of Pascal. The result would have been a profound examination of variety and classical perfection, of mutability and stoicism, of object and pure conception in the work of the great `peintre philosophe'. The rivalry between Pointel and Chantelou and Poussin's theory of modes is also discussed in the des eaux, now in the second part. The 1647 Mo se sauve Louvre, was painted for Pointel but provoked the jealousy of Chantelou, Poussin's famous letter on the modes being the response to his jealousy. Marin explores the nature of the gaze, both between the spectator and the painting and between the figures in the painting, linking both exchanges with Stendhal's `promesse de bonheur', something one might also describe as the nature of desire in painting. (Unfortunately, both the Seuil and Stanford editions have mistakenly des eaux, also in the reproduced the 1638 Mo se sauve Louvre, rather than the Pointel version of the subject.) The remaining articles in the second part examine specific motifs in the work of Poussin: ruins and architectural fragments in one, and sleeping figures in a number of his early works, depicting scenes from Ovid or Tasso, in the other. In both cases, the examination of the individual motif gives rise to a much broader and deeper exploration of Poussin's work and of painting in general. The varying thematic le of ruins and architectural fragments is and formal ro analysed in seven religious paintings by Poussin, mostly showing Biblical scenes from the Old and New Testaments. These analyses are based on two interconnected initial premises: that the ruins represented in Poussin's paintings are a metaphorical figure standing for the abstract constructing matrix that underlies representation in Poussin, and that ruins also superimpose time past and time future since, formally, the razed ruins of an ancient building and the groundplan of a future building are the same. The sleeping figures article deals with a whole series of closely interrelated types of `metamorphosis': between sleeping and waking, between the pre-verbal and verbalisation, between pre-conscious reverie and the articulation of self. Generally speaking, one might say between desire in the body and the realm of logos. These `metamorphoses' are explored in both directions on three different levels of representation: within the paintings themselves, several of which in fact depict metamorphoses; between the representing pictorial surface and that which it represents; and between the spectator and the painting. Marin finishes with an analysis of the Louvre Echo et Narcisse via a discussion of nature morte and the painting of Chardin. One is reminded at times of the work of Kristeva. (Both the Seuil and Stanford editions have been very parsimonious about providing reproductions for these articles, both of which deal with seven paintings only one is reproduced for the ruins article and only two for the sleeping figures article.) Generally speaking, Catherine Porter's translation for the Stanford edition is of a good standard; comparison with selected passages from the French text reveal it as being extremely faithful to the original and Marin's overall arguments remain clear. (It is worth noting that this is the first time any of the articles in the Sublime Poussin have been translated into English.) There has also been an effort to make the book userfriendly for English-speaking readers: references in the original footnotes to works in languages other than English have, wherever possible, been replaced by new references to the same work in English translation. The Stanford editors have added a fairly extensive bibliography, not in the Seuil edition, again taking care, wherever possible, to give English translations of French, German, Italian or classical works. Specific problems with the reproductions have already been mentioned, but overall, in both editions, they are far too small to deal with Marin's extremely detailed visual observations. The book is virtually unreadable without access to another book on Poussin with a high quality set of plates. Sublime Poussin is an invaluable publication, even for those already familiar with the individual articles which gain enormously from being brought together. This results in an almost endless series of resonances, interconnections and fresh insights the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts. Our understanding of Poussin cannot fail to be greatly enriched and deepened by Marin's extraordinary capacity for visual observation and intellectual speculation. Nevertheless, anyone interested in any period of Western classical art should read this book, if only to see the effect of good scholarship on the visual arts. Sublime Poussin is quite simply sublime Marin.

Guy Callan, Diabelein Theatre Co.

volume 7 issue 4

september 2000

bpl/aah

The Art Book

11

Copyright of Art Book is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.