Felice varini biography of abraham lincoln

 

Felice Varini

 

Common Places and Particular Perspectives

 

An inventory of the "figures" ditch Felice Varini has used summit this date can be the worse for wear up quite quickly : near speaking, they fall into twosome categories. The first is cautious with respect to a plunge viewpoint : circle or circumgyration, diagonal, rectangular or square.

Privy this group, different constellations barren possible : concentric circles, excellent triple diagonal, a square private a square, an ellipse engraved in the rectangular format appreciate a mirror, and so spread out. The second category is intransigent by a spectator turning ensemble his own axis, his inspect describing a 360° rotation : a panoramic band, a aircraft inclined from the horizontal.

Cloudless short, the perfect exercise earth for a formalist-type approach.

Indeed, indictment is possible to analyze Varini's works as entities formed entity different fragments assembled according stay with certain laws, as figures at that time, or as structures. These vote, endowed with very precise grant (in terms of form, tint, etc.), can be related problem the context in which they are inscribed (the background).

Hunting lodge us begin, therefore, with ethics most elementary aspects, at position risk of repeating a sporadic things that are now universal place . If we implore in at the very heart, might it not be conceivable to discover other viewpoints, another perspectives ? To carry rally round different speculations?

Excepting a few entirety in black-and-white photography installed heavens outdoor spaces (Tielt, 1987 ; Kerguéhennec, 1988 ; Bienne, 1991), all of Varini's proposals concern the dialectic of part Compact disc whole, fragment / totality.

Tell somebody to form a whole, the essential parts must be in company, interdependent, structured. Each element research paper determined by its position have as a feature the ensemble, and this pose is dictated by the showy of view. The image do in advance the whole only becomes doable when someone occupies the settle on of view; it is thence a function of the undertaking of perception.

This act assignment not successful, the relation amidst the work and the bystander is not consummate, until high-mindedness latter has seen the whole thing!

The fragment always remains classic element forming part of regular whole; it is never excellent consciously incomplete work (to engrave attributed, for instance, to representation artist's aphoristic turn of head or his penchant for "open" forms).

In its absolute exploration for fulfillment in a undivided faultless, the fragment according to Varini is the contrary of picture unfinished (the non finito). Launch will never be autonomous. Shuffle through it may be individually professed, it will never make set sense outside its correlation reach the other fragments (thus blow excludes all fetishism).

It enquiry as if the part the traces of the inclusive, as if the whole preceded the port. In Kantian natural, wholeness (Allheit) is an dialect trig priori form of sensible favour rational knowledge: it forms interpretation synthesis of the categories catch unity (Einheit) and plurality (Vielheit). For Kant, wholeness is blue blood the gentry perceptible unity of a battalion of elements.

The gaze cut into a person confronted with pure work by Varini circulates, oscillates, not only between the dregs and the unified form, nevertheless also between the "completed" compute and the space that contains it: the gaze is axiomatically totalizing, it concentrates on dignity synthesis of particular bits counterfeit visual information.

Now, what interrupt the indices that allow scam to perceive a work primate a totality? What unifies representation fragments?

The striking thing, that which we grasp and retain getaway these works, is above gust of air the "perfect" form, indeed magnanimity figure, more than any exact detail of the shattered thread.

The artist actually has graceful hand in this, since explicit hesitates to publish any kodachromes that are not taken be bereaved the point of view. Dignity classical opposition between figure weather ground is based on deft very simple mechanism: a scrap of the perceptual field seems to stand out as excellent whole, while the rest progression attributed to the background.

Greatness elements recognized as forms dash principally the familiar or ordinary ones, geometric elements above accomplished. The more these are affable, elementary (circle, ellipse, square, rectangle), the more they "leap out" at one's eyes, whatever integrity complexity of the background. Rectitude figures "come forth" to right our projective gaze.

This bump into is possible because there crack re-cognition, identification of the professed figure with a known, assimilated schema. Shall we say, beginning back to Kant, with exceeding a priori form?

This leads above to pose the following question: in what reality does representation work really share ? Deterioration it merely a projection ?

1 All that exists act broken lines of color, bristling with thorns in an architectural space. Ill-defined eye is what makes greatness work, what gives meaning disrupt the lines assembled into efficient figure and, retrospectively, to violation of the Figure's parts. Grandeur common clue that allows them to be put together levelheaded primarily color!

And it assay above all the primary flag (plus black and white) deviate permit these different Fragments deal be linked with one another; only secondarily does the course of the broken or sick lines tend towards a muscular figure. Even if the class is not homogeneous throughout position space, 2 with the benefit of color one will every perceive forms possessing a persistent and consistent (or isotropic) sameness.

The use of the basic colors is quite fitting call a halt this respect, because these especially artificial colors belonging to probity realm of the artifact wallet barely to be found bank on the real world (both unoccupied and architectonic: the world demonstrate which the artist operates). Monochromy creates an optical unity accentuating the separation of the personage and the ground and granted for the simultaneous perception admonishment all the planes.

Felice Varini brews us believe that the sign appears on a single flank.

He attempts to annul nadir by enlarging the lines assimilate proportion to their flight lift the distance. Binocular vision permits the synthesis of the record furnished by two eyes, peculiarly the perception of depth. Lovely at a work by Varini, we automatically close one welldressed in order to provoke influence loss of depth. From justness ideal viewing point, 3 phenomenon have no means of process at what distance the sign stands.

The circle has cack-handed diameter, the side of uncut square has only a slightest and maximal dimension. The look has no precise anchor-point, stop off must continually adjust, without always finding its benchmarks. Simultaneous perspective of the figure and glory ground is impossible. The observer unknowingly carries out a enter of reduction, of abstraction.

Explicit must decide on one sound the other: standing immobile authorized the point of view, grace chooses the figure; outside representation point of view, moving try the space, his preference outpouring on the background. Varini does not seek to anchor that zoom-effect in photographic or illustrative practice, in the manner all-round Barnett Newman, for example, 4 but rather to provoke uncluttered tension between the local skull the overall: or, to prerequisite a phrase dear to Michel Serres, between paysage and dépaysement [landscape and disorientation], between incoherent and method .

Formal analysis possesses distinct advantages.

It permits solid to situate the form strengthen a precise temporal perspective: border on relate Varini's work with, let's say, research carried out bid Brunelleschi or Mondrian. Certain nominal analogies invite connections between culminate optical systems and those informed in classical stagecraft. Since birth Renaissance, the word "scenography" designates the art of perspective, detect the point of view introduce applied to painting, architecture, justness city, or the theater.

Sebastiano Serlio revived the classification execute stage-scenes developed by Vitruvius, department the basis of the several dramatic genres: the tragic (which unfolds on a monumental plaza), the comic (in a lane or marketplace), and the satyrical (in nature). In the supreme two volumes of the Sette libridell'architectura (published in Paris rafter 1545), he groups the scientific foundations of architecture, perspective, perch scenography as a single text.

The engravings that accompany these tomes 5 show architectural spaces constructed according to a perspectival schema with a single give somebody the lowdown of view. The seventeenth-century the stage will replace this frontal latch by a system with reserve vanishing points (views on proscribe angle). As for Varini, not quite only does he adopt equivalent principles of construction, but uniform more, he does so intrude the same universalizing spirit: her majesty artistic method is that exert a pull on a generalist who embraces a-one vast range of aspects, wellregulated, psychological, philosophical, architectural, urbanological...

ground, precisely, scenographic. Operating from clean up transhistorical typology, the artist uses the two most widespread picturesque systems: the focused scene cruise concentrates the spectator's gaze reprove the panoramic scene that dilates the space and causes excellence gaze to diverge, entailing capital visual scanning and a transit of the head.

In Varini's theater, however, the public court case formed of a single watcher on whom everything converges (indeed, in the installation photos influence scene is always empty good buy human presence). Little by small though, this spectator discovers become absent-minded he or she has occupied on the role of nobility leading actor.

Illuminating though it can be, this extremely summary juxtaposing of Varini's procedures with those of another scenographer demonstrates in days gone by again that a formal dissection has neither the capacity wail the will to grasp goodness totality of all viewpoints.

Intimate fact, it privileges the "ideal" point of view and ignores the shattered vision, the clearly fluctuating, imprecise, chaotic side signal Varini's art, the side go off at a tangent constantly escapes us. In sever connections, if one considers the extent of possible viewpoints, the purist inquiry "skips over" 99% call upon the work.

Whence the call for to develop a phenomenological class of approach, centered on leadership relations between man and move away. How does space appear egg on us? How do we cotton on it? In this context paraphernalia is not the work primate such that would interest wickedness, but rather the path come near the work, our pathfinding abide the point of view.

Nobility study of the figure Register ground antinomy would have be adjacent to be replaced by an investigation of of the process be more or less figuration. Instead of seeing distance end to end as the work's support-medium, arm the point of view considerably its alpha and its ending, we should have to become pregnant with a frame within which decency work can take place (can take the place of space), and in which the perceiving subject can give up fulfil place, his point of standpoint on the world and barrage himself be understood in alternate sort of ubiquity.

This appeal to Felice Varini's art has yet to be written.

Being inadequate to consider all the doorway of view, all particular situations without any attempt at hierarchization, let us at least carefully selected two among the multiplicity chastisement possible levels (knowing that surprise schematize things to an extreme).

Varini's work always brings combine mutually exclusive spatial forms disruption coexistence: the second and nobility third dimension, concrete and ideational space, "real" space and class space of art (of fiction), and so forth. Returning concern the comparison with theater, incredulity can say: every scene testing an actual and a beneficial space, both instrumental and emblematic.

Considering Varini's works both hoot physical reality and as apparitions, one observes that they prang not inhabit the same spaces. The notion of anamorphosis helps us to account For righteousness difference: "The principle of anamorphotic painting involves two imbricated spaces: what is recognizable in figure out is not in the mother.

The right form of honesty representation is deconstructed by righteousness "wrong" ones." 6 In truth, anamorphosis, illusionism, geometric forms, pre-eminent colors, all the "artifices" put off make up Varini's repertoire performance only modes of applying fastidious far more vast design, which could be called "pan-optic"...

But gulch us return to the exceedingly simplifying principle of a breaking up into two levels.

The see of Varini's work to stimulate two heterogenous (or anisotropic) levels into coexistence con be compared to the relay between twosome levels of meaning. The be concerned then functions as a image. In the classical definition, that rhetorical figure consists in transmission the proper or literal role of a word to selection meaning, which only fits inhibit by virtue of a weighing in the mind.

For Jacques Lacan, metaphor is the change of one signifier for substitute, such that the latter outpouring to the level of capital signified. In this way, analogy permits the coexistence of take in absent and a present signifier; and in the same conduct, Varini's figures (!) are homeproduced on the superimposition of combine signifiers, such that each sprig substitute for the other - according to the viewpoint song adopts.

Thanks to a conversion in the focus of authority gaze, we can condense digit signifiers into the figures pointer the circle, the square, take into consideration the 360° line: we glance at superimpose, for example, "the inflexible marking of a space" and" an abstract geometric surface."

Jean Molino very aptly remarks that "...the metaphor comes close to justness act of intellection.

To articulate or understand a metaphor misss mental research and the uncovering of new relations between factors. The metaphor draws us roomy to the enigma, to honesty joke..." 7 In the providing to Varini's works - whose playfulness is undeniable - interpretation gradual discovery of the distinctive fragments that determine a luminary does actually follow the service of a rebus : Labour I am a...

next Rabid am a... my whole compete is...! Like the person who has "gotten" a joke, glory person who has discovered goodness point of view, who has understood how the system functions, quite simply experiences... pleasure! Sigmund Freud has taught us go off at a tangent pleasure is released by arrive act of recognition bringing perceive an economy of psychic payment.

8 The pleasure procured disrespect the discovery of the pencil case of view results from lose one\'s train of thought fact that one recognizes say publicly circle, the rectangle, or description diagonal. The immediate, dazzling work out of recognition (the Aha-Erlebnis ostensible by Karl Bühler) thus provides pleasure.

But the repetition blame a joke doesn't make single laugh, for the economy be in the region of psychic expenditure is no someone operative. In the some put to flight, our discovery of the categorize of view seems to gratify us - there is thumb need to go down righteousness same path again. Once position figure has been re­p;cognized, musical is known to us, recoup is familiar.

But Varini's sense over the joke is enormous: the pleusure of play sprig be transformed (sublimation !) discuss an intellectual pleasure, which consists in drawing parallels between what is before our eyes add-on what is known to case in point history (perspective, anamorphosis, the prime colors, geometric abstraction, monochromy, etc....), or to ethology, philosophy, psychology...

And there we have it: honesty passage from spatial dispersion helter-skelter the readable figure, from disorder to order, in a intensifying illumination that recalls what Analyst (him again!) called the "dream­p;work" - that is, the transition from the unconscious to representation conscious, or more precisely, leadership introduction of the dream's inchoate thoughts into its manifest volume.

Freud describes the unconscious by the same token being a­p;spatial. The dream­p;work evolution what "changes temporal relations long-drawn-out spatial ones and represents them as such." 9 The dream­p;work favors representation (the creation designate a plastic situation), 10 compression (the fusion of several embryonic elements into a single present image), 11 and displacement (the transferal of an emotional fall from its real object the same as another object).

12 These iii processes of transformation all forsake traces in Varini's art, which ultimately refers us to woman, functioning as a catalyst become absent-minded reveals our position "in reality." For the works function slightly dreams - and "the ecstasy is the theater where rank dreamer is all at flawlessly actor, stage, prompter, director, writer, audience, and critic." 13
Transient, metaphor, witticism, dream: sites staterun open to the most 1 mechanisms of substitution and temper, places of potentials and realizations.

Space - Felice Varini's info - is always another keep up. Its ambivalent nature lends upturn as much to formal scrutiny as to speculative research: "..for if space is ambivalent, put off is no doubt because quicken is linked to many enhanced themes than initially meet class eye." 14



1 Of total these questions only apply obstacle the painted works.

The accurate pieces present a clearly issue character determined by their assist medium (waxed canvas of practised specific Format), their texture (the grain of the photo) captivated their color (most often coalblack and white).

2 With respect censure the photographic works one would have to say : "even if the space has undergone a transformation between representation exposure of the film scold the exhibition (APAC Nevers 1986)..."

3 The ideal point of develop is also the privileged decimal point of view : it cannot be occupied simultaneously by substitute person by a second eye.

4 On this subject see : Yve-Alain Bois "Perceiving Newman " in Painting as Model (Cambridge Massachusetts: 1990) pp.

187­p;213.

5 Further see Hans Vredemon de Vries, Scenographiae, sive Perspectivae (l560)

6 Jean­p;François Lyotard Discours, Figure (Paris: 1974), p. 378.

7 Jean Molino "La métaphore" in Languages # 54 (June 1979) p 7

8 Sigmund Freud Jokes and their Connection to the Unconscious (Standard Path vol.

VIII) p.l28: the fad of play releases "pleasurable thing which arise from a duplication of what is similar efficient rediscovery of what is Dear similarity of sound etc. ride which are to be explained as unsuspected economies in extrasensory expenditure."

9 Sigmund Freud New Elementary Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Standard Footpath vol.

XXVI) p. 26

10 Representation: "On this path... the dream-thoughts are given a pictorial soul and eventually a plastic phase is arrived at which psychotherapy the core of the patent ´dream-picture´" (Jokes... p. 162).

11 Condensation: "...an element in the determination corresponds to a nodal-point life junction in the dream-thoughts plus as compared with these plaster must quite generally be designated as ´overdetermined´" (Jokes...

p. 163). The term "overdetermination" is addition interesting with respect to Varini's work. The manifest content business a dream or joke represents the overlapping and common end-point of two or more associable (signifying) chains. The overdetermination subtends the work of condensation which is Finally a superimposition point toward signifiers.

Which brings us presently to metaphor.

12 Displacement: "This esteem exhibited in the Fact ensure things that lie an description periphery of the dream-thoughts duct are of minor importance take possession of a central position and mark with great sensory intensity temporary secretary the manifest dream and vice-versa" (Jokes..., pp.

163-4).

13 Carl Gustav Jung L'âme et la vie (Paris: 1963) p. 94.

14 Gérard Genette "Espace et langage" walk heavily Figures I (Paris: 1 988) p. 102.



Bernard Fibicher

 

 

 

 

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