the last modern painting

8/12/2019 The Last Modern Painting

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-last-modern-painting 1/11



The Last Modern Painting

NICOLASFLYNN

7: :.. .? . .

rS~'' *Es

'I ?; ??? :'::: : .': .. .:: . .

..S

.i

;:

; ,

s' :,.i:,: . :::::. . .....:. .......... .......,. , ,L

Fig. 1. J. W. M. Turner, 'Sunnse with Sea Monsters' c.1845, oil on canvas.90 x 120 cm. Tate Gallery,London.

(Photograph:Tate Gallery.)

On such limits and at the limit one could say that there isno unconscious,which is elaborated when representationand affects whetheror not tied to representations) hape a

logic. Here, on the contrary, consciousness has notassumed its rights and transformedinto signifiersthosefluid demarcationsof yet unstable territorieswhere an 'I'thatis taking shapeis ceaselessly straying.We are no longerwithin the sphere of the unconscious but at the limit of

primal repression that, nevertheless, has discovered an

intrinsically orporealand already signifyingbrand, symp-tom, and sign: repugnance,disgust, abjection.There is aneffervescenceof object and sign - not of desire but ofintolerable ignificance; hey tumble overinto non-sense or

the impossible real, but they appear even so in spite of

'myself (whichis not) as abjection.Kristeva,Powers f Horror

I

Incomplete and underwhelming affect, poisedbetween the dreaming beauties of liquid colour and

the compelling horror of eyes that never close. Look-

ing, and looking in, and looking back: through a

lifetime, through an oeuvre, and through a history- this ruin is the remainder of the universal moment

in the speaking being's confirmation, it is the trace of

Turner's lifetime's question, of his vortical signature,and, in turn, it is our murmuring residue, the

remainder of our modernity (Fig. 1). If, that is, all of

these are conceived of as being adventures in the

forming of the formless, in turning the priority of

seeing into the semblance of one final archaism -

THE OXFORDARTJOURNAL 20:2 1997

:--.?a;pcc ilr-r:ygip,,, qk""isiXSF1EI*:II P"V?-' ?-?ii*rf; ZILIS ??EsF Cll7DI ?f?t:IC?i'??1 u I?? r? *? "?i ":

??L''iI? .:.1.

,,..

-ct;t

I .S#; V

*- l

;tf..IfI

13

This content downloaded from 182.178.239.129 on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 02:55:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp





into naming. For naming, it seems, heals the wound

at the heart of seeing, where seeing again becomes

silent, and trembling,and dissolvesin the warm soft

splendourof the whole of the thing. But from here,from our condition, this naming needs be thus

worthless and parlous, and rhyming because so

frighteningbecause so fragile.Its final meaning will

be a transcribedradiancethat in vision is lined withrepugnance- a verbo/visual aetiology of this, our

awakeningsadness.1A flawedself-sufficiencywhose image drifts,there,

in thisglassofthe moder. The traceof a beingwhose

make-upand whose decompositionhappenaboutthe

moder's own tendentious finding of tenuous self-

composurein the reflectionof naming in seeing. On

thattightlystretchedcanvas, ighthas been drawnout

into the sign of the process of being as general

dispersal,being seen turning between a vision of a

self and its name. Although not a sign at all, strictly

speaking,but the sign of a sign - of significance-

that is, where the splittingof the sign's inner compo-sure gives in to the illusion of its being transcended.

And in the light of modernity, in an historiographythat is bound into the moder's own self-composure,the idea of a dispersedsubject is a nonsense - it is

obscene- becauseit namesthe obscenityfromwhich

Modernismis the flight and meditates then on the

visionof the wound it would feign fly from.

Just as the very preciousness of the modern's

vauntedautonomy s the signof the seamlesscertitude

of its surfaces of dependence; just as its burning

surface is the waste of the imploding mass at its

white-holeheart;

so does this fragile perspective

open onto the spectacle, significant exactly in the

measure of your complacency, of the possibility of

its non-being, sublime and complete. This pathetic

closure,like being at your own funeral,is an abiding

and affectiveand peculiarly modern fantasy - the

modernas mourning (Barthessawthis) - a continu-

ous life-in-death of the sign; the promise of an

absolutionof sortsthathas hauntedwith melancholic

splendour the semiotic disenchantment of the

modern; has murmured its nonsense - beguiling,

enthralling,mpenetrable wavesof smokeandlight,

a lover'ssleepingdiscourse, ikethe pointlessmusic of

her breath: nsignificantand impossiblyreal.

Somewhere n the modem, in being subject to its

peculiararrangementofwordsand pictures, s a silent

spectaclewhich maybe only now can our language

make seen; is a silence now where, then, the signs of

light, and space, and utter surface encircled and

enraptured he steel of words and positioned them-

selves as the provisional lluminatorsof the limits of

their representativecompetence. In other words, a

semiotic disposition which is quite specific to this

moment, which illumines the space between the

visible and the effable here, in Sunrisewith SeaMonsters

as well as across the range of Turner's incomplete

series of land and sea scapes from the 1840s.2Herebecause the relationsthat come to light belong to a

psychic profileand dynamics that are universal,but

also here because this particulardispositionof words

and picturesestablisheswhatbecomes a model of the

birth and death of signs acrossthe discursive rame-

workof the moder. Or, possibly,because here theyareclearestand mostbright,or,here is the momentof

originalcrisisfromwhichwe have been flying,toward

which modernity seems to have been but a dreary

retreatand return.Here is narcissisticcrisisrevealedin the silence of images and here the compromisedsalvationof the continuous sign. Here is the babble

that staves off the silence - here - the noise that

keeps all signs afloat.3

Modernity is visible here, through this model, in

these paintings,as a successionof progressivelynfee-

bling attemptsto give a name to and, conversely, o

have seeing suture the wound that is reopenedwith

everytriumphantrenaming.Modernityexpendsitself

in the act of renaming tself(it has, oddly, prided tself

on its successivefailuresof naming, its cavalcadeof

'isms'). And in this schema painting illumines the

limitsofthe representable nd asksofus thatwe namethe unnameable.In this paintingit asks us to name

that which is appearing from the evaporationof

language through colour onto the steely surfaceof

the seen. The painting's operations of naming and

seeing, which mimic a primal necessity, return the

compulsionthatis revealed n lookingtoward he first

knotting of horror and beauty whose own arcane,

internalpoise then forcesthe question posed by the

paintingback againto the spectacleof the wasteand

the necessityof the word and the image, backto the

first opening onto our original crisis and our final

silence, back, towards wasted, fallen pictures. The

dissymmetryof painting and language establishtheaestheticsceneofmodernbeing, andthe moder then

is like seeing the sunshine,it is ajoyous impossibilitylined preposterouslywith its own posteriority: am I,

the subjectis the object,the painting- nearly.

A yellowblaze of memorial oy or traceof mnemo-

nic tracery.And, a windowonto the scene of our fatal

exposure o thisburning,bleachinglight.And, best,a

mirrorbearing,there, the image of an ironicsaviour.

And, better, ust a painting.

II

It is a painting that poses oblique but profound

questions about the time and space of seeing and

the formof these questionswill be its finalmeaning.

But how to ask of it the questionsit asks:throughits

content, by its forms, through its colours, by its

relationto a paradigm,by its verystatusas a finished

artwork?And how to account for its sign of mind or

self: how does it position all of its lack; how are its

questionsrephrased n the lookingforthem, its work

in refulgentmemory set against the dimmer contri-

vance of its signs?I mean, think about the painting.

Have youseen it? Rememberit,

please.It is a thingwhose completebeing surfacesonly in

the fluidand redoundingexpanseof memory; t is an

THEOXFORDRT OURNAL 20:2 1997

14







afterglow,a splendidburningember,one possessedof

the confoundingtropicmesmerismof a mock sun: a

pictureof the parhelion.It is a paintingwhich works

by and through its own absence, which is brightestwhen recollected;a disappointment,even, when youstandbefore it (in the Clore Gallery,I mean), forit is

only a painting,and a duller one than the memoryit

always ignites.The fullness of it

is,in

effect,its

eventualeffect over time, and its affectis assembledin the memorial traces which are the shards of the

pleasureof a fullerpresencethatyou, in seeingit, giveto it. Because by shocking and fond remembrance t

glowsbrighter,and it is always threatening o dissolvefromgreento red to the blazingwhite-yellowgroundon whichit is composed,and to fade fromtherefinallyinto an emptier,whiterspace,into superabundantbutintolerablesignificance.

The flaming red of it though, solidifies from the

picture'sburningand becomes seared onto the retina.Its redness marks the furthest of its reaches, is the

beacon at the nearestpoint to forgetting, o losingtheimagein the sensatediffusionof the afterthought.Andthe red is also its most immediatepresence,the onlyreal content in the thing. Red saves it from oblivion,fromdisappearingnto colour,into a red afterglow,by

tracingthose eyes whose hard red stare recomposesmemory's ambling suffusion,salvagingsomething of

meaning, or mooring, though hardly. The eyes are

always appearing, they never appear (they cannot

appear,they belong to a mythic thing), they are whythe paintingworksover time. If it has a form,one true

form,then this is it: the appearingand disappearingofa field of vision.

But, beyond vision, still some uncanny presenceisdriftingthere in the silence waiting to be known. In

memory,lookback,beforethe painting,look in, once

in, look around- but it'salwaysand onlytheseeyes I

see, see them seeing me. But because the time of the

paintingcannot and can never be the time of the look

you give to it; because the eyes that look back from

thiswindow(atthe pointthe windowis a mirror) ora

moment look back after I have looked; because it

followsme; because the time of being and the time of

representationare not isometric - so is desire dis-

embodied in looking-

paraphrasing Lacan - rou see

that monster?Do you see it? Well it seesyou The other

Lacaniantruismapplies:the look thatyou giveto the

paintingis met and crossedby the gaze which lies inthe field of the Other,etc.... or, better:in lookingatthe thing, the Thing looks back. It sees us seeing the

scopic drive's constitution of lack in the painting'slooking,in its mute (maternal)power,in its hailingus

irresistiblyback.4It documents, then, the firstappearanceof seeing,

the firstmeeting of eyes, and all in the face of such

fading, and flashing and then melting - on theborderlinesof our imprinting into lack and desire.This vision's corporeality sees the failures driven

deepinto the heart of

language,it sees the uncon-

sciousnessof the desire in naming, it gropesbeyondthe painting's ack of physicalbearingsand temporal

predication,beyond spatial descriptionand beneath

words. It is a challenge to reading - desire instan-

tiated.These words by which we give to it an identity,

'Sunrisewith Sea Monsters',are the easiest to erase,

beingtwopartsof a questionrather hana description.Then from here to knowingthe thing as the painter

might faintlyhave knownit: as

sun,as

sea,as oil and

as pigment and as somethinghalf-seen,half-named,that seems to be wanting to be something besidesitself. Both place and time and the stare of the

monsters, the painting's disconcerted seeing,approach he pointof evaporation,pigmentsignifyinga time and medium a place,but onlyjust. Whichis toreiterate he dynamicof it, its fascination,poisedtherebetweenthing and nothing, significanceand its obliv-ion. It is the partial perfectionof the heliotrope (onlybecause perfect parheliotropes far too imperfect),bywhich I mean the realizationof the real(theresidue ofthe unsignifiable) n metaphor,or, conversely,meta-

phor'slightness (the way it escapesthe real).But this unreality s also the relentlessweightof it,its heavy-hearted disaffection and melancholic

remainder, there, in the temporarinessof its perfec-tion, in the wellspringof its strangeand despairingnew beauty. It is beauty itself seen in the jubilatoryflash forcedfrombetweenthe obscenityof non-mean-

ing - of monstereyes - and the yellowof a sunshinewhich sublimatesnearnon-meaningbacktowards he

ecstasy in vanishing. An undecidable predicate for

figuration loatingbeforenothing- before silence -

on the border hat skirts he unsayable hatis yetblackand unformed (which will be abjection when it

becomes known). This is where words (where mywords) have gone in the image

- to the task of

attestingto the gorgeous horror of the power of the

primaryemptiness,of the still silentarchitecture fthe

primal scene.5 Around the rudimentaryarmatureofthe sign, in the asserted differencebetweenthingand

nothing - a differenceerased in the mirror of the

Thing's forming,here in the painting- in this is themimesis and the memory,both glowingand deathly,of primal repression.

It is a gridof being onto which the painterdrawsaline aroundseeing, and diffused nto othersby whichthese words and that picture establishtheir play of

difference, tsvision authenticatesa historicityo beingwhich is the moder. And it is not a self-sufficiency,rather,that particularly emblant image of authenti-

city to desire is its permanent crisis, its prodigaldispersal and scattered polyvalence. It is a beingwhose self-imageis founded in the beauty of seeingand forgetting he serialityof sayingthatI am, indeed,I - It is an aesthetic- and seeing being thus is the

painting'sfirstand finalmeaning.

III

The thing that is searchingto be seen, the eyes andthe mouth, the awfulred seared ontothe solderingof

THE OXFORDARTJOURNAL 20:2 1997 15







blue into white and gold, still calls for and insists

upon being named, and then these same still ask to

be placed:if these are indeed sea monstersthen theyshould be somewhere. But the painting resists any

simple placement,and the title we give to it is alwaysa question, and only as such, and ironically, is it

representativeof its content and form which is this

very question, this problematicresidue of figurationwhich necessitates our abandonment of the cus-

tomaryidentitiesof the seeing and the seen. A time

of day and a species of creatureto be named only by

way of their relationof differencewithin a paradigm

(Turner n the 1840s)which is itselfslidingawayfrom

difference the paintingsof the 1840sarebeginningto

look all the same), exactlythrough the evacuationof

the subject matterwhich gives hope to our impulsehere towardconsigning,even if fallaciously, he thingto a name.

Gurnards,dolphins, ohn-dorys;these all appear n

his paintingsat this time - the 'Whalers' ketchbook,

for instance, is full of fish and stuff that reveals afascinationfor the grotesque in natural history, for

seeing science border mythology and horror - so

what is it here thatwe see?One fish head clearlyand

one less clear, and a great red hole or form . . . a

mouth? But then, this is the stupefying trick the

picturealways plays, it points the other way and we

see it as the two eyes of a single and grotesquethingwith the gash beneath now most definitelya gapingmouth. Then the mouth of the fish on the right

reasserts tself with a curious smile and the illusion

which faces left, that of the single monster head, is

revealedto bejust

aplayful

illusion, but one with a

disquietingeffectwhich lingersin the common-sense

visionthat supplantsit. So next we wonderjust why

we believed for a moment the absurd conceit our

mindsjust entertained.But the bathoswhich answers

loosensits gripin the time of the picture,and the eye

moves on. Other forms, a fin, some scales or some

netting, are scattered around the centre and seem

momentarilyas if theymightcomposethesefragmentsinto a picture- they promisea minimum of intellig-

ibility, but, their being fragmented,they eventually

confuseas much as they areable to confirma sense of

time and place. And then we see the big, single

monsterface again, it echoes, a mental kink thatwe

now realizethatwe cannotunsee - like ajoke thatis

so bad you cannot forgetit - we know it cannot be

thatbutwe see it, it callsus back.And thenwe wonder

if the paintersaw it, left it like that, half-formed,an

ungainly witticism, or an accidental discovery, the

unwilledand unlikelyslippageof innocentor uncon-

scious form into corrupted insubjection, a thing

hideous and vulgaramidst all of the glowingpathos.

Or did he not notice?But then can the unconscious

forcethrough ts censorssomethingso unlikelyand so

ugly? No ... no, I can see the two shapes again ...

again it becomes intelligible. These are a pair of

Gurnardslike the little watercolourin Manchester,like the large one that Ruskin kept, the one now in

Boston, ... there ... I can see them. But wasn't there

something monstrous about them even? Didn't he

make them eat fleshin the foregroundof the Slave-ship

painting?Is that the mouth of one monster.. .?

The ambiguity of these forms is an effect of the

uncertainscale of whatever he objectis in its relation

to the space of the painting,a space which is corres-

pondingly ambiguous. The series of paintings to

which this one belongs, the three by four footers ofthe 1840s,see Turnerplayingwith differentdegreesof

dissimulationof the relationsof formand space, and

in that series, whateveris the object - a wreck, a

buoy, a dolphin, a town - it is always delicatelybalanced at the edge of the visible, in mists of paint,

confounding common-sense seeing. If we see this

painting as a panoramic seascape and adjust our

perceptionof the scale of the sea monsters accord-

ingly, then the whole thing becomes ludicrous.Then

if we see the fish as fish-sizedand the scene to match

then the space of the paintingwith its dramaand its

coloured-connotedtranscendencebecomes absurdly

grandiose, and the forms that are there mock itsaspiration, the pathos of it all humiliated by the

fishmongeryof the foreground.Is it really sunrise, or are both the time and the

place yet more of the picture's disinformation?Are

these the meltingof the marginsof eitherends of the

day into one golden hinterworld,and all arranged

before a scene that is neither land nor sea, nor light

nor colour:the undecidable ocus of lateTurner?Has

time and place in the paintingbecome self-sufficient,

has Turner'spainting of the 1840sbecome a purelyself and retrospective xercise;is it a seriesof capric-cios assembledfroma privaterepertorium, timeand

place of self-reference?And, included in that world,do not these formlesscoloursbeg eventhe questionof

time and place itself - are not paint and colourby

now independentof them, and the designation Sun-

rise', like 'Sea Monsters',redundant?The sun is set

somewhere low and to the right, in the east of the

picture, in a sense, and against the colder blues of

sunrise.Butthe picturesmovements, ts slidingranges

of colour,allowsas easilythe yellow/red to appear o

be dominant.Neitherpredominates red and yellow

arealwaysbeing overturnedby passagesof violetand

blue which fade fromthereinto the intermixtureand

chromaticstasis,the retinalsuspensionof puregreen,

which is everywhere,a fine nettingaroundthe whole.

And all of this irresolutionof content and form,this

awakened anxiety, is soothed and placated by the

contragredient low of the sheer bright beauty that

springsfromthe same palette.But still the eyes and the mouth do signify,and

stronglyso. And they do so by conductingus to the

formof the questionthat is this significance,but still,

how to talkof the painting?Maybe the contextis the

entireshapeofTurner's ife'swork,maybeit is visible

through the vortex, which lingers into this work, a

crumbled sign, a limit. In the painter'swork of the

1830sthebordersof sea and land, of skyand air,and

of paint and illusion, were confounded and erased

throughthe powerof the opticpush and pull dictated


16







the word and image effect of the purposelesspurpo-siveness of drive,the beginningsand the endings of a

moder subject'saestheticself-discovery, een in the

erasure of subject matter. Not simply by way of

coloured, diffuse things and phenomena- in

clouds, spray, mists, and sunshine, the subject's

analogue seen on or in the painting's area - but

simply colour, colour in its own orbit, a mimicryofsubjectmatter,a deft consubstantiation.Simple and

perfectly circular, yellow returns to yellow, blue

echoes blue, red answersred; colour relationsmove

and arrestthe work of the painting, sublimatingthe

inquisitionoverwhich its circlingeye is cast.

IV

Maybeit is colour,then, thatfinallyasksthe question.

Maybe colour, which seems most able to escape

figuration,analogizesbest the painting's disfiguring

question.And thisbecausebeneaththe softlogicof itscolourslies Turner'sfascinationwith the hardmock-

empiricismof Goethe. Maybe in colour is rationalityboth imposedandthen blendedawayin the gestureof

the painter. Does a new, and almost exclusivelycolour-codedsystematicitysupplant the perspectivalillusionismand narrativityhat the workof the 1830s

had begun to effaceand erase?Or is it that the new

systematicity,n the momentof its execution,strives o

be asystemic - colour caressing its objects and

obscuring the clarity of vision, then moving on,

avoidingits referent,and seen in the fleetingtime of

being, atopicand

opaque?Here, it seems, the power

of theory alone might approach adequacy to the

dispersalenactedin the painting.The transpositionof Goethe's colour theory that

Turner effects in the painting is, however, far from

literal, and the picture works, in part, to correct

failureswhich, the painter'sannotationsto his own

copy of Goethe suggest, persist within the theory.

Goethe,we know, is symptomaticof the subjectifica-tion of vision in the early 19th century, his subjecti-

vismandempiricismpartofthe largerepistemologicalshift of the earlymoder in which classicism'soptic

paradigms displacedby the modern's nvestigationof

the perceptual contingencies of the physiologyand

psychologyof seeing.6But, whilst colour is the primary medium of

moder vision, dismantling he outside/inside distinc-

tion in the classicaleye, thereis a blindnessin colour

theoryto the inversion hatit performs n its dissection

of the cold, external eye of Renaissance space or

Cartesianlogic; a colour blindness, in fact, which

lies in the presumptionto be able to name colour

itself. Naming perception, Goethe only internalizes

the subject/object problematic with a theory that

Turner's practice, transformingempiricism into a

poeticsof science,wantsto demolish.Inscribingnine-

teenth century subjectivism between the mutuallyexclusivemasterdiscoursesof science and mysticism,

GoetheinstantiatesFoucault's empirico-transcenden-

tal doublet' beautifully; his subject is subject and

object of the knowledgein the new chromatography,and he is but the Kant of colour.Colourmight erase

the subject, Turner, in effect, says, but not if, as an

object,the wherewithalof the erasurecan be said.

Hence his fascinationwith the theory of colours,and hence the work of colour here - defining the

painting'squestion as being the means of Goethe'snegation. The painting is involved in Turner's con-

tinuous,practicalcritique, n the work of the 1840s,of

Goetheand of science, in his distrustof theirground-less validations,or rather,of theirclaim to be able to

renderhis own as knowledge,to explainthe undecid-

able provinceof the painterwhosejob is preciselyto

play in the space between vision and words that the

theoristcannot theorize.Exactlywhere Turner posi-tions his work alongside both science and languagebecomesvisibleif it can be picturedas beginningwith

a framework ike this one from Goethe's Theory f

Colours:

Consideredna general ointofview,coloursdetermined

towards neoftwosides.It thuspresents contrastwhich

we calla polarity,ndwhichwemayfitlydesignate ythe

expressionplusand minus.

Plus.Yellow.Action.

Light.Brightness.

Force.Warmth.

Proximity.

Repulsion.

Minus.Blue.

Negation.Shadow.Darkness.Weakness.Coldness.Distance.Attraction.

If thesespecific, ontrasted rinciples recombined,he

respectiveualities onotthereforeestroy achother:or

if in this intermixturehe ingredientsare so perfectlybalanced hat neither s to be distinctly ecognized,he

unionagainacquires specific haracter;t appears s a

qualityby itself n whichwe no longer hinkof combina-

tion.Theunionwecallgreen.

Blueandyellowdonotadmitofincreasedntensity ithout

presentlyxhibiting newappearancen additiono their

own. Each colour, in its lighteststate, is a dark;if

condensed t must become darker,but this effectno

sooner akesplacethanthe hue assumesan appearance

which we designateby the word reddish . . . A powerfulimpressionflight eaveshesensation fredontheretina.

Intheprismaticellow-red hichsprings irectlyrom he

yellow,we hardly ecognizeheyellow.

This deepeningakesplaceagainby meansof colourless

semi-transparentediums ndhereweseetheeffectn its

utmostpurityandextent.7

Goethe's vision is, at first sight, remarkably ympa-

theticto specificaspectsof the picture.But a working

knowledgeof the potential of colour to instantiatea

dynamicplayof oppositeshas been the degreezeroof

thevery

act ofpainting

forthe durationof the artist's

career.And that the painting is and must be more

than the theory arises from Turner's ultimate insis-


18







tence on the absolute priority and contingent flex-

ibility of vision as limit to epistemology. So, whilstboth elaborate a discourse on colour, they mean

somethingdifferent,even if Turner, naively,is awareof the distinction only in the performance of the

painting.The tension which animates the gesturalapplica-

tion of colourtheory

accounts for the form that the

painting takes against the grid of theory's word. In

bending it round and around again towards theineffable in seeing, in penetrating theory's pristinespace with those ruddy, corpulent eyes, the painterhas circumventedtheory's control and has made a

paintingof modernvision alongsideone of its dissim-ulation. The dynamics of the vortex, the core of the

compulsion in Turner, is transferred o an image of

optic/vortical power, to a visualization of energy, of

optic driving,between colour and colour, fromleft to

right,roundand around,to a spectaclethat leaves its

subjectagape.Finallyspeechless,its questionsunspo-

ken, unpresentablesave as pure seeing, it answers,then, in seeing seeing as being the recourse for the

wounded, purblind, modern thing's being. And itanswers like this with an image which dissects andthen reconstitutes he innocence of the eye.

The left side ofthe picture s made from the coloursand patina of an old-masterish chiaroscuro, fromochres and dirtywhite. These are blended forjust amoment and then sent into the prism of the whitecentre and then out to the right margin where the

palette s revealed n a displayofpurecolour,fromtopto bottom: blue, yellow and then red. The shock ofthis initialjuxtapositionis soothed by the modulated

glow of the cloudy white horizontal axis. Yellow ismixed into the white ground in a slow smearingthatleavespurewhite most in evidence to the leftallowingthatyellowto dominate the right.The whiter left sidecontains the same series of admixtures as the right,from the top again:blue then yellow then red. But atthe left they are chilled and thinned into a ghostlyvariant of the vibrantright, the top left-handcorner

beingthe coldestpartof the painting.Alongthe left to

right axes these colour relationsconfound or reversethemselvesand redirectthe movement of the reader's

eye. The comfortablefamiliarityof the left's earthytonalitywelcomes that eye for a moment, but at the

sametime the immediate shockof pure colour shoutsfor attentionon the right,pushingthe tones of the leftback.Meanwhile,the cold blue in the topmostcornerof the pageandthe cold and distant eft side in generalhas its priorityusurpedby the vibrant warmth of the

right.A similar dynamic articulates the diagonal axes

which bind and stretch together the painting's fourcorners. The cold blue upper left runs down to the

deepred lowerrightwhere that shadeprogresseson to

purple and the merest hint of pure blue again. Thelower eftandthe upperrightare tied by theirworkingof

greenand

yellow,at the left,downfromblue, at the

right,towards he pureblue of the corner.The crux ofthe diagonalsties their variousoperations nto a knot

that is made from the combination of chromaticthreads from the extreme of either corer into that

palette-like swirl nestled above the sea monsters.

There, a whitish lavender and red echoes the leftand right corers, whilst the tan and yellow connectthe brownishgreen of the lower left to the greenishyellow of the upper right. These axes, once seen,

suggestthe faint

presenceof a structurebeneath the

mists, a crooked-limbedX, as if the painter,despitethe spatialand chromatic reedomsof the work,couldnot resist the impulse to tie the form as well as theeffect to the steel of his vortex. But that which

submerges this trace of structure also carries thevortical emphasis forward, the more compellinglybecause the more unseen, and folds the corers ofthe workin towardthe centre, oining and competingwith the meeting of the uprights, roundingthem intothe shape of seeing.

The finalfoldingaxis,that which bindsthe top andbottom of the picture, s realizedthrougha mirroring,

not, in this instance,of adjacentor opposite pointsonthe colourwheel, but of varied ntensitiesof the sametones. A pale green above,nestled on the melding ofthe white/blue and the white/yellow of the upperreaches,is reflected n the intense green sheen of thelower portion, glowing through the red and the

purple, like oxidized copper. This mirroring s most

pronounced at the middle of the painting, and thecolourof it is then refractedout into its constituentsatthe edges, left and right,where it joins the prismaticseparationwhich articulates he painting'sother struc-tures and where, consequently,the circlingand turn-

ing of the wheel begins again.

You could cut a strip from the right edge of thepictureandjoin the ends to formthe colour circle:red,

yellow, greenand blue betweenthe purpleswhich are

present n flecksat both ends. If this one circle can be

imaginedto mimic,for a moment,the illusorystillness

produced by the imperceptiblyrapid turnings of awheel or, better,of a gyroscope,then the effectof thework of the colour n the painting s visible.It allworksto fold in the corners and sides into a myriad of

imperceptiblecircles, around the arcs of a sphere,moldingit into the shapeof the eye, into the circuitof

sight.A sphere,and a sphere (the eye in the painting)within a sphere- the eye amidst the myriadpointsit

sees within its orbit,that spherethat is the limit of theeye's perception - the two fused by the infinitevibrationsof colour in the moment of seeing, in thesame way that the subjectof vision is the fusion of avisionof, and a dispersal nto, the sight of the limit ofitself.

Again, he has made it work like this: across the

blue/yellow frameworkare stretched two indivisiblesurfacesof intensity;of intensityand its negation:thered and the green.Yellow and blue substitute or andset in motion the vorticalpulse, the yellow repulsingthe attraction of the blue. These trace an arc of

movement, into and out of the painting,althoughnot through illusionisticspaces, which are dissimu-

latedthroughthe picture'sgyratingchromaticenergy,

THE OxFORDARTJOURNAL 20:2 1997 19







but into and out of the space of viewing,between usand the picture,us and those eyes which surface romits depths,which slide out from here to hide below itssurface.Then this movement is arrested it is arrestedbefore and after its mesmerism works) because the

yellow and the blue both contain already within

themselves(Turnerconcurswith Goethe on this) the

abilityto be individuallytransformed nto their ownchromaticresidueordynamicstasis, nto one in which

movement is sublimated to a potential, to a poise,between intensityand negation.The perfectbalance

of the green is out perfected (Goethe calls it 'more

perfect') n red which is always potential in the purestate of the yellow and the blue (again, accordingto

Goethe), beyond their lightest states, beyond their

prismaticpurity, beyond white. A red so intense it

cannotexistin the moment of seeingthe painting,but

is the traceon the retinaleft by it, by the yellow and

the blue, springingfrom and diving back below the

erasureof the green.Thus the paintingis here and is

an absence,it is vision and memoryat once - and italternatesbetween them, always escaping from the

conceptualgraspof knowing it as a thing composedfrom specifics, from a list of tones and colours,

escapingfromits naming.A seeing, then, but a seeing still sequesteredfrom

the remainsof the desire to give a name to it, to the

eyesandthe mouth,which arealwaysfadingfromred

to silence.Becausestill those eyes returnthis lookwe

give, and still that mouth mocks our silence, keeps

drawingout this vestigeof faithin it as sign, faithin

that we can name what we see, which calls us back

from the seductions of the mute and overarching

dispersalof the whole, from the thrill of it all andfromthe sheerbrightbeautyof colour. It is thus with

so much perturbingand implacableenergy that this

forbiddingmouth and those entrancingeyes begin to

surface nto meaning.

V

The meaning of nothing is its meaning - this is not

quite true, of course, but it makes the point - it is

howthe paintingsignifiesnothingon the borderlineof

significationthat is its meaning:it means next to

nothing. It is the path that the painting retraces-

retraceswithdreadandwith longing- the pathof its

retreatand return to the first aesthetic scene of the

subjectthat is its seeminglypointlessquestion.Likea

mirrorof the mirrorphase,but, as such, composedby

fascinationof a double inimitability.Not a metaphor

forrepresentation,but a representationof subjectivityas a seeing in the elliptical movement in the space

chartedby the before and afterof metaphor.It is a

mirror not constitutive of the subject as lack, for

between here and there there is no desire, rather,it

is an imageof the dynamicpreconditionsofnarcissism

and of loss, of the ritual abandonmentof the objectinto the abominable real in the moment before

Narcissus sees and loves his image. It is a graph

clarifyingthe subject as text for image and word's

uneven susceptibility to binding in the symbolic

manufactoryof ego and identity, in the flight fromthe real,by way ofjouissance,o the first imit, thresh-

old of subject,desire.Put anotherway, the objectifica-tion of drive and the relativesecurity of word and

image as keepsakeof the unbound; the sublimeand

the abject; love and death-

yes.8This scene of the subject is boundless, diffuse,

properly sublime, but its provenance, in somato/

semantic disposition lies within abjection.And it is

the sublime which salvages,through the promiseof

naming, the sign of the non-object:it keeps it under

controland makes bearablesemanto/somaticconfu-

sion. This I and the eye, the concept of a subjectas

general dispersal, sees through the unconscious, it

challengesthe theoryof the unconscious,categorizing

by the way as abject failedrepression.The fictionof

subjectiveautonomybelongs only to faithin repres-sion's completionand what it describes,what it gives

bounds to is, rather, nothing but a trite moderfiction: he autonomyeffect.And the sightofabjectionleads us back then to the time aftermodernitywhere

we now witness the decentringof a sovereignsubjectas being alwaysand alreadythe logic of the modern,

withthe modernityeffectofthe I-am-Iunravelling nd

preposterous,and seen in the scene of the subject.What is signified n the blindness coincidentwith the

imaginary discovery of a fractured, late twentieth-

century subjectivityis but the moder without its

own ironiesof self-mystification,s merelycontempor-

aryvanitymisrecognizedas a profoundernarcissism,

as one which has always been there, one more

beautiful, one that can be heard laughing mischie-vouslywhenever the abject','the informe',and so on- articles in a born-again's crass catechism -

get

witlesslyworn by those faintand forlornneurosesin

searchof real meaningin the art/academiccorporate

complex.Forthe moder, do you not see, wasalways,

already, almost, post-itself- wearing its Lyotard

inside-out.9Our painting'sdouble fabric,double time, double

vision, ts strayingbeing, itspromiseofoblivionandits

presentationof thunder are abjectionand sublimity

describinga vortexof attraction ndrepulsion hatsets

the scene for our subject. Between the drive to

dispersal, from colour to light to silence, and the

imploding necessity of its unbearable real, from

words to mouth to silence, the picture mocks and

glorifies our place in the modern. It repeats itself,

becomes, through its own general dispersal, the

analogue of consciousness which disintegratesend-

lessly in its retreatand returnto the limit of primal

repression.The picture s a warning,ora reminder

the subjectsearching orthe unconscious,analogically

and in the mannerof itsjouissance,n the aestheticas

purposivenesswithout purpose- a remembranceof

the silentjoy and the silenterhorror,flashingin the

meetingof the

abjectand the sublime,originatinghe

subjective moment of the modern, with all of its

pleasuresand its pains.

THEOXFORDRT OURNAL 20:2 1997

20







Turner'spaintingsees the unconsciouswithin con-sciousness and figuresfortha subjectwhich suffuses,assimilates,and thenjust drifts,its being multiplyingin silence. Likelightbut no longerlike metaphor,this

being finds its dependency in representation, n the

moder, and on account of the powersof seeinginside

reading, by ellipsis, by caressing, by touching and

keeping moving, by permanently rediscoveringthe

corporeal delight of beginning again to name a

thing, with eyes that reach like dripping fingers,touching the picture'sbroken surface and making itall wet again. And through these obscene pleasuressoothingitself in abeyance of its late discovery,fromthewakingdream of its anthropological lumber,that,throughall of this,thereis nothingto discover, here isno self to find.

Painting at the limit, painting as the limit, thefrailestmoment of the subject/objectcrisisof originalseparationand the most archaic sublimation of thetwo. Before the demarcation of language, before

secondary repression,this image exists in advanceoflanguagebut only appears o consciousnesswithinthe

spaces of the second repression as metaphormomently before metaphor disintegratesunder the

sway of the desire it begins to displace onto thestubbornmetonymwhose own powersof refigurationcrumble into the silent music of those codelesstexturesthat are stretchedaround the melting frame-work of pure bright colour. Spilling over into this

pictorial imagination is the most frail and archaicmoment of the genealogyof moder being.

Sunrise with Sea Monsterssynoptically presentsmodernity in the extent to which that is a subjec-

tion-in-dispersalwhich follows on from the metaphy-sicalimpossibility, he deconstructibility,fyou will, ofits foundation.And this is what is visiblein these late

essaysof the painter- the limits of the moder, andthe fact that it will be only a matter of time before the

impossibilityof these pictures becomes the impossi-bilityof picturesin general.

And the softsuccourof light is still slowlylappingthe

image of sadness which has run fromthose eyes like

liquid glass. And those burning eyes still pierce the

surfacing ension of semanticambition,seeing straightthrougha vanitythat would feign the transcriptionof

vision. And the mouth stillwhispers ts mockeryofthe

ungainly likeness whose own silent dreaming con-demns it to an emptinessthat is utterlyunspeakable,laughing in the face of this frail and final meaning:these are not incomplete paintings, they are com-

pleted images of the incompletable.

Notes

1. This essay derives from a section of my doctoral thesis, Turner's

Spectacular elancholynd the FateofModernityCourtauldInstitute,1996),in whichI readthe artist'spaintingof the 1840swithinthe contextof early

moder word/image relationships.The traditionalpriorityof language,givenin the Horatiananalogy,utpictura oesis, s overturnedaround the

turn of the nineteenthcentury and the lag between seeing and naming

THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL 20:2 1997

constitutes he modern subject'sessentiallyaestheticbeing. This being is

incapableof realizing he autonomythat is projected nto imagesbecause

the pre-oedipalremainder hat is carriedwithin the desire to see returns

each aestheticenactment of self to the scene of that selfs foundingcrisis.

Turner's late work, according to my reading of it, in the continuous

struggle t stagesbetweenimage and text, and throughthe oedipalthemes

it addresses,allows individual and historical subjectivenarratives o be

seen simultaneouslyat the moment of their inception.2. The paintings in question, nearly all of which hang in the Clore

Galleryat the Tate, are all threeby fourfeet, like Sunrisewith SeaMonsters,and share with it approximatelyhe same level of finish.The titles ofthe

other paintingstoo are in partthe productof guessworkand indecision:

Folkstone?;eascape ithDistantCoast;Rough eaetc. And whatunites them

all is precisely the extent to which they all inspire the search for their

elusive object.The richnessof these late essays lies veryobviously n the

openness of meaningthey exhibit, in an opacitywhich leads perception,consciousness,words etc. into a chase aftertheir visualsplendour.

3. MyTurnergoesmuch further hanthis modem counterpart ecause,whilst n theirimage/text equationshis lateexhibitedorks estthe limitsof

the presentable, he late unfinishedpictures- whose number and whose

consistency n respectof the seeing and naming questionconstitute hem

as a purposive,evenif unconscious,opus - thesepictures,Sunrise ithSea

Monstersncluded, havingseen the fragile,aesthetic constitution of mod-

ernity'ssubject, push back the language/visiondialectic towardsdissolu-

torysilence.4. Lacan'sanecdote llustrateshis contention hat the viewer s as much

the object as the controllingsubject of vision. The Lacanian gaze is

disembodied, ocated on a screen which figuresexactlythe partialmastery

which, formy purposes, equates to the deeply inauthentic aesthetic(and

moder) sense of self. The Lacanian'Thing', a concept whose meaningKristevaelaborates,is the real that will not be signified.Practicaland

theoreticalillucidation of it is to be found in, Julia Kristeva,BlackSun

(Columbia UniversityPress:New York, 1989).5. The primalscene stagesthe first dramasof subjectionand like the

mirrorphase which follows it the dynamicestablished n primary denti-

ficationbecomes a structuringmetaphorfor experiencein the imaginaryand symbolicbut, carryingover,as it does, the memorialrichness of the

pre-symbolic,this metaphor is experienced traumaticallyand recounts

how the real comes to be in representation,worrying t with its whispered

unmeaning.In my readingof it, Sunrisewith Sea Monsterss this scene: a

miraculouslypre-mirrorphase mirrorin which the moder self and its

definingaesthetic drama is visible.

6. The importanceofGoethein respectofthe formationofspecularand

autonomoussubjectivitys documentedbyJohnathanCrary n his Techni-

ques ftheObserver(MITress:Cambridge,1992).WhilstCrary ees Turner

and Goetheup to the pointof theirbeingin pursuitof the subjectofvision,

my contention s that thetheory/practiceaxisthattheyworkalong- in the

extent to which that instantiatesthe reversalof language's priority n ut

picturapoesistthe turn ofthe nineteenthcentury positions hem,finally,at

odds, and with radically antagonistic subjects in view. Simply, whilst

Goethe's colour refers o the moder subject,Turner's colours refer o the

beforeandafterofit, envisioning he separationof self and aestheticground- deconstructingpicture,subject,ekphrasis.

7. J. W. von Goethe, Theory f ColoursLondon, 1840),pp. 276-8.

8. I havedraftedaspectsofKristeva'sPowers fHorrornd BlackSun nto

my analysis because I believe that by doing so I might be able to

reduplicate he content f Kristeva'sown analyses,which is the void, over

our own - over the emptiness that haunts the presumptionwe make,wheneverwe write of whatever s specificto paintings, hat language,can,in fact,represent he verything - its own limit - that paintingsexposeand exist on account of. When we talk of paintingswe sayeverythingbut

that which is there and open our discourse up to abjection in our

(inevitable)failure. Thus my problem has been to construct a readingwhich will encounter the problem of writing of Kristeva and Turner

together, of writing of two other discourses of the pre-objectal,without

turning them into my object. How to use this writing to make these

correspondarounda profond but significantabsence?

Like Kristeva, like Turner, I cannot produce my object without

becoming banal,but I can attemptto covey or exert its meaningfuldrift

fromrandomnesswith words which simplycircletheir own failure.This

being an attemptto include one heavilyimage-ladendiscourse Kristeva)over image (Turner), images are bound to proliferateand, rather than

being simplynarcissistic,my own stylisticself-consciousnesshas a certain

21







necessity,one validated in the restorationof narcissism to the foundingtruth of its beingas permanentcrisis. And this is the wonderful ronyof it:

narcissismhusproperly onceivedwill be offensiveonlytovanity which

is not narcissismbut the faith in it.

9. Kristeva's 'abject' excavates asymbolia and finds, at the most

precociouslimit of the subject, the sign that exists before (even if it is

only visible through) primal repression.It opens up a sumptuous black

aesthetics,a flirtationwithmorbidityand the ecstaticallyreal. And if it has

a special purchaseon the present it is because it marks the disaffected

standpointthat is most apt for viewingrepresentational ystems chasingeach other'sdeadlyirrelevancen this vacuumof transcendence.

As occurredwith deconstructionbefore t, a paleand popularversionof

the abject s currentlybeingreified ntomethod,homogenized ntoa bland

paste that is spreadableover any or all aspects of any or all practice.

Ignoring its own specific and devastatingimplications, the 'abject-as-

method' turns a crisis into an artificeand whilstseemingto confront he

present futilityof the sign it invisibly confirms traditionalchannels of

representation, nterpretationand mastery. Shoring up the same old

subject, a subject paradoxicallyemboldened throughthe staged danger

that is given in the abject'swhiffof trauma,the concepthas become the

Prozacof criticaltheory.For the full picturesee, Julia Kristeva,Powers fHorrorColumbiaUniversityPress:New York, 1983).

THE OxFORDARTJOURNAL 20:2 1997

22

the last modern painting

Documents