L'artiste comme maillon et comme interlocuteur : Pour une approche dialogique de l'histoire de l'art

Abstract

Starting from the assumption that modern artists are both unique creators and links in a long historical chain, this article examines the relationship between creation and responsibility towards the past. Contrary to the evolutionary model of art history, inherited from Giorgio Vasari, which conceives of the artist as a link in a long evolutionary chain, the article proposes a dialogical approach inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin: the artist is not only a link, but also an interlocutor, who relates to the works of the past as if they were statements addressed to him, calling for an active response. Mieke Bal subscribes to this perspective; however, her dialogism, based on the present’s reconfiguration of the past through quotation, risks dissolving its otherness by reducing it to a discursive resource. To maintain the consistency of the past that this presentism tends to overlook, the article proposes the concept of “recommencement”, exemplified by the dialogue between Turner and Lorrain: creating means resuming an inaugural gesture in order to assume it differently without dissolving it into a purely discursive resource. The recommencement thus occupies the middle ground between an evolutionary history where the present is determined by the past and a pre-posterior history that reconfigures the past but removes its own consistency.