Object #1 – Fragment of Degas
The original painting is currently on view at Glyptoteket in Copenhagen as part of the exhibition Degas’ Obsession, running through November 29.
Text #1 – Tracing the Light
The oldest light we can observe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, is nearly 14 billion years old. One of the defining traits of light is that it cannot truly be owned, at least not yet.
A line can be said to span two ends of a spectrum of light: sunlight, the natural and warm light that is about 8 minutes and 19 seconds old when it reaches Earth, and light from distant stars that has traveled for thousands of years, on the one hand, to light from artificial sources or reflected light, on the other hand, that reaches us in nanoseconds.
So we see one axis representing the distance light travels and another axis covering the range from natural to artificial light.
The word “artificial” is interesting in this context because, like light itself, the word comes to us whether we want it or not. It originates from the Latin artificialis, which in turn traces back, just as light moves outward, to artificium.
This gives us the root ars, meaning art or skill (derived from facere, to make, create, or bring forth).
Lead white is produced by exposing lead plates to vinegar fumes and carbon dioxide. This process forms a white crust on the lead, which is then scraped off and used as pigment. Around 1840, zinc white was invented, and titanium white followed in 1919.
These pigments, in contrast to the ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal that were used in ancient cave paintings, like Derrida’s concept of the pharmakon, are artificial and human-made.
The production of pigments transforms substances from something natural into something new and artificial. They are toxic, potentially lethal, yet also represent a form of technology that enables new kinds of art.
Also see: Spectre de Degas
Layer #1 – White
“People can often be heard exclaiming, “Look at that natural light,” even while standing in artificially lit museum rooms.
Object #1 reveals a geological-like structure. It is a very small fragment taken from the painting by Edgar Degas painted around 1882, and photographed through a Zeiss microscope (a process that uses artificial light) using a method called X-ray fluorescence (etymologically derived from the mineral ‘fluorspar’) spectroscopy (XRF).
So we have the literal (the title of the painting, the painter’s name), the mineral (the pigments), and the artificial (the creation of a representation of a scene that did not exist in a single point of time, but was the result of years of editing).
The fragment was then photographed again with a camera using a CCD sensor, which offered a new perspective on the light. The combination of the microscope, camera lens, and CCD sensor created an image of something that Degas himself never saw as a visible object; yet, through this process, it was transformed into an object in its own right.
The artificial light that Degas used, whether from gas lamps or early electric sources, enabled the creation of a toxic pigment due to its lead content.
Also see: Open call: The Art of Artificial Intelligence | The Wrong Benniale
More recent research has shown that it is possible to stop light by deforming the structure of two-dimensional photonic crystals. This could pave the way for quantum computers and groundbreaking methods of data storage.
The second object is digital and inorganic from beginning to end, offered as both a reference point and a contrast to the tiny paint flake from Degas’ Dancers Practicing in the Foyer.
The Getty Conservation Institute has described the method in connection with a similar analysis being done on the ‘The Milliners’ after an X-ray had shown several phases of rework (including erasing and adding persons):
“Because XRF is an X-ray technique, information is gathered simultaneously from all the paint layers; therefore, elements may be detected from a ground layer, together with those from overlying paint layers. If the painting has a complicated layer structure (as the X-radiograph indicates is likely the case for The Milliners), it is usually necessary to remove small samples for additional analysis in order to more fully understand the painting’s construction.
Samples taken from paintings are barely visible to the human eye (their size is less than 1 mm, typically on the order of only several hundred microns). Working under a microscope and in collaboration with a conservator, the scientist will take samples using fine surgical tools. Sometimes merely a scraping is required, but more frequently samples of all the paint layers are taken and mounted to reveal a cross-section of the painting’s stratigraphy. An ideal cross-section sample will contain all the layers of a painting from the ground layer to the final varnish.”
“From elemental analysis of the individual layers, it was determined that the ground layer is composed of lead white and barytes; the dark layer above it of lead white, bone black, and barytes, while the bright red particles are vermilion. The light brown layer towards the right of the sample is lead white and iron oxide earths (red ochre by visual examination), with associated minerals. The bright central layer is red lead followed by a lead white layer with chrome green and red ochre particles throughout. The thin dark layer at the top is lead white with iron oxide earths (again, red ochre by visual examination)”
— The Working Methods of Degas: The Milliners, The Getty Conservation Institute, 2008
Based on similar technical analyses, researchers could establish that Degas started working on ‘Dancers Practicing in the Foyer’ a lot earlier than previously thought – and that he worked on it, adding and removing layers and motifs, for close to 30 years. The painting contains up to 14 layers of paint.
Interestingly, a painter often praised for his instinctive ability to capture a fleeting moment in motion may have spent up to 30 years doing just that, and that material traces of this long process are chronologically embedded, almost written or woven into the very structure of the painting, traces that were previously invisible and therefore beyond our understanding.
paratext #1 – bakhtin
“Through contact with the present, an object is attracted to the incomplete process of a world-in-the-making and is stamped with the seal of inconclusiveness. No matter how distant this object is from us in time, it is connected to our incomplete, present-day, continuing temporal transitions, it develops a relationship with our unpreparedness, with our present. But meanwhile, our present has been moving into an inconclusive future. And in this inconclusive context, all the semantic stability of the object is lost; its sense and significance are renewed and grow as the context continues to unfold” — Mikhail Bakhtin, 1975-1981.
paratext #2 – Jacques derrida
“White mythology—metaphysics has erased within itself the fabulous scene that has produced it, the scene that nevertheless remains active and stirring, inscribed in white ink, an invisible design covered over in the palimpsest” – Jacques Derrida, 1971.
“Bizarres, ces métaphysiciens, qui veulent échapper au monde des apparences, sont contraints de vivre perpétuellement dans l’allégorie. Poètes tristes, ils décolorent les fables antiques, et ils ne sont que des assembleurs de fables. Ils font de la mythologie blanche. »
Une formule — brève, condensée, économe, presque muette — a été déployée en un discours interminablement explicatif, se mettant en avant comme un pédagogue, avec l’effet de dérision que produit toujours la traduction bavarde et gesticulante d’un idéogramme oriental. Parodie du traducteur, naïveté du métaphysicien, du piètre péripatéticien qui ne reconnaît pas sa figure et ne sait pas où elle l’a fait marcher.
La métaphysique — mythologie blanche qui rassemble et réfléchit la culture de l’Occident : l’homme blanc prend sa propre mythologie, indo-européenne, son logos, c’est-à-dire le mythos de son idiome, pour la forme universelle de ce qu’il doit vouloir encore appeler la Raison. Ce qui ne va pas sans guerre. Aristote, le défenseur de la métaphysique (une coquille aura imprimé dans le titre Aristie), finit par sortir, décidé à ne plus dialoguer avec un mauvais joueur : « Je sors non persuadé. Si vous aviez raisonné avec les règles, il m’aurait été facile de réfuter vos arguments.” – Jacques Derrida quoted from Poetique 5, 1971, La Mythologie Blanche.
Object #2
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