A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting

by Hubert Damisch, Janet Lloyd (Translator)

This is the first in a series of books in which one of the most influential of contemporary art theorists revised from within the conceptions underlying the history of art. The author’s basic idea is that the rigor of linear perspective cannot encompass all of visual experience and that it could be said to generate an oppositional factor with which it interacts the cloud. On a literal level, this could be represented by the absence of the sky, as in Brunelleschi’s legendary first experiments with panels using perspective. Or it could be the vaporous swathes that Correggio uses to mediate between the viewer on earth and the heavenly prospect in his frescoed domes at Parma. Insofar as the cloud is a semiotic operator, interacting with the linear order of perspective, it also becomes a dynamic agent facilitating the creation of new types of pictorial space. (Damisch puts the signifer cloud between slashes to indicate that he deals with clouds as signs instead of realistic elements.) This way of looking at the history of painting is especially fruitful for the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but it is also valuable for looking at such junctures as the nineteenth century. For example, Damisch invokes Ruskin and Turner, who carry out both in theory and in practice a revision of the conditions of appearances of the cloud as a landscape feature. Even for the twentieth century, he has illuminating things to say about how his reading of cloud applies to the painters Leger and Batthus. In short, Damisch achieves a brilliant and systematic demonstration of a concept of semiotic interaction that touches some of the most crucial features of the Western art tradition.

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction, France, History

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Hubert Damisch (born 1928), is a French philosopher specialised in aesthetics and art history, and professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris from 1975 until 1996.

Damisch studied at the Sorbonne with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, later, with Pierre Francastel. In 1967 he founded the Cercle d’histoire/théorie de l’art that would later become the CEHTA (Centre d'histoire et théorie des arts)[1] at the EHESS.[2]

Damisch has written extensively on the history and theory of painting, architecture, photography, cinema, theatre, and the museum. His works are landmark references for a theory of visual representations.

Reviews

[Ling · Rating 5 out of 5]

we are here to attempt a semiological analysis that does not set out by acknowledging its dependence upon the linguistic (phonetic) model, but instead aims to define the specific semiotic function that constitutes the mainspring of pictoral production. such an analysis cannot possibly proceed simply by a functional division of the painted surface into its constitutive parts, and then by breaking down those parts, in their turn, into the elements of which they are composed. on the contrary, it needs to circumvent the flat surface upon which the image is depicted in order to target the image's texture and its depth as a painting, striving to recover the levels, or rather the registers, where superposition (or intermeshing) and regulated interplay--if not entanglement--define the pictorial process in its signifying materiality. however, this should be done without presupposing their relative coherence or the possibility of drawing up a more or less exhaustive list of terms and functions that belong to the same class. in the absence of any explicit theory, the method to be followed must perforce be inductive. it would amount to inferring from an analysis of the pictorial process itself some concept of what we have called its various levels or reigsters, and then describing these, in the physical sense of the tern, and revealing their relative organizational role. (14)

hubert damisch, "sign and symbol" in a theory of /cloud/: toward a history of painting. stanford: stanford up, 2002.

[Jacob Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend Hubert Damish's A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting. First published in 1972, not translated till 2002, I so wish I had this book when I was taking courses in art history almost 50 years ago.

Dense reading... but if you keep ploughing ahead, understanding becomes cumulative as he returns again and again to the examples on which he builds his argument.

The advantage of reading it now (unless you are able to travel the world to see all the art he cites), is that reading in front of a computer, you can quickly Google images you are not familiar with, or remember only vaguely. Richly documented. THIS is what art history should aspire to.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a cliche to saw that a given books form or style mirrors it's content. But that is precisely what happens here. An thoroughly researched an highly intelligent exploration of anti-rationalist themes in the history of Western art. Content-wise, this is everything Panofsky is not.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love Damisch so much.