Deconstruction in the Neighborhood of Art. The Problem of Painting in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida.

Gaynutdinov Timur Rashidovich PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy at Yaroslavl Demidov State University 150000, Russia, Yaroslavl Region, Yaroslavl, str. Sovetskaya 10, room No. 58 jean-jacques@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

It is safe to say that the theme of art, while not defining in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, nevertheless appears as a cross-cutting theme in a number of his works. At the same time, deconstruction is absolutely the opposite of the usual academic strategy of reception of classical aesthetics. That is why we must carefully do the work that allows us to restore all cases of Derrida's treatment of objects traditionally included in the register of "works of art". Now we are forced to state the deafening poverty of such practices of reading the Derridarian corpus of texts. Most of Derrida's works inspired by the theme of painting remain untranslated and, accordingly, unpublished in Russian.  In this publication, we would like to refer to the most important book by Jacques Derrida on the subject of fine art – "Truth in Painting" ^[1] and consider the nodal concepts through which this work analyzes the theme of painting: parergon, Passepartout, cartouche, truth. Since "Truth in Painting" has also not yet been published in Russian (only two small fragments of it were published in separate publications), in our opinion, such a reconstruction can have important theoretical significance and serve as a starting point for the subsequent development of the problems of art in the philosopher's legacy.

At first glance, it seems that painting was for Jacques Derrida some marginal topic that arose only on the periphery of his interests, a secondary or even a third-rate area, into the territory of which he invaded, rather by accident and in passing, almost in jest, when he was not zealous in his studies of philosophy or literature. But in reality, the situation is still somewhat more complicated. Since painting dispenses with language and is alien to any discourse, no discourse is able to embrace and explain it, and any conversation that adds more and more details to the description of an artistic creation leaves behind only exhaustion and emptiness. This is probably why Jacques Derrida was so keen on painting and graphics by Valerio Adami, in whose work the drawing was inseparable from the text ^[2].

Derrida approaches art in a roundabout way, almost always from afar – this is art on the edges, on the periphery or even beyond, in the zone of the visible, but not noticed, habitually ignored. Hence the problem of parergon, as well as the themes of Passepartout, signatures, titles, cartouche, blindness ^[3]: "four times around painting, only around within the permitted boundaries, this is the story of recognition and appropriation of the surroundings of a work of art, at best approaches to it: frame, title, signature, museum, archive, reproduction, speech, the market, in short, everything where the right to painting is legalized by the border, the line of opposition, preferably indivisible" ^{[4, p. 317]}.  It is into four parts that Derrida's most significant work, inspired by the theme of painting – "Truth in Painting", is divided into four parts, the preface to which ("Passepartout") and the first part ("Parergon") also divided into four chapters.  Jacques Derrida preferred such a four-part or, rather, in a theatrical way, a four-act structural division since the time of writing the book "Dissemination", published in 1972 ^[5]. The question of the function of the four-element structure in Derrida's texts still remains open. In the work "Dissemination" he explains that this practice of structural division begins with the doubling of the dyad and all binary oppositions characteristic of the logocentric model. Elsewhere, he quotes four rabbis who entered the Pardes ("garden"), which is consistent with the four levels of meaning of Kabbalah, but all this, of course, requires a separate thoughtful consideration. How to connect these different modalities of the four figures with the texts grouped together in the "Truth in Painting" and, in general, whether it is worth doing it remains a mystery. Perhaps the excessive Pythagoreanization and fetishization of the number four is unnecessary here. At the same time, it is safe to say that the four for Jacques Derrida is a complementarity number capable of multiplying ambiguity and duplicity, and it is painting, to which this article is primarily addressed, that goes here in addition.  Almost all Derrida concepts (distinction, pharmacon, trace, grammatology and others) overflow any logophonocentric dyads. These are always additions that go beyond the usual lexicon and taxonomy of metaphysics. 

All parts of the book "Truth in Painting" were created at different times, for six years, which is generally very characteristic of Derrida's "books", a significant part of which is prefabricated and complexly constructed. It is no coincidence that the philosopher, already in one of his early interviews in 1967, answering the question of Henri Rons, remarks: "In what you call my books, if anything is called into question first of all, it is the unity of the book and a single "book", considered as a perfect tonality, including all the implications of such a concept" ^[6]. We dwell on the topic of the book in Derrida's philosophy in more detail in another publication ^[7].

So, "I write four times around painting" ^{[4, p. 315]}, Derrida notes in the preface of "Truths in Painting". The first part of the book, entitled "Parergon", is compiled from a seminar started by Derrida back in 1972 and first partially published in 1974. In this part, Derrida subordinates "the big question of the philosophical tradition ("What is art?", "beautiful?", "representation?", "the origin of a work of art?", etc.) to the atopic persistence of the parergon" ^{[4, p. 315]}. At the same time, the very concept of the parergon Derrida draws from the fourteenth chapter of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Faculty of Judgment: "Even what is called decoration (parerga), that is, everything that is not included in the idea of the subject as a whole, as its internal component, but is connected with it only externally as an addition, reinforcing the benevolence of taste also acts only through its form, like, for example, picture frames, or the drapery of statues, or colonnades around a magnificent building. But if the decoration itself does not have a beautiful shape, if it, like a golden frame, is added only in order to cause approval of the picture by its attractiveness, then it is called decoration and harms genuine beauty" ^{[8, pp. 94-95]}.

In order to isolate yourself from the infinity of the text, any work of art should be limited to: a frame, a title, a date, a signature. Are these elements part of the work or an additional element of it? Perhaps they are only an intermediate link, some link or coupling between the work and its surroundings, a necessary connecting thread with the landscape, adjusting the optics of perception of the work in its context and, at the same time, drawing a line of rupture and separation from it. The parergon itself is brought to life by the insufficiency of the work of art and the need to overcome it?  Or, on the contrary, does he introduce redundancy into it, which makes it possible to perpetuate its true perfection? Is a parergon one with a work of art, or at least can it be one? And for Derrida, it is not only a question of "aesthetic judgment", but also an institutional question, a question of power and property rights.  

Derrida notes that "parergon" is an addition to "ergon", which translates from Greek as labor, work, activity, but also necessity, need. Without columns, the building of the classical Greek order is not completed, which means it is imperfect, so the parergon is not just an external, additional part, but it is the very expression of the lack of ergon. However, one should not see this lack of ergon as a consequence of the imperfection of the creator and his inability to create a complete masterpiece. Rather, on the contrary: "the lack that the parergon expresses is a constitutive, as Derrida puts it, moment of inner unity and perfection of the work. And yet there is something lacking in this unity, completeness and perfection… The parergon is the external expression, embodiment, materialization of this internal defect of a perfect and finished work. In the parergon, the inner defect of the work is taken out of its limits and preserved outside of it" ^[9]. The parergon restricts the work of art, frames and borders it, while being neither its inner nor its outer part and, at the same time, fancifully connecting them together, it stops the artist's activity in some way, giving it integrity and completeness. It can be said that the parergon preserves the inventive productivity of work, its strength and internal necessity. Without a parergon, there can be no work, and therefore no art. Any work worthy of the name of art goes beyond its own borders. What finds a place through it, what realizes itself through it, gaining the ability to be seen, is always a transgression, a transition, a stepping over. And the parergon is its necessary condition. 

The second part of the book "Truth in Painting" includes a text written by Derrida in 1975 for an exhibition by the Italian–French artist Valerio Adami, with whom Derrida maintained close friendly relations until the end of his life. This text itself was published in the same 1975 under the title "+R (par dessus le march?)" in one of the most famous art publications of the second half of the XX century – "Derriere le miroir" ("Through the Looking Glass"). "Despite the fact that the starting point of writing this article for Derrida was Adami's graphics, it is very far from the usual art criticism or, say, the philosophy of art. To a greater extent, Derrida here continues her previous research in the field of writing and signature ..., supplementing them with reflections on Walter Benjamin and the issue of the technical reproducibility of art ..., as well as the formation of a work of art of its own surplus value. The very name "+R (par dessus le march?)" can be translated as "in addition", "in addition", simultaneously keeping in mind the multiple economic (market, trade) and legal (contract, contract, transaction, agreement) connotations that arise here, as well as the effects of doubling or even "infinite multiplication" caused by double authorship and double signature" ^[2].

The third part of the book "Cartouches" ("Cartouches" – Derrida uses this word in the plural) was originally associated with the presentation of the exhibition of the French artist, engraver and writer Gerard Titus–Carmel at the Georges Pompidou Museum in the spring of 1978. "For the third time, testing the line as a signature, whether it concerns the proper name, the so-called patronymic, or the draughtsman's idiom, sometimes called a ductus, I investigate the system of duction resulting from it (production, reproduction, induction, reduction, etc.)" ^{[4, p. 316]}.

The word "cartouche" means a kind of elegant framing, vignette or ornamental edging in the form of a scroll with folded corners – such architectural elements were often placed over the front entrances of houses and window openings, placing a coat of arms, emblem or motto on them. Derrida uses this term to refer to a letter, comment or signature attached by the author to one of his works (in the Cartouche, Derrida refers to the work of Gerard Titus–Carmel). Anyway, Derrida notes, a cartouche is always a text. It may differ significantly from the work itself, but, at the same time, it is inevitably connected with it. Moreover, the cartouche is part of it. It can be considered as a title, a signature, a legend, a comment, or even a preface. It identifies or signs a painting, but it can also be a simple set of strokes or decorations decorating a particular official document.   As an example of a cartouche, Derrida also calls a cartellino – a small piece of paper or parchment written by the artist illusionistically and usually placed inside a painting on a wall, parapet or false frame. Most often, the artist's signature, the date of writing of the work and its name were placed on the cartellino, less often – one or another motto or the name of the customer. This technique was especially characteristic of the Venetian school of painting and was widespread from the second half of the XV to the middle of the XVI century (in particular, it can be found in the works of Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina). Cartellino seems to be a clever trick of the artist embedding his own name inside the canvas. He doesn't so much sign the work as come into play, making the signature part of the painting, but also the painting part of himself. That's why quite often cartellino looks like a random piece of paper barely hanging on the wall in anticipation of another gust of wind. But for Derrida, cartouche, just like cartellino, is primarily an act of discursive writing, an archival document that perpetuates, explains, describes, tells the story of a work of art or clarifies its idea and structure. In any museum, next to the original work, we see such informational signs with explanations and comments: countless cartouches, without which no exhibition can do. Art turns out to be dependent on these cartouches, without their assertive power, without writing that articulates the meaning of painting, there is no artistic exposition. Cartouche makes any artistic space a political space: it distributes roles, it hierarchizes – it rules.  

Approximately at the same time as "Cartouche", in the first half of 1978, the last part of the book was written, and a fragment of this part was published separately in the magazine "Macula" (the third issue for 1978). It is this text, written in the form of a polylogue, that completes the book and simultaneously collects it, establishing a connection between the first part, built around Kant and the remaining chapters focused on various artists – Paul Cezanne, Valerio Adami, Gerard Titus–Carmel and Vincent Van Gogh. This text is dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh's shoes, more precisely, their embodiment on canvas, and is built in the form of a polylogue, the starting point for which was Meyer Shapiro's essay "Still Life as a personal object" ^[10], in which he criticizes Martin Heidegger's famous reasoning about Vincent Van Gogh's painting depicting peasant shoes ^[11].  A kind of duel is unfolding between Shapiro and Heidegger, and Derrida here is not so much the second of one of the duelists as a sharp critic of both.   In general, Jacques Derrida continues the conversation raised here (of course, "on a country road") Martin Heidegger, who, in turn, follows a long tradition dating back at least to the time of Plato and his shoemaker from the dialogue "The State". Derrida refers to Van Gogh's painting "Old Shoes with Laces" as a paradigm for considering a work of art as such. Unlike Heidegger, who believes that this pair of shoes belongs to a peasant, and Shapiro, who connected them with a city dweller like Van Gogh himself, Derrida insists that these shoes do not have any kind of belonging. They are abandoned, abandoned and already deprived of any use value. Heidegger seeks to bring the shoes back to earth, to put them back on the ground of the fundamental experience of the peasantry; Shapiro gives them to the urban dweller Vincent Van Gogh, but both Heidegger and Shapiro only fall into the abyss of their own illusions, both have a naive, subcritical approach. As a work of art, the painted object is deprived of any function, no longer serves any purpose and is released from any task. He is no longer there, and he no longer represents anything: neither the artist who signed the painting, nor the object depicted by him, nor the observer. Absolutely nothing and no one. He suspends any ties, unties any ties, like the shoelaces of Van Gogh's shoes. And these shoes themselves turn out to be alienated, empty and anonymous.

Preface ("Passepartout") the work "Truth in Painting" was written last and is meaningfully connected with "Eight theses for (or against?) semiology of painting" Hubert Damisha. The first of these theses stated that if there is truth in painting, then it goes far beyond semiology. To a large extent, the very title of Derrida's book "Truth in Painting" can be considered as a development or an attempt to comment on this thesis of Damish.   In "Passepartout" Derrida deconstructs the phrase of Paul Cezanne "I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell you it" ^[12].  This remark was dropped by him exactly a year before his death in a letter to Emile Bernard dated October 23, 1905. It was a private letter that was not intended for publication and certainly was not the program text of the artist. On the contrary, it was a very personal, even intimate message to his, in general, only student, who was almost 30 years younger than the master himself. In this letter, Cezanne talks a lot about the old man and the growing fear of infirmity, emphasizing the immutability of his artistic goal, at the same time he expresses doubt that he will be able to achieve it. However, at the end of the letter, and in violation of all its previous tonality, Cezanne makes this promise: "I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell you it." Despite the private nature of the message, this phrase has become famous, art historians and philosophers often turn to it, and, apparently, it was Hubert Damish in 1974 in the "Eight Theses for (or against?) the semiology of art" was one of the first to quote these words by Cezanne. Jacques Derrida turned a fragment of Cezanne's phrase into the title of the book, and although Cezanne's words themselves are understood only in the preface, he managed, to one degree or another, to fit the problematic of truth into all parts of his own text. We do not know for sure whether the final title of Derrida's book "Truth in Painting" was added a posteriori, at the very end, in order to unite the body of disparate texts that were formed over several years. And most likely this is not the case, since all four parts, as well as the preface preceding them, seem to answer the same question posed by this phrase of Cezanne. Cezanne's promise – the contract he concludes at the end of his life in a letter to Emile Bernard – can only be fulfilled through painting, since only it is able to cross borders and transcend the artist's performative experience. The performative complement, which, in the end, is any artistic creation, is capable of discovering itself indefinitely.

The question of truth in painting is posed by Cezanne, but he answers it not through speech, but by non-mimetic means of his own painting.   For him, the depicted object has its own non-articulate verbally meaning, therefore, access to it can be carried out not in accordance with the current symbolic rules, but by regression of the perceptual basis. Can philosophy express this truth? For philosophy, painting is a sphere that produces a certain meaning, which gives rise to a permanent demand for truth that arises in artistic practices.

When Cezanne says that he "owes the truth," he thereby does not so much recognize his own debt, who knows how much it exists, even a little forgotten over the years (the artist is 66 years old at that moment), as he creates it, produces it anew, assuming more and more serious obligations. That's the whole point: Cezanne always felt in debt, hence this persistence in work, hence this phenomenological density of objects in his paintings. Probably, keeping this particular remark of Cezanne in mind, Emile Bernard will write to many after Cezanne's death: "The concept of beauty was alien to Cezanne, only the concept of truth was close to him" ^{[12, p. 212]}.

No one has ever dared to do this before, or at least no one has ever declared this "duty of truth" with such determination. But after Cezanne, his promise, his inheritance and all the debts owed to him will already sound quite often, becoming a bright element of many artistic practices. We see this "debt of truth" in the paintings of Francis Bacon, and it is not by chance that Gilles Deleuze notes that "Bacon is a much more faithful Cezanne than the disciples of Cezanne": "This is what most generally connects Bacon with Cezanne: the desire to write sensation, or, as Bacon says, in words very similar to Cezanne's, register the fact" ^{[13, p. 51]}. Antonin Artaud wrote something similar about the painting of Moses Kisling: "The artist here achieves one thing – to convey to us a life seen from the sharpest angle, endowed with the deepest unconsciousness and meaningfulness at once… A wonderful boy with empty eye sockets and you, an old man with glasses cursing the world, are tangible as the truth" ^[14].

But what is at stake in this debt of truth? And what exactly is it?  Since Cezanne, it has become mandatory for painting to be an act, in other words, for her to do something. In the "Eight theses for (or against?) already mentioned by us, the semiology of art" Hubert Damish offers a formulation of this obligation: painting by Cezanne and after him creates the elements of which it consists. Previously, it only represented and was subordinated to one or another discourse: religious, sentimental, romantic, realistic, and the like. From now on, thanks to Cezanne and the additional performativity that his painting carries, the painting must produce its own content from beginning to end. We are talking about the rejection of any discursive painting in favor of the act of painting. This act generates work outside of any prescriptions of the artistic tradition. Painting no longer recognizes any pre-established external determinants and is always a singular singular act: "The promise of Cezanne ... is special. His performance is not a literal promise to say in the sense of stating, but "to do". It promises a different performativity, and the content of the promise, as well as its form, is determined by the possibility of this other... the promise ceases to be the same event as any "speech act": in addition to the act, which it either states, it "produces" a special event associated with the performative structure of the utterance – it is about a promise. But another application, the object of a promise, promised by a promise, is another performative, "said", which could well, although we do not yet know it, be "picturesque" – not speaking and not describing, etc." ^{[4, p. 310]}.

Derrida notes that there is an absolute gulf between the Cezanne contract on the one hand, and philosophy (Heidegger) and art history (Shapiro) on the other. According to the professors, the artist, like the researcher who interprets him, wants to recreate the truth, restore it within its boundaries. But the silent authenticity of the painting (Derrida here refers not only to Van Gogh's "Old Shoes", but also to Jan van Eyck's "Portrait of the Arnolfini Couple") goes beyond the simple restoration of the truth.  The picture does not limit itself to the representation of an object or the truth attached to it. She crosses the line, overflowing her boundaries. That is why the logic of a work of art is inevitably the logic of the Kantian parergon, which, if it forms a boundary, certainly avoids the logic of the totality of representation.

So, Derrida circles around painting, making her turn four times, making her neighborhood raids four times, always staying on the outskirts, away from the main themes. The legacy of the great philosophers of the past continues to dominate the philosophical discourse about art in general and painting in particular. By translating analysis into fields (parerges), shifting towards marginalia, Derrida breaks his hierarchies and the entire habitual system of value judgments. The traditional oppositions used by philosophy to comprehend art lead it only to subordination to the authorities of writing and logos, a fundamental circular hierarchical classification (like the discourses on art by Hegel or Heidegger). That's why Jacques Derrida is moving in a completely different direction. However, no matter what precautions he takes, Derrida is well aware that everything he says and writes about painting and drawing belongs to an extensive genealogical tradition that originates in Greek philosophy, but also continues to be developed by his older contemporaries: Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger and, albeit in a completely different way, Georges Bataille ^[15], Michel Leiris ^[16], Maurice Blanchot ^[17] and others. Whether he wants it or not, Derrida continues this tradition, being her genealogist and at the same time an accountant, not the most diligent, and perhaps scrupulous only in some small things, but he inherits this tradition. Of course, Derrida never expressed reverence for the history of art, understood as a body of knowledge, and only occasionally analyzed or described objects categorically interpreted by the museum community as "works of art", but still he wrote several texts existing on the conditional periphery of art, inventing his own lexicon for this, starting with the notorious "differences" (difference) and further through the parergon, passepartout, cartouche, economesis and others. For those who are now turning to the topic of art and painting through the prism of Derrida's deconstruction, the violation of accepted discursive practices, the usual order of speech, punching through holes and holes in it is clearly striking. This became possible not only and not so much through Derrida's invention and conceptualization of new vocables, but through the formation of a perfect new type of discourse – deconstruction. For Jacques Derrida, the deconstruction of aesthetics and the deconstruction of philosophy go hand in hand and equally imply the rejection of the assertion of the logic of truth, which would give art meaning.

In conclusion, it should be noted that Derrida, developing the deconstruction of painting in the margins (parergue) of classical aesthetics, shifts the usual axis of perception and the hierarchy that is dictated to her. In the book "Truth in Painting" Derrida rethinks all aspects of the painting, and, in particular, the opposition of internal and external. Signature, passepartout, frame, cartouche, museum, archive, art market – all this, being an attribute of the external, inevitably leaves an imprint on the understanding of the inner character of the canvas, its "truth". The classical discourse of aesthetics proceeds from the position that truth is present in a work of art, or at least it should be promised to us by the artist himself, as Paul Cezanne did. However, only a certain expert can broadcast this truth to us, and in this task he must rely on museum institutions, their archives and catalogs, which help explain the genealogy of the work and control its place in the museum space.  All this strengthens faith in his word – the word of authority, the word of the father – the logocentric word. Of course, Derrida does not completely ignore the defining issues of the philosophy of art, but he avoids their frontal setting, bends, confusing, blows away the dust of a long-learned lesson from them, he worries them, introducing discord and confusion: "Under what conditions will the legacy be surpassed, dismantled or displaced, if at all possible the great philosophies of art still reigning over all this problematic, especially the legacy of Kant, Hegel and, on another level, Heidegger? This is one circle of prolegomena of Truth in painting, which are the parergon of this book" ^{[4, p. 316]}.