Visual Cultures

James ELKINS

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781841503073
• eBook ISBN: 9781841503844
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Visual Cultures is the first study of the place of visuality and literacy in specific nations around the world, and includes authoritative, insightful essays on the value accorded to the visual and the verbal in Japan, Poland, China, Russia, Ireland and Slovenia. The content is not only analytic, but also historical, tracing changes in the significance of visual and verbal literacy in each nation. Visual Cultures also raises and explores issues of national identity, and provides a wealth of information for future research. Visual Cultures will appeal to those with an interest in visual studies, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, area studies, subaltern studies, political theory, art history and art criticism.

A VISUALLY-ORIENTED LITERARY CULTURE?

Kris Van Heuckelom

The influence of cultural mediation on the physiological process of seeing is a recurring topic in the field of visual studies. An example that is often given when discussing the proclaimed cultural variability of ocular experience is the difference between a Hellenic and a Hebraic approach to visual experience. Ancient Greece is said to be at the roots of the concept of sight as “being the noblest of the senses,” whereas Jewish culture is usually linked to a tradition of iconoclasm and antirepresentationalism. The conventional wisdom holding that Judaism is indifferent or even hostile to the visual arts has, of course, been doubted, but it remains a fact that in the Jewish case, one can find a significant amount of prescriptive (i.e., religious) texts expressing a rather negative attitude toward visual experience and representation (see Olin 2001; Bland 2001). The reasons one culture or the other tends to evolve (or to represent itself) as rather visually or nonvisually oriented are, however, not always easy to discern. In this historical survey, I will present a case study that focuses on the highly ambiguous status of visual practices in Polish culture. I will not only critically discuss some of the elements that are likely to have played a significant role in the historical development of Poland (representing itself) as a predominantly literary or verbal culture but will also try to show to what extent the concept of visual literacy might be useful when discussing the cultural variability of visual experience.

The ideal starting point for a critical discussion of the ambiguous status of the visual in Polish culture is a remarkable essay published in Paris by the Polish art and literary critic Julian Klaczko (1825–1906).¹ Being a regular contributor to La Revue des Deux Mondes/Review of the Two Worlds, the most influential Parisian review at the time, Klaczko was known for his provocative opinions on both political and cultural affairs. His essay, entitled “Sztuka Polska”/ “Polish Art,” (1857) aimed at discussing the state of Polish art in the second half of the nineteenth century and at answering the question in what direction Polish art should evolve in the decades and centuries to come. Generally speaking, Klaczko began with two basic facts:

1. the poor and belated development of the visual/plastic arts in Poland

2. the high status that was traditionally assigned in Polish culture to literature

Or to put it in Klaczko’s own words:

Nie szperajmy w pergaminach za antenatami naszego rze

biarstwa i malarstwa, których nigdy nie było, ale umiejmy szczyci

si

i godnie wywi

za

z tego prawdziwego szlachectwa, które nam w pi

knym

wiecie ideału wielka nasza wyrobiła Poezja! (Klaczko 1961, p. 48).

[Let us not sniff with our noses in old parchments to find the precursors of our sculpture and painting, because they have never existed, on the contrary, let us take pride in the true nobility that has been produced by our Poetry, in the beautiful world of ideals.]

From these two facts, Klaczko drew the following rather provocative assumptions:

1. historically speaking, at the roots of Polish culture lies a sui generis “verbocentrism”

2. as a consequence of this “verbocentrism,” for Polish artists, it makes no sense whatsoever to try to be creative in the domain of the visual/plastic arts

Klaczko’s essay gets very interesting the moment he attempts to provide a reasonable explanation for this proclaimed “verbocentric” character of Polish culture. Confronted with the obvious absence of normative religious concepts that could have been—as in the Jewish example—at the roots of the Pole’s preference for the word, Klaczko resorts to an explanation of an ethnic nature. Obviously inspired by various theories of Pan-Slavism and Slavophilia that were in vogue in nineteenth-century eastern Europe, the author of “Polish Art” (Klaczko 1961 [1857]) refers to a presumed etymological link between the common Slavic ethnonym Słowianie [Slavs] and the phonetically similar stem słowo [word]. Following Klaczko’s interpretation, the word Słowianie [Slavs] should actually be read and understood as “ludy Słowa” [people of the Word]. The author of Polish Art formulated his arguments in the following way:

D

wi

k i słowo to s

jedynie wcielenia dla polskiego i słowia

skiego ducha naturalne, nie wymuszone i prawdziwe, jedyne, które lud u nas zrozumie

, a masy uzna

i uczci

s

w stanie. … Słowianie, jeste

my i możemy tylko by

mistrzami Słowa! … Nie p

dzłem i dłutem, lecz krzyżem a mieczem zwyci

żała Polska od wieków (Klaczko 1858 pp. 44, 49, 69).

[The sound and the word are for the Polish and Slav spirit the only natural, unimposed and true embodiment, the sole which our people can understand and our masses are capable of recognizing and appreciating … As Slavs, we are and can be only masters of the Word! … For centuries, Poland has won victories not by means of the paintbrush and chisel but with the cross and sword.]

Klaczko’s arguments are, of course, insufficient or even incorrect on several levels. First of all, the etymological interpretation of Słowianie as proposed in “Polish Art” appears to be highly doubtful, although some linguists are still attracted by the idea of linking the Slavic ethnonym semantically to the stem słowo.² Roman Jakobson, for instance, has claimed that there is sufficient linguistic evidence in the Old Russian language to maintain the presumed etymological link between Słowianie and słowo (see Jakobson 1959). Jakobson refers to an argument that has often been used in support of the interpretation of Słowianie as “people of the Word”—that is, the presumed semantic link between Słowianie and the ethnonym Niemcy [mute people]. The word Niemcy was used by the Slavs to refer to neighboring German tribes who could “not speak”—that is, whose language was incomprehensible for the Slavs.

On a more general level, it is obvious that Klaczko employs a highly static and essentialist concept of cultural identity, which inevitably leads to all kinds of unjustified generalizations. As such, Klaczko’s claim of Slavic “verbocentrism” is a typical Romantic construct that relies on the presumed existence of some kind of common Slavic soul or Slavic spirituality. Actually, Klaczko was not the first person to observe a neat link between the proclaimed Polish preference for the word and the Slavic roots of the Poles. Some fifteen years earlier, similar “Slavophilic” ideas had been expressed by the Polish “national poet” Adam Mickiewicz, one of the main representatives of Polish Romantic literature. In the years 1840–1844, the emigré writer Mickiewicz held the first chair of Slavic literatures at the Collège de France in Paris and as such, he gave several series of lectures devoted to issues of Slavic languages and cultures. In one of his lectures, in which he discussed the common roots of Slavic culture, Mickiewicz referred to the poor development of the visual arts in the Slavic part of Europe and explained this fact in the following way:

On comprendra maintenant pourquoi les Slaves n’ont pas jusqu’à présent cherché à faire de l’art plastique. Quel besoin auraient-ils de courir après des copies, puisqu’ils possèdent tout entier l’organe qui les rend capables de voir les originaux? Ces souvenirs du monde invisible que l’on taille en marbre, que l’on coule en bronze, et que l’on attache à la toile pour les préserver de l’oubli, le peuple slave les conserve tous vivants. Ce ne sont pas pour lui des souvenirs, c’est de la réalité, c’est de l’actualité. Le peuple passe sa vie à raconter, à chanter les événements qui se déroulent sous la terre, dans les airs et au ciel. C’est pour n’avoir pas compris les merveilles de cette foi vivante des Slaves, que certains civilisateurs modernes croyaient rendre un grand service à ces pays en y transportant quelques statues et quelques tableaux. (Mickiewicz 1914, pp. 271–272).

[One can comprehend why up to now the Slavs have not engaged in the plastic arts. Apparently, the latter were never their vocation. Why should they compete for copies when they possess, in its full glory, an organ with whose aid they can see the originals? Those reminiscences of the invisible world that others, fearing that they might lose them, hew out o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Slovenia: Visuality and Literarity In Slovene Culture
• Japan: Lost In Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything
• Ireland: Words Upon the Windowpane: Image, Text, and Irish Culture
• Poland: A Visually-Oriented Literary Culture?
• China: Verbal Above Visual: A Chinese Perspective
• Russia: To Read, To Look: Teaching Visual Studies In Moscow
• Critical Response
• Contributors