Watch to understand

In Read imagesJohann Michel starts from the observation that hermeneutics, which is originally an interpretation of texts (literary, religious, legal), has not been much interested in images, with the exception of Heidegger and especially Gadamer. It is to fill this gap that he wants to develop a hermeneutic of images in their specificity. Unlike Gadamer, who studies the ontological basis of all the arts, Johann Michel’s analysis focuses only on plastic art, and more precisely on fixed graphic images (paintings, engravings, statues, drawings, photographs), seen as “ vital externalizations permanently fixed » in the sense of Dilthey, that is to say as objectifications of life. He deliberately leaves moving images (like cinema for example) aside. To delimit the domain of artistic images, he distinguishes them from what he calls “ signal-images » (for example signage). To the immediate understanding of “ signal-images “, he opposes the mediating or interpretative understanding of “ images-art “. Artistic images therefore call for interpretation, because they are plurivocal and they have a deeper, richer meaning, whereas “ signal-images » are unambiguous and can be understood spontaneously and immediately.

In his analysis, Johann Michel does not choose the path short of Heidegger, but rather the path long by Ricoeur who, to arrive at ontology, takes the detour of the human sciences. He proposes to do for the sciences of the image what Ricoeur did for the sciences of the text, namely to go through explanation to arrive at understanding. The hermeneutics of art thus enters into debate with the history of art (Winckelmann, Panofsky, Pächt, Warburg, Arasse and G. Didi-Huberman), but also with the semiology of images (Louis Marin), with pragmatist aesthetics (John Dewey), the psychoanalysis of art (Freud), cultural anthropology (C. Geertz, Philippe Descola), analytical philosophy (N. Goodman, G. Ryle). To do this Michel starts from concrete interpretations of works, whether it is the psychological interpretation that Freud gives of Moses by Michelangelo, Daniel Arasse’s interpretation of the Story of Saint Nicholas by Ambrogio Lorenzetti or by The Adoration of the Magi by P. Bruegel, the semiological analysis by Louis Marin of Landscape in calm weather of Poussin or The Storm by Giorgione and that of Emmanuel Souchier from a photograph by Degas, Auguste Renoir and Stéphane Mallarméor even the iconographic interpretation of Spring by Botticelli by A. Warburg.

From text to image: the readability of images

If the work is titled Read imagesis that the author starts from the idea that the images are readable like texts, or in any case, that we can establish analogies and homologies between text and image, especially since certain images tell stories (see in particular the chapters Textualize images, Tell the pictures). Panofsky’s iconology, which consists of interpreting images starting from literary sources (classical texts of Antiquity) and which finds its source in philology, as well as semiology, highlight the fact that a transposition of methods of interpretation from texts to images is possible.

J. Michel also applies principles from textual hermeneutics to the hermeneutics of images (for example Meier’s principle of hermeneutic equity, the hermeneutic circle, the method of parallel passages, Schleiermacher’s grammatical and technical interpretation, the text model (p. 205-221) or the dialectic of explanation and understanding as described by P. Ricoeur). He emphasizes, for example, that grammatical interpretation (in the sense of Schleiermacher) is for discourse the equivalent of what Panofsky’s iconographic interpretation is for the image, or even connects technical interpretation (in the sense of Schleiermacher) with the theory of Kunstwollen by Riegl.

On the question of the relationship between description and interpretation, the hermeneutics of art enters into dialogue with the interpretive anthropology of culture of Clifford Geertz and the analytical philosophy of art (Danto) which both reject the existence of a neutral description as a pure illusion, but this does not mean according to J. Michel that all description would be put out of circulation in favor of interpretation. He proposes not to oppose thin description and thick description as Geertz does, but to articulate them one to the other and to distinguish degrees between the thinnest description and therefore the least interpretative and the thickest description and therefore the most interpretative, in the manner of Ryle or Panofsky.

The image beyond the readable

But can the image be reduced to its sole readability at the risk of losing its visibility? ? After discussing methods of interpreting images which start from the principle of legibility of images, Johann Michel is interested in approaches which call into question such a hermeneutic of art, for example which think that the nature of an image is not to signify, but to affect (see the chapters Test the images, Experiment with images, Figure the images). In In front of the imageG. Didi-Huberman thus criticized Panofsky’s textualist conception of the image, emphasizing that the image is not reduced to the readable, nor even the visible, but that it is of the order of the visual. Hence a criticism of iconology which would only be adapted to certain types of images (those of a narrative, allegorical, historical type).

J. Michel also admits that there is a meaning of images that escapes the readable. But instead of opposing sensation and interpretation, sensitive and intelligible, visual and readable, he tries to articulate them and show that “ the detour through interpretation in turn allows us to increase the emotional potential of an image » (p. 234). He gives as an example the iconological hermeneutics of Aby Warburg who “ doesn’t come obscure, but on the contrary reveal the emotional power aroused by a painting » (p. 215). The interpretation of Spring of Botticelli by Aby Warburg captures the eroticism “ in the pathos of its figuration, in its movements, in its rhythm and its forces, in its corporeality » (p. 218). Thanks to iconological hermeneutics, we can therefore not only “ better understand, but also better feel the affects that circulate between the characters and their actions » (p. 218).

In the chapter Experiment with imagesJohann Michel is interested in art as an experience “ immediate ”, as an experience “ accumulative » and as an experience “ creative » (p. 236). He thus relates Dewey’s pragmatism which rejects the duality between sense-sensation and sense-signification with the way in which Winckelmann envisages the aesthetic experience, while distinguishing them from the way in which Gadamer envisages the experience of art.

For J. Michel, the artistic experience is not only about contemplation, it is also about scientific observation and experimentation. If he accepts Gadamer’s perspective, according to which there is no radical distancing because we belong to history, he nevertheless emphasizes that the art historian’s investigation does indeed produce a distancing “ relative “, as shown, for example, in the micro-history of painting by Daniel Arasse, who uses photography to see details that would otherwise go unnoticed.

This is why J. Michel applies the notion of experimental investigation that Dewey had applied to the natural sciences and to the epistemology of ordinary experience to aesthetic experience. He distinguishes three types of actions of the observer on the image: actions which transform not the image, but the physical and mental conditions of the observer ; indirect actions on the image, without manipulation of its materiality (which concern the environmental conditions of making the image visible, which change over time, as well as the technological conditions of perception of the image, such as the use of photography) and direct actions on the image (for example in the case of a restoration).

Finally, to show that what is to be interpreted in an image is not only its symbolism and its structure, but also its “ power to act », the hermeneutics of J. Michel enters into dialogue with the cultural anthropology of figures that Descola develops in Forms of the visiblewhich takes into account images from non-Western cultural areas.

From narrative identity to figurative identity

J. Michel’s approach therefore consists of articulating notions that have been opposed to each other: understanding vs. interpretation, explanation vs. understanding, description vs. interpretation, sensation vs. interpretation, representation vs. interpretation, the end point of his hermeneutics of art being the formation of an identity not narrative, but figurative, because man can understand himself better not only thanks to texts, but also thanks to images.

The dialogue that Johann Michel opens with the human and social sciences proves fruitful and makes it possible to significantly broaden the field of the hermeneutics of images and to connect different interpretive perspectives which are interested in images from very varied angles. An important aspect of the book is the desire to reconcile the perspective of a methodological hermeneutics with that of Gadamer. After having underlined the analogy that Gadamer establishes between the reading of texts and the reading of images, J. Michel does not start from the latter’s suggestions regarding the “ reading » images, but rather methodological hermeneutics. Johann Michel could perhaps have benefited more from Gadamer’s analyses, as well as from the work undertaken in his lineage, because it seems to me that starting from the latter, we can directly articulate the question of the readability of images to their effectiveness. Indeed, from the latter’s perspective, interpretation is not a scientific method, but the experience of the spectator which reactivates the work. More generally, we can wonder if it would not be interesting to extend the analysis by taking into account more strongly the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, which would allow us to return to the ontological question which constituted the ultimate horizon of Ricoeur’s analysis, from which Johann Michel draws inspiration.