Chi ha paura dello pseudomorfo?

Since Spengler borrowed from the mineralogical terminology the term \u201cpseudomorphism\u201d to apply it to the morphology of cultures and to the interpretation of the relationship between different cultural traditions, this concept has widely been used in the vocabulary of philosophy and human sciences. This article intends to reconstruct some milestones in the history of the effects of such a loan, while investigating the oscillations of its semantic spectrum and its methodological and epistemological implications. Spengler employed the concept in a negative sense, to describe a phenomenon of morphological constraint: a new culture is compelled by the inertial force of a previous culture to take on alien forms to express its own contents. Among Spengler\u2019s readers, Jonas had recourse to the notion of \u201cpseudomorphosis\u201d in order to explore the links between the Gnosis and the Greek, Oriental and Christian traditions; Mumford used it to analyse the connections between recent technological inventions and the old forms of power and economy; Adorno conceived pseudomorphosis as a pernicious mimesis (philosophy mimicking sciences; art imitating the conceptual language; music imitating painting). All share the idea that pseudomorphism consists of a false manifestation of form, which ends up masking the expression of an authentic and original content. Moreover, the adoption of old forms to communicate new contents encourages merely superficial and largely unfounded analogies and similarities. Panofsky also adopts the notion in his iconology, impressing however to the concept different semantic nuances at different moments of his work. In Studies of Iconology (1939) he recognizes the heuristic value of pseudomorphism, which is capable of bringing to expression, during the Renaissance, contents that had remained unexpressed in ancient times thanks to the mediation of surviving medieval elements: a complex articulation of the pseudomorphic function in three times, that highlights a poietic retroactive movement exerted by the present on the remote past thanks to the metabolic activity of the recent past, in the wake of Warburg\u2019s investigations on the Nachleben der Antike. Such acknowledgment is however lost in the subsequent reflections: in Tomb Sculpture (1964) Panofsky reaffirms the negative and simplistic sense of pseudomorphism as an apparent but groundless formal analogy. Taken in this pejorative sense, the term is assumed by art historians like Rosenblum and Bois. But the revaluation, in recent times, of the phenomena of anachronism (Didi-Huberman, Nagel, Wood, Powell) is promoting a new sensibility for the heuristic potentials of the pseudomorphic retroaction. To be fully accomplished, this requalification must be accompanied by a coherent theory of similarities

Un punto delicato : breve nota su sensibilità e stile

In my paper I address Guido Davide Neri\u2019s reading of Panofsky\u2019s art theory formulated in his German works. I particularly focus on the critical objections raised by Neri in his introduction to the Italian anthology of Panofsky\u2019s essays La prospettiva come \u201cforma simbolica\u201d e altri scritti, that he edited in 1961. In this text Neri rejects a dualistic rigid opposition of natural physiology of vision and cultural stylistic representation, as supported by the neo-Kantian Panofsky in his seminal essays on the iconological levels, and advocates a more nuanced approach, capable of connecting sensibility and style

Quasi-soggetti e come-se: l\u2019empatia nell\u2019esperienza artistica

Da molti estetologi e psicologi dell\u2019arte la nozione di empatia \ue8 stata ritenuta, a cavallo fra Otto- e Novecento, la chiave di volta per comprendere l\u2019esperienza della fruizione artistica: oggi le neuroscienze hanno rilanciato la questione, grazie alla scoperta dei neuroni-specchio, e il problema \ue8 ritornato al centro del dibattito estetico. Raccogliendo sotto di s\ue9 le dinamiche di immedesimazione, identificazione, fusione, vivificazione, animazione, risonanza, questo versatile strumento concettuale permette di render conto di molteplici aspetti della nostra risposta all\u2019oggetto artistico. Questo paper intende offrire una mappa delle pi\uf9 significative implicazioni sollevate dall\u2019esperienza empatica nella risposta alle principali forme d\u2019arte della nostra tradizione culturale. Una risposta che si correla all\u2019oggetto artistico \u201ccome se\u201d si trattasse non di una mera cosa, bens\uec di un \u201cquasi-soggetto\u201d: un tipo di relazione che mette necessariamente fuori gioco il modello proiettivo, soggettivistico e psicologistico dell\u2019empatia, a tutto vantaggio di un paradigma analogico ed espressivo

Raffaello necesita sus manos : estética, técnica y ciencia del arte en Dino Formaggio

Dino Formaggio\u2019s philosophical investigations on the issue of the artistic technique embrace all the crucial questions related to aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, both en the sense of a theory of sensation and en the sense of a theory of art. Within this frame, this paper aims at exploring en particular the relationship of Formaggio with the German tradition of the \u201cgeneral science of art" (allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft) and the so-called \u201chistory of art with no names\u201d (Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen): en the context of the Italian aesthetic debate his works contributed en a fundamental way to approach under a different and new perspective authors like Fiedler, Dessoir, Utitz, Riegl, whose first reception by Benedetto Croce had interpreted en a deforming idealistic manner

Raffaello ha bisogno delle mani : estetica, tecnica e scienza dell’arte in Dino Formaggio

La riflessione filosofica di Dino Formaggio sulla questione della tecnica artistica chiama in causa tutte le questioni nodali dell\u2019estetica come disciplina filosofica, sia nella sua accezione di teoria della sensazione, sia in quella di teoria dell\u2019arte. In questo contesto, il mio saggio punta a esplorare in particolare il rapporto di Formaggio nei confronti della tradizione tedesca della "scienza generale dell\u2019arte" (allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft) e della cosiddetta "storia dell\u2019arte senza nomi\u201d (Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen): nel contesto del dibattito estetico italiano i suoi testi hanno infatti contribuito in maniera fondamentale a gettare nuova e diversa luce su autori come Fiedler, Dessoir, Utitz, Riegl, che la prima ricezione da parte di Benedetto Croce aveva inquadrato in una prospettiva idealistica deformante.Dino Formaggio\u2019s philosophical investigations on the issue of the artistic technique embrace all the crucial questions related to aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, both en the sense of a theory of sensation and en the sense of a theory of art. Within this frame, this paper aims at exploring en particular the relationship of Formaggio with the German tradition of the \u201cgeneral science of art" (allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft) and the so-called \u201chistory of art with no names\u201d (Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen): en the context of the Italian aesthetic debate his works contributed en a fundamental way to approach under a different and new perspective authors like Fiedler, Dessoir, Utitz, Riegl, whose first reception by Benedetto Croce had interpreted en a deforming idealistic manner.La reflexi\uf3n filos\uf3fica de Dino Formaggio sobre la cuesti\uf3n de la t\ue9cnica art\uedstica re\ufane todas las cuestiones fundamentales de la est\ue9tica como disciplina filos\uf3fica, tanto en su significado de teor\ueda de la sensaci\uf3n, como el de teor\ueda del arte. En este contexto, este art\uedculo intenta explorar en particular la relaci\uf3n de Formaggio frente a la tradici\uf3n alemana de la \u201cciencia general del arte\u201d (allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft) y de la as\ued llamada \u201chistoria del arte sin nombres\u201d (Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen): de hecho en el contexto del debate est\ue9tico italiano sus textos han contribuido de manera fundamental a arrojar una luz diferente sobre autores como Fiedler, Dessoir, Utitz, Riegl, que la primera recepci\uf3n por parte de Benedetto Croce ya hab\ueda colocado en una perspectiva idealista deformante

Archéologie des images et logique rétrospective

Le Vingtième siècle a connu un «cézannisme», en littérature (Rilke, D.H. Lawrence, Gertrud Stein, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, pour ne citer que quelques noms) comme en philosophie (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Lyotard, Deleuze, Maldiney). On a utilisé Cézanne pour «penser en peinture», pour penser en image ce qui ne se laissait penser autrement, ce qui ne pouvait pas être pensé avec les concepts. Mais ce siècle a aussi connu un «manétisme», dont Aby Warburg constitue un représentant éminent. On t..

El Greco at the Ophthalmologist’s

The paper aims at reconstructing the centennial history of the so-called \u201cEl Greco fallacy\u201d, namely the hypothesis that the extremely elongated figures painted by the Cretan artist were due to his astigmatism and not to a stylistic option intentionally assumed by the painter. This hypothesis interestingly and problematically intertwines the status of the perceptual image with the status of the represented picture. While offering a survey of the main positions defended by ophthalmologists, psychologists, art critics and art historians on this optical issue, the essay tries to reject the false alternative between a physiologistic and a spiritualistic approach to art, both based on an unsustainable causalistic assumption. Drawing on David Katz and Merleau-Ponty, the author rather outlines an expressive model in which the optical element in visual arts is not denied, but on the contrary metabolized in the embodied representation