Foreningen Periskop - Forum for kunsthistorisk debat
Abstract
Umberto Eco’s concept of ratio difficilis accounts for semiotic processes that are often termed iconic. It borders upon a relation in which rules are not followed, but invented, in Eco’s version of Kant’s reflexive judgment. Reflexive judgment is at work in aesthetic judgment and in teleological judgment. Both relate to forms of nature and exceed the domain of understanding by implying finality. Gilles Deleuze seizes upon notions from Leibniz in order to invent a “divergent use of faculties” whereby we can grasp the generating forces of organic individuation that remain obscure to empirical conceptualisation. Proposing a ratio difficilior, we may conceive of a correspondence between organic individuation as cascade of individuating events, and events as expressed by works of art. Differences between works of art may be approached from the viewpoint of different types of organic individuation. Fibonacci numbers and surface tension forms are common to both plants and animals, but the concept of plant reiteration of growth patterns allows the circumvention of an extrinsic gestaltist approach to repetitive sculptural structures in favour of an intrinsic genetic viewpoint of individuatory cascades. A similar viewpoint applied to the difference between paratactical (“archaic”, “primitive”) and hypotactical (“classical”) organisation of statues can be derived from the difference between animal species that exist as individuals, and those that exist as colonies
