Intuition, Logic, Intuition Author(s): Thierry de Duve Reviewed work(s): Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 25, No.

1 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 181-189 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344139 . Accessed: 22/07/2012 11:36
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Critical Response II
Intuition, Logic, Intuition

Thierry de Duve

The sense I get from James Elkins's response (for which many thanks) is that he is not having a critical debate with me so much as with his former self. "I spent several years doing the kind of work de Duve has pulled off with such dispatch," he says (p. 175), and in a footnote he speaks of his "own misplaced labor," to be found in his dissertation, "full of diagrams so intricate [he] ran out of letters of the alphabet and started over with aa, bb, and so forth" (p. 175 n. 9). While I find such candid self-criticism an admirable proof of honesty, and while I wouldn't dare criticize Elkins's thorough and competent work on Jan van Eyck or Paolo Uccello or Piero della Francesca even if he does, I beg him to consider that I don't share his personal trajectory. I have never slept with la dolceprospettiva;that's simply not where I'm coming from. Nor have I ever built 3-D models of Duchamp's The Large Glass or dreamt of drawing an equation between and Holbein's TheAmbassadors. Which is Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere in I in those Elkins's don't passages response where why recognize myself he slips into the first person plural ("We're all recovering addicts here"; p. 177) and speaks of "our favorite interpretive mode-sleuthingand our favorite subject for analysis-the interrogation of subjectivity" (p. 176). The piece I wrote is not about subjectivity at all, and it interprets as little as possible. True, a few paragraphs into the piece a hint or two is given as to my long-term interest in it, and I make some rather elliptical remarks toward the end that indicate where my interpretation might go when the time comes. I am working on a book that will have Manet's Bar
CriticalInquiry 25 (Autumn 1998) ? 1998 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/98/2501-0003$02.00.

All rights reserved.

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at its center, but it is too soon to tell where the book is going to take meI don't fully know it myself yet. The story of this piece is actually quite simple. Three years ago, I was working on something else when, for the sake of some comparison but mostly for the fun of it, I attempted to draw a bird's-eye view of Manet's Bar. After a bit of fumbling, the idea occurred to me that the optical "errors" in the painting might be accounted for with the hypothesis of a rotating mirror. What immediately struck me was the fact that the combination of barmaid and reflected duo is far more consistent with an oblique mirror than with an eccentric viewpoint. The next thing that struck me was that the man's reflection in the mirror could be read--geometrically, optically-as corresponding simultaneously to a man standing on the side and outside the visual pyramid, if the mirror is parallel to the picture plane, and to a man facing the barmaid, if the mirror is oblique. I immediately assumed that the mirror was both parallel and oblique. Whatever Manet's intentions, the fact that one image in the mirror locks together the man's two possible positions in "real" space confirmed my (and everyone else's) initial intuition that he "is" in both positions. There I had an explanation for the riddle of the painting's construction that could be derived from the painting and nothing but the painting. I was pretty sure at the time that someone else had stumbled on the same explanation as I, and left it at that. When I began seriously working on Manet a year later, I realized that no one had, and when TwelveViewsof Manet's"Bar" appeared, that realization became a certainty. I then decided that I should write a technical piece dealing with the geometry of the painting, so as to make my demonstration available to other scholars. The result is the essay "How Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere Is Constructed," which made funny detours before being accepted by Critical Inquiry,but that's another story. Let me now try to attend to Elkins's main objections.

WhatIs Intuitiveand WhatIs Counterintuitive?

Intuition and aesthetic appreciation are always my starting points, whether the work of art under scrutiny is something as highly theoretical as Marcel Duchamp's Fountain or whether it is Manet's Bar. To make that clear, I quoted Kermit Champa: "'Like all of Manet's best works the Bar looks right before it looks wrong, and the latter sensation never com-

Thierry de Duve has written extensively on modern and contemporary art. He is the author of Pictorial Nominalism (1991), Kant after Dubetweenthe Lines (1996) and editor of champ (1996), and ClementGreenberg The DefinitivelyUnfinishedMarcelDuchamp(1991).

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pletely subverts the former"' (p. 143). What looks right in the Bar? Essentially, the intuitive facts that we are facing the barmaid and that our emotional response is prompted by her movingfacingness (Michael Fried's term). Then, what looks wrong? Essentially, the equally intuitive facts that her reflection is not where it should be and that a man is facing her in the mirror who remains unaccounted for in "real" space. Now, you may or you may not want to reconcile the wrong with the right. Not seeking reconciliation may or may not have far-reaching consequences (such as claiming, as does T J. Clark, that "'inconsistencies so carefully contrived must have been felt to be somehow appropriate to the social forms the painter had chosen to show"' [p. 141 n. 11]). Seeking reconciliation, on the other hand, may or may not have other far-reaching consequences. I personally didn't seekreconciliation; I found it in the painting in the shape of a demonstrable construction accounting for both the right and the wrong. Before I found anything, however, my curiosity had been aroused. Certainly I considered the viewer's puzzlement (something subjective) as an aesthetic response to the painting, and the painting's perspectival puzzle (something objective, there for all to see) as the trigger to the viewer's reflection. That's because I have a Kantian, that is, reflexive,understanding of aesthetic intuition. Should you be puzzled by Manet's Bar, and should you be reflexively interested by your own puzzlement, then, as soon as you have noticed the presence of a mirror in the image, you would inevitably be drawn to the laws of optics in order to see if the puzzle can be solved. Two things make me call the puzzle perspectivalrather than simply optical.First, both mirrors and images in strict monocular perspective obey the laws of optics, which exist independently of us. Second, the painting offers one obvious perspectival clue, the left-hand edge of the bar in the mirror. I didn't pick it from Conger's diagram (I was unaware of its existence at the time), as Elkins seems to believe, but rather from the painting itself. When I later discovered, thanks to the X-ray, that Manet had moved the left-hand edge of the bar from where its extension crosses the median line of the painting between Suzon's eyes to a crossing point at her mouth, then I knew that it had significance for the painter. Of course I don't really know that. Call it aesthetic conviction instead of knowledge, but then, don't accuse me of overconfidence in scientific demonstrations. Neither do I know for sure that the vanishing point is at Suzon's mouth. This is the one and only premise one has to accept in order to see the demonstration as a true demonstration. Elkins is right in saying that "de Duve reaches his conclusion twice: definitively at the end of the paper, but also beforehis optical analysis" (p. 174 n. 8). The reason this is so is that in aesthetic matters intuition-that is, reflexive aesthetic first. Whoever wants to challenge this either needs to judgment-comes negate aesthetic intuition in general (in which case all that remains in Manet's Bar is indeed a mere intellectual puzzle) or else convince me that his or her intuition is less counterintuitive than mine. Thus, I admit that

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the premise upon which my demonstration is based-namely, the intuition that the beholder is facing the barmaid-is not itself demonstrable. It is in the nature of aesthetic intuition to claim universal assent without proof-in this case, to assume that all of us experience the painting as a face-to-face encounter. In footnote 16 of my text, I explored the counterintuitive hypothesis that the beholder is not facing the barmaid but is standing, instead, far enough to the right so as to see the reflections of the barmaid and of the man in the top hat where they are. But that in turn would have to be compatible with the direction of the left-hand edge of the bar in the mirror, leading the viewer to climb high above the depicted scene. If we accept that we are facing the barmaid-an impression that is not only intuitive in the most immediate manner but that is also underscored by the emphasized median line (the ridge of the nose, the medallion, the row of buttons, the pleat, and so on)-then the vanishing point can only be where the median line crosses the orthogonal that extends the left edge of the marble countertop in the mirror-that is, at Suzon's mouth. Elkins doesn't challenge this, though he calls it a guess founded on a thought experiment. (What thought experiment?)

WhatIs Economicaland WhatIs Less So?

Once the vanishing point is established or accepted, the line of sight on which the viewpoint is situated is fixed, too. But with a fixed line of sight, an immobile parallel mirror, and characters on the stage who stay put, you will explain neither the puzzle nor your puzzlement. Something or someone must be moving. I made it a binary choice, as Elkins aptly noted: either the viewer or the mirror moves. In fact, once I begin to unfold the demonstration, it becomes clear that both the mirror and the man in the top hat have moved between the first and the second phase of the demonstration. Is this more or less economical than having the viewer move to where he or she sees exactly what we see in the mirror? Let's try to plan it out. To do this rigorously, we need to move the painter/ spectator's viewpoint along the arc of a circle whose center is, as in my demonstration, the projection of the painting's median line into the mirror, by an angle twice as wide as the one it took to rotate the mirror in my demonstration. Diagram 5 shows the result. I'm not arguing that a few degrees less is what makes one hypothesis more economical than the other. What I'm arguing is that if you adopt the solution of moving the viewer, the number of other inexplicable things in the painting multiplies. For one thing, you still need to postulate two viewpoints and thus the conflation of two moments, since the lateral view onto the scene is so oblique that it makes a frontal depiction of the barmaid all but impossible (not counting the fact that she is intersected by the visual pyramid). And,

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DIAGRAM 5.-Plan of the scenography of Manet's A Bar at theFolies-Bergere. Hypothesis with viewer moving to the right so that the reflections of the man and the barmaid correspond to the painting.

as I already stated, a single lateral viewpoint would send the viewer far up in the air, as a perspective view drawn from a center of projection compatible with both diagram 5 and the only orthogonal in the painting would easily demonstrate. Next, why would Manet move his viewpoint so far to the right? We know that the finished painting evolved out of the sketch, and a mere glimpse at the distance between the barmaid and her reflection in the sketch tells you that the painter's viewpoint is not as far

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to the right as in the Courtauld Institute's picture. Third, Manet painted the barmaid's reflection four times, moving it gradually to the right, something more easily done with a pivoting mirror (even a huge one) than by transporting the easel, especially for someone who was painting seated because of a terrible leg condition. (The mirror, by the way, need not be as big as the one in the painting to capture the image of the duo. Furthermore, as I said in my essay, we don't have to imagine Manet working with the accuracy of my demonstration to understand that he grasped that the two mirror images of the man would lock together-which is what really matters.) But perhaps I am mistaken in defending my solution as more economical than alternative ones. "The search for economy is itself suspect," Elkins writes, on the grounds that "perspective is by nature uneconomical" (p. 172). This is a surprising assertion. As a means of depicting the world, strictone-point perspective is extremely economical; not only does it simplify the work of the draughtsman enormously by rendering a host of decisions, such as the diminution of objects, automatic, but it also deliberately neglects a number of aspects of the visual world (aspects that three-point perspective and chiaroscuro might restore) in favor of a simplified view. What Elkins means, I suppose, is that works of art (of the kind that fascinated him-works such as van Eyck's TheArnolfini Marriage or Uccello's The Flood) almost never obey strict one-point perspective. Granted. But that shifts the ground of the discussion. Elkins accuses me, in fact, of reducing the complexity of Manet's art to the one phenomenon in the Bar prone to a positivistic account. It's an unwarranted accusation as long as I have not offered my interpretation of Manet's art. Meanwhile, I claim that my demonstration is economical in exactly the sense that elegant, concise mathematical formulas are economical, or that scientific reductionism in general is. Indeed, seeking economy is the hallmark of scientific endeavor, and the demonstration I undertook is a scientific endeavor-undertaken, not because I am generally interested in speaking the forensic language of problems, clues, codes, ciphers, and so forth, but because in this particular, indeed unique case we are dealing with a problem of construction that, for once, is susceptible to proof. This is rare enough in the history of art. If Elkins, using his incomparably better knowledge of geometry, optics, and perspective, had successfully proved that my demonstration was incompatible with the visual evidence in the painting, I would have yielded. But he hasn't. Instead, he urges us (again, the lapse into the first person plural) to resist the temptation to be scientific: "we have to resist because, if we don't, we risk missing the real pleasure of the works" (p. 175). Do I have to speakof my pleasure in Manet's Bar to prove that I didn't miss it? Words prove nothing in matters of feeling, and besides, my pleasure in Manet was not the subject of the essay.

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WhatIs ConclusiveProof and WhatIs Not?

This question hinges on two others: What is it exactly that I tried to prove? and, Are geometry and optics adequate vehicles of proof by virtue of their mathematical nature? The latter question finds a simple pragmatic answer in this: Whenever we encounter vertical mirrors (whether in images or in real life), we can treat them in plan as axes of symmetry. The position and distance of mirror images relative to their real counterparts, as well as the equality of the gaze's angle of incidence and angle of reflection no matter where the viewer is, simply follow. Real, pictured, and virtual spaces get equal treatment, and their scenography in a bird'seye view is independent of the placement of the picture plane, of the viewpoint of the perspective, and of the "focal length" of the visual pyramid. The latter three parameters, together with the left and right borders of the picture, then become a regulative device with which to adjust the scenographic parameters (width and depth of the bar counter, distance between counter and mirror, placement of the characters), so as to arrive at a plan as close as possible to the perspectival view. Since the painting offers no hint of distance points, none of these elements are fixed, as Elkins rightly notes. To conclude from this that any of them (Elkins speaks of the man in the top hat) "could be adjusted practically at will, producing a wide range of positions all in accord with the painting" is, however, a gross mistake (p. 173). You'd be surprised how little leeway there is when you try to keep all the parameters in check at once. The diagrams I have offered are the result of a long trial-and-error process, and they are not yet in perfect accord with the painting (they will never be, though they might perhaps still be improved). I, too, would put the mirror a little closer to the barmaid, if this wouldn't make it impossible to detach her from her mirror image; I would prefer to see the man stand this side of the picture plane, at the front angle of the bar, if this wouldn't pull him too far away from the barmaid in the mirror; and I would opt for a shorter distance between viewpoint and picture plane, if the left side of the "real"bar didn't need to be placed about an inch beyond the frame of the picture in order to correspond to its mirror image. The diagrams are as plausible as they can be, but they are theoretical.It is theoretically necessary that the man be moved along the arc of a circle whose center is also the pivot of the mirror for his two images to coincide perfectly. In practice, I didn't think for a minute that Manet proceeded this way. When all is said and done, the really troubling thing is not that the diagrams remain too theoretical to be demonstrative; it is, quite to the contrary, how closely all the parameters fall into place according to theory given the certainty that Manet's procedure must have been far more empirical and far less precise. This is in itself, if not proof, at least a very strong reinforcement of the thesis that the painting is conceived as the theory would have it constructed.

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Is that what I wanted to prove? Elkins says it is an "unexpected coincidence" that (and here he quotes me) "'one and the same reflection of the man in the top hat, in a mirror which in the meantime has pivoted, should serve for his two successive locations "in reality.""'No doubt it could be a coincidence. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this, however, is not that "it would still not be true that it proves the thesis" (p. 173) but, rather, that Manet didn't know what he was doing, an uncomfortable thought that I nevertheless took into account when I said that I didn't intend to explain how Manet conceived and constructed his painting, but only how thepainting is conceived and constructed. But the rose's reflection on the right is enough to prove that Manet knew what he was doing. So, what is, in fact, the thesis? The thesis is that what Elkins calls an "unexpected coincidence" is "what clinches the demonstration, and indeed, makes it a true demonstration" (pp. 173, 152). The logic of the painting's construction is locked into place by the co-incidence,indeed, of two mirror images indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps I should have added (because this is what really clinches it) that whereas the man's reflection is compatible with both mirrors, the woman's is compatible with the oblique mirror only. The co-incidence is not coincidental. Which brings me to a few concluding remarks weaving together Manet's use of perspective, the issue of uncertainties, and my avowed long-term interest in crossing Michael Fried with T J. Clark. In my essay, I qualified that interest thus: "to play the question of the viewer's place when he or she faces a painting thatfaces him or her against the question of the uncertainty of representation when it is representativeof an uncertainty that constitutes the social identity of the public-all at the precise moment in the history of painting when an emergent modernism could still lay claims on 'the painting of modern life"' (p. 139). I was pleased to see that Elkins shares that interest: "the most important question is the degreeof uncertaintywe want to ascribe to the relationships among the figures (including ourselves, and including also the painter, as he is implied)." Then he adds, "De Duve's thesis has the least room to maneuver" (p. 179). I would hope so. Isn't the task of art history, as a scientific endeavor, to strive for a lesser degree of uncertainty when it comes to interpretive relevance? Perhaps even all the more so since the "uncertainty we want to ascribe to the relationships between the figures" is what needs to be understood as such. The uncertainty I would indeed hope to have offered less room to maneuver is the interpretive fuzziness of some historians who do not deem it necessary to attend preciselyto the visual evidence in front of them the better to use the art as their own inkblot test. It was my impression that, though fascinating and sometimes very enlightening, most essays in TwelveViewsof Manet's"Bar" went slightly overboard in the direction of exuberant projective fantasies, and, if this is a trend, then I wonder whether it is in the interest of the New Art History. Manet's uncertainty is an altogether different matter,

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especially in the Bar. It is so obviously willed, and so manifestly the product of a clear mind that knew very well what it was doing and of a hand that could rely blindly, so to speak, on the painter's intuition, that the idea was irresistible-at least to me-that uncertainty was itself a clue. Perhaps I haven't emphasized enough the incredibly playful game of hideand-seek, of revelation and conceit, of clues carefully planted and It is lackadaisically contradicted, that goes on in A Bar at theFolies-Bergere. here that perspective sets in. A summation (such as Conger's) of the various perspectival clues in the painting leads nowhere, since they cancel each other out. Something more like subtraction is required in order to focus on the main uncertainty, which is the all-too-blatant contradiction between the couple in the mirror and the mirror itself. The Bar is a composite image, I claimed in my essay. It is as if the couple's image has been excised from the oblique mirror and pasted into the parallel mirror. The idea of transferring figures seen from one angle (here, thanks to an oblique mirror) into surroundings seen from another angle didn't seem to me at odds with the notions that the painting as a whole was "in perspective" and that the picture plane was perpendicular to the gaze. I agree with Elkins that such Photoshop procedures (if he will allow me the anachronism) were current practice all along in perspectival painting, even in "careful, analytically minded paintings" (p. 171). Actually, I had in mind the example of the two figures in Raphael's The School of Athens who stand at the extreme right of the painting holding globes that appear as circles instead of ellipses, as they would if they had been drawn in the same central projection as the architecture.' What is true of the globes is, of course, true of the figures themselves; I was, therefore, utterly familiarized with a picture plane containing a multitude of tiny picture planes oblique to it-very much my understanding of Alberti's intarsia, by the way. What is certainly not common practice, and actually extremely peculiar, is the possibility of a double reading attached to such "pasted-in" figures. There is to my knowledge no precedent in the whole history of art to a mirror image lending itself to such a reading, not even Las Meninas. As Joel Snyder has demonstrated, the king and queen in the mirror cannotbe the "real" king and queen who are posing for the painted Velkzquez but mustbe the king and queen portrayed on the canvas whose back we are beholding in Las Meninas. Velkzquez relies on our inadequate decoding of the perspective in his painting to generate the fascinating ambiguity that has led so many viewers astray, Michel Foucault included. But with Manet's Bar things are different. The fascination is similar; the sense of ambiguity is there, too; but, in fact, the image offers two unambiguous, yet incompatible, readings. The intimation is that Manet relied on our adequate decoding of both readings in this case, and that he did it to further our puzzlement, not to assuage it.
1. See M. H. Pirenne, Optics,Painting, and Photography (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 121-22.