Bataille, Georges - Van Gogh as Prometheus

7/21/2019 Bataille, Georges - Van Gogh as Prometheus

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Van Gogh as PrometheusAuthor(s): Georges Bataille and Annette MichelsonReviewed work(s):Source: October, Vol. 36, Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing (Spring, 1986), pp. 58-60Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778550.

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Van Gogh as Prometheus

How is it that towering figures, reassuring in their power of persuasion,emerge among us? How is it that within the chaos of infinite possibility certainforms take shape, radiating a sudden brilliance, a force of conviction that ex-cludes doubt? This would seem to happen independently of the crowd. It isquite generally agreed that once one stops to linger in contemplation of a paint-ing, its significance in no way depends upon anyone else's assent.This view stands, of course, as a denial of everything that obviously tran-spires in front of canvases placed on exhibition; the visitor goes not in searchof his own pleasure, but rather the judgments expected of him by others.There is, however, little point in stressing the poverty of most viewers andreaders. Beyond the absurd limits of present custom and even through the rashconfusion that surrounds the paintings and the name of Van Gogh, a world canopen- a world in which one no longer spitefully waves the crowd aside, but ourown world, the world in which, at the arrival of spring, a human being dis-cards, with a joyous gesture, his heavy, musty winter coat.Such a person, coatless, drifting with the crowd-more in innocence thanin contempt-cannot look without terror upon the tragic canvases as so manypainful signs, as the perceptible trace of Vincent Van Gogh's existence. Thatperson may, however, then feel the greatness that he represents, not in himselfalone: he stumbles still at every moment under the weight of shared misery-not in himself alone, but insofar as he is, in his nakedness, the bearer of untoldhopes for all those who desire life and who desire, as well, to rid the earth, ifnecessary, of the power of that which bears no resemblance to him. Imbuedwith this wholly future greatness, the terror felt by such a man would becomelaughable-laughable, even, the ear, the brothel, and Vincent's suicide; didhe not make human tragedy the sole object of his entire life, whether in cries,laughter, love, or even struggle?He must perforce marvel to the point of laughter at that powerful magicfor which savages would, no doubt, require an entire drunken crowd, sus-tained clamor, and the beating of many drums. For it was no mere bloody earthat Van Gogh detached from his own head bearing it off to that House (the


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troubling, crude, and childish image of the world we represent to others). VanGogh, who decided by 1882 that it was better to be Prometheus than Jupiter,tore from within himself rather than an ear, nothing less than a SUN.Above all, human existence requires stability, the permanence of things.The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure ofstrength; such expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents thestrongest possible threat. The feelings of admiration and of ecstasy induced bythem thus mean that we are concerned to admire them from afar. The sun cor-responds most conveniently to that prudent concern. It is all radiance,giganticloss of heat and of light,flame, explosion;but remote from men, who can enjoy insafety and quiet the fruits of this great cataclysm. To the earth belongs thesolidity which sustains houses of stone and the steps of men (at least on its sur-face, for buried within the depths of the earth is the incandescence of lava).Given the forgoing, it must be said that after the night of December '88,when, in the house to which it came, his ear met a fate which remains unknown(one can only dimly imagine the laughter and discomfort which preceded someunknown decision), Van Gogh began to give to the sun a meaning which it hadnot yet had. He did not introduce it into his canvases as part of a decor, butrather like the sorcerer whose dance slowly rouses the crowd, transporting it inits movement. At that moment all of his painting finally became radiation,explo-sion,flame, and himself, lost in ecstasy before a source of radiant ife, exploding,inflamed.When this solar dance began, all at once nature itself was shaken,plants burst into flame, and the earth rippled like a swift sea, or burst; of thestability at the foundation of things nothing remained. Death appeared in asort of transparency, like the sun through the blood of a living hand, in the in-terstices of the bones outlined in the darkness. The flowers, bright or faded, theface of depressingly haggard radiance, the Van Gogh sunflower - disquiet?domination? - put an end to all the power of immutable law, of foundations, ofall that confers on (many) faces their repugnant aspect of defensive closure.This singular election of the sun must not, however, induce absurd error;Van Gogh's canvases do not-any more than Prometheus's flight-form atribute to the remote sovereign of the sky, and the sun is dominant insofar as itis captured. Far from recognizing the distantpower of the heavenly cataclysm(as though only an extension of its monotonous surface, safe from change, hadbeen required), the earth, like a daughter suddenly dazzled and perverted byher father's debauchery, in turn luxuriates in cataclysm, in explosive loss andbrilliance.It is this that accounts for the great, festive quality of Van Gogh's painting.This painter, more than any other, had that sense of flowers which also repre-sent, on earth, intoxication, joyous perversion-flowers which burst, beam,and dart their flaming heads into the very rays of that sun which will witherthem. There is in this deep birth such disturbance that it induces laughter; howcan we ignore that chain of knots which so surely links ear, asylum, sun, the


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OCTOBER

feast, and death? With the stroke of a razor Van Gogh cut off his ear; he thenbrought it to a brothel he knew. Madness incited him, as a violent dance sus-tains a shared ecstasy. He painted his finest canvases. He remained for a whileconfined within an asylum, and a year and a half after cutting off his ear, hekilled himself.When all has happened thus, what meaning remains for art or criticism?Can we even maintain that in these conditions, art alone will explain the soundof crowds within the exhibition halls? Vincent Van Gogh belongs not to arthistory, but to the bloody myth of our existence as humans. He is of that rarecompany who, in a world spellbound by stability, by sleep, suddenly reachedthe terrible boiling point without which all that claims to endure becomes in-sipid, intolerable, declines. For this boiling point has meaning not only forhim who attains it, but for all, even though all may notyet perceive that whichbinds man's savage destiny to radiance, o explosion,toflame, and only thereby topower.

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Bataille, Georges - Van Gogh as Prometheus