Palimpsest talk in Paris

Last Thursday, March 15, the talk / lecture about the Palimpsest I could present once again at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The same lecture I did in February 2010 at the PhDarts conference in The Hague. The lecture was organised by Gilgian Gelzer, teacher from the drawing department. Many students showed up and listened quite concentrated. The next day, Friday March 16, individual talks with several students about their drawings made the ENSBA visit fruitful.

Within a reasonable time I have the plan to publish both texts, about the Palimpsest and about Idolatry & Iconoclasm, here on this blog.

short story about IDOLATRY in 5 images

Nicolas Poussin, the golden calf

The best way to make people forget an idolatrous rite is to put another rite in its place.

Enguerand Quarton, piéta

The Christians followed the same principle by building their churches on the ruins of pagan temples and by observing their feasts on the dates of pagan festivals.

Hanri Jacobs, midi / solange, paysage losange

For the same reason, Moses had to institute many dietary and sacrificial prescriptions in order to occupy the terrain held by the Sabians and their idolatrous ways,

Henri Jacobs, quartet

"so that all these rites and cults that they practised for the sake of the idols, they now came to practise in the honor of god."

Henri Jacobs, two drawings of a symbolon

The divine strategy was so successful that the Sabians and their once mighty community fell into oblivion. (Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian)

the idol shop

Illustration from a Moravian haggadah of 1737, based on the printed Amsterdam haggadah of 1712.

Abraham and the idol shop of his father Terah.

Terah, Abraham's father, was an idol worshipper. One day Terah had to leave the store in which he sold idols. He left Abraham to manage the store in his absence. A man came and wanted to buy an idol. Abraham asked him "How old are you?" And the man responded "Fifty or sixty years old." Abraham then said "Pitiful is the man who is sixty and worships idols that are only one day old." So the man left in embarrassment.
Once came a woman with an offering of fine flour. She said to Abraham "Here, take it and bring it before the idols." Abraham stood up, took a stick, broke all the idols, and put the stick back in the hands of the biggest idol among them. When his father returned he asked "Who did this to them?" Abraham answered "I will not deny you the truth. A woman came with an offering of fine flour and asked me to bring it before them. So I brought it before them and each said "I shall eat first." Then the biggest one stood among them, he took a stick in his hand and broke them all." So Terah said to him "Why do you mock me? Do these idols know anything to speak and move?" And Abraham replied "Won't your ears hear what your mouth speaks?"

Midrash Rabbah, Noah, portion 38, section 13, translated by Shai Lavi

iconoclasm II

The idea for a ban on images, how and why is it born?

In the ten commandments, inscripted on two stone tablets which God wrote with his finger and delivered by Moses, it is on a very important second place :

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
1 : Do not have any other gods before me.
2 : You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3 : You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

Because images can be powerful and therefore dangerous?
People are simple and scared and therefore they like to worship an image, of a golden calf for example. Is it that bad? God is a jealous god and that is very human quality. He or she or it has no form, god is fire, or light, sound, clouds, thunder and lightning.
Why is that jealous god so afraid of image making?
Abstract or figurative images are they equal from power?
The most powerful images are pornographic images?

"The more power pictures have, the less we seem to know about how they operate"
(Peter Weibel in Iconoclash).
To combat the figurative image, you must first acknowledge, admire and confess the figurative image?
Idolatry and iconoclasm are finally dealing with the pornographic image?
Powerful images in the vast flood of images today are images of what? Of sex, of violence, of war, of death? 


Images don't cry...