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Histoire de l'art. L'esprit des formes I
«L'esprit des formes est un. Il circule au-dedans d'elles comme le feu central qui roule au centre des planètes et détermine la hauteur et le profil de leurs montagnes selon le degré de résistance et la constitution du sol. C'est la permanence de cette force qu'il s'agit de retrouver et de mettre en lumière sous la diversité et la variabilité des symboles qui la dissimulent. Je crains de ne pas être parvenu à maintenir, entre les pages de ce livre, cette circulation grandiose d'énergie qui rend aussi sûrement solidaire la moindre image d'oiseau trouvée dans les sables d'Égypte d'un aéroplane actuel, que la plus effacée des silhouettes de mammouth gravée sur les parois du Fond-de-Gaume, de la pagode de Srirangam ou du Parthénon de Périclès. J'aurais voulu aussi montrer comment la statue arrachée d'un temple quelconque reproduit les profils mêmes de ce temple entre ses plans dont les ondes mouvantes vont saisir dans l'espace, pour les incorporer à elles, les passages et les reflets qui déterminent la peinture et font naître de la peinture, par leurs rythmes enchevêtrés, des harmonies invisibles d'où la musique jaillira. J'aurais voulu, enfin, réduire à quelques rapports évidents l'innombrable complexité des relations révélées par la variété innombrable des images, et la profondeur des abîmes que leur étude creuse en nous.»
Élie Faure.
Élie Faure.
- GenresArt
454 pages, Paperback
Published January 23, 1992
About the author
Élie Faure
163 books22 followersJacques Élie Faure (4 April 1873 – 29 October 1937) was a French medical doctor, art historian and essayist.
Faure was called "the greatest art critic of the 1920s and 30s". He is the author of the History of Art, considered a historiographical pillar in the discipline.
Dr. Faure was drafted as a military doctor at the front line during the First World War. He was quickly traumatized by the fighting and moved to the rear of the battlefield.
His book, La Sainte Face (The Holy Face), published in 1917 retraces his time as a frontline doctor from August 1914 to August 1915. The second part, "Far from the Fire", describes his convalescence in Paris and Côte d'Azur.
Faure was called "the greatest art critic of the 1920s and 30s". He is the author of the History of Art, considered a historiographical pillar in the discipline.
Dr. Faure was drafted as a military doctor at the front line during the First World War. He was quickly traumatized by the fighting and moved to the rear of the battlefield.
His book, La Sainte Face (The Holy Face), published in 1917 retraces his time as a frontline doctor from August 1914 to August 1915. The second part, "Far from the Fire", describes his convalescence in Paris and Côte d'Azur.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 16, 2008
I don't know why the english versions of this book aren't listed, but I did read it in English, not French (sorry Prof. Winston!) It's huge though - the library copy I got was volume two, and even that is 2 separate 500 page books bound together. (I'll read volume one when the wait list gets to me.)
Faure is probably the most enthusiastic art historian I've ever read. Even if you don't know the works he's writing about, and even if you aren't thinking about them as you read, his language is a fucking avalanche of embodied emotion. I only started reading him b/c I love the passage that Jean-Paul Belmondo reads to his daughter at the beginning of 'Pierrot le Fou', but that is just the beginning. Faure makes language tremble with vitality, and you can almost hear his pen shaking like Artaud's as he writes (he was just able to channel his energies a bit better, but his spirit is quite similar) - and that's even in translation.
examples:
"Wheras every living spirt, worthy of domination and strength, struggles unceasingly to individualize himself, to separate himself from the world; he [ Rembrandt] accepts it wholly. The world merges with his being to such a degree, all external movements re-echo in his flesh so suddenly and so intoxicatingly that he no longer distinguishes that which is himself from that which is the world, nor realizes that all the things of the world are hymns which are within him. It is because there was, between the world and himself, a pitiless interchange, a kind of silent frenzy of desire, reborn immediately after the possession.When he had not succeeded in dragging to his room some outcast in order to lure to his mouth and his eyes all of his old tired soul, when he did not find his older brother there, battered and hollowed out by his work, or his son Titus with his eyes of shadowy flame, or Hendrickje always ready to leave the stove and her dishcloth to put an amber necklace around her neck, undress, and give her flanks the embrace of light and of the mind, he must needs, to appease his fever, stand before a mirror, grimace, laugh, look grave, feign fright or give utterance to his suffering. Life for him was a continuous surprise and discovery. It did not allow him an hour of respite. All his misfortunes, his misery, and the oblivion into which he slipped were nothing as compared to the increasing torture of being unable to grasp the flight of things and perceive the time which was left him to live and to learn, becoming briefer and slipping away more quickly, in the measure that the universe widened its limits and flowed back into him, ever more moviong and more complex and more seecret. The approach of death is not really dramatic save for him who feels that he will never possess life."
and
"We live by our original innocence; but when movements of ideas are born around us and encircle us little by little, like great waters around an island, if our innocence refuses to extract from them the nourishment which will renew it, a frightful aridity succeeds the bursting forth of fruits which rendered it so savory. That which kills is not learning: it is the failure to feel what one learns. Innocence is immortal to him who is ever seeking. It is reborn of its ashes, and the new presentiment appears only when experience and study have destroyed or confirmed the older presentiment."
Faure is probably the most enthusiastic art historian I've ever read. Even if you don't know the works he's writing about, and even if you aren't thinking about them as you read, his language is a fucking avalanche of embodied emotion. I only started reading him b/c I love the passage that Jean-Paul Belmondo reads to his daughter at the beginning of 'Pierrot le Fou', but that is just the beginning. Faure makes language tremble with vitality, and you can almost hear his pen shaking like Artaud's as he writes (he was just able to channel his energies a bit better, but his spirit is quite similar) - and that's even in translation.
examples:
"Wheras every living spirt, worthy of domination and strength, struggles unceasingly to individualize himself, to separate himself from the world; he [ Rembrandt] accepts it wholly. The world merges with his being to such a degree, all external movements re-echo in his flesh so suddenly and so intoxicatingly that he no longer distinguishes that which is himself from that which is the world, nor realizes that all the things of the world are hymns which are within him. It is because there was, between the world and himself, a pitiless interchange, a kind of silent frenzy of desire, reborn immediately after the possession.When he had not succeeded in dragging to his room some outcast in order to lure to his mouth and his eyes all of his old tired soul, when he did not find his older brother there, battered and hollowed out by his work, or his son Titus with his eyes of shadowy flame, or Hendrickje always ready to leave the stove and her dishcloth to put an amber necklace around her neck, undress, and give her flanks the embrace of light and of the mind, he must needs, to appease his fever, stand before a mirror, grimace, laugh, look grave, feign fright or give utterance to his suffering. Life for him was a continuous surprise and discovery. It did not allow him an hour of respite. All his misfortunes, his misery, and the oblivion into which he slipped were nothing as compared to the increasing torture of being unable to grasp the flight of things and perceive the time which was left him to live and to learn, becoming briefer and slipping away more quickly, in the measure that the universe widened its limits and flowed back into him, ever more moviong and more complex and more seecret. The approach of death is not really dramatic save for him who feels that he will never possess life."
and
"We live by our original innocence; but when movements of ideas are born around us and encircle us little by little, like great waters around an island, if our innocence refuses to extract from them the nourishment which will renew it, a frightful aridity succeeds the bursting forth of fruits which rendered it so savory. That which kills is not learning: it is the failure to feel what one learns. Innocence is immortal to him who is ever seeking. It is reborn of its ashes, and the new presentiment appears only when experience and study have destroyed or confirmed the older presentiment."
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review