The Art of the Encounter. A review of Zsuzsa Baross, Encounters: Gérard Titus-Carmel, Jean-Luc Nancy, Claire Denis

• Published in: Postmodern Culture Vol. 26; no. 1
• Main Author: Bogue, Ronald
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Denis, Claire; Motion pictures; Nonviolence; Philosophers; Vibration; Violence; Writing
• ISSN: 1053-1920; 1053-1920
• DOI: 10.1353/pmc.2015.0024

[...]the artist and philosopher can stage encounters, if not control them, by assembling images and concepts in experimental combinations, awaiting the arrival of an event, and then, should it arrive, composing paintings, films or texts that capture and amplify the force of that event. The encounter’s effects may be shown but not predicted, and Baross’s aim is to make her non-book itself a “showing (a ‘monstration,’ to borrow the term of Jean-Luc Nancy, rather than a demonstration)” of the consequences of encounters: “resonances and echoes, montage and variation effects that from a distance join distant texts, texts and images, a writing and a painting, painting and drawing, thought and cinema, the cinema and the body” (2-3). The 159 drawings, identical in size, but smaller than the painting (70 cm x 60.5 cm), are in mixed media: “chalk, crayon, acrylic wash, charcoal, lead pencil, and—cut or torn, then pasted on the subjectile—thin often transparent ‘Asia’ paper, itself in smooth pastel color” (20). Baross’ book includes a photograph of the exhibition space, as well as color reproductions of the Grünewald altarpiece, Titus-Carmel’s corresponding acrylic painting, and 67 of the 159 drawings.