"Per fingere le parole la poesia supera
la pittura, e per fingere fatti la pittura supera la poesia [...] Ma la pittura
non per sapere i suoi operatori dire sua ragione, è restata lungo tempo
senza avvocati, perché essa non parla, ma per sé si dimostra e
termina ne' fatti; e la poesia finisce in parole, con le quali come briosa se
stessa lauda"
(Leonardo da Vinci)
Pictorial signs graft onto the regular canvas/text of life with their specific
distance, whether little or big, disengaged from conventionality, representation
and pure and simple transcription.
They are "iconic" interpretants in the sense developed by C. S. Peirce, they
are based on likeness without an original, namely not on likeness as result
of a comparison with an original, but as the shifting itself that creates a
sign by establishing a relation with what is not supposed to be either originally
or naturally linked. In this referring that makes likeness a differing, the
iconic depiction tries to get near to what is given as other - and the meaning
of this depiction is this shifting itself beyond what is both given and visible:
an icon is a sign that owns a character that will make it a significant even
if its object doesn't exist, as a trace marked with chalk which represents a
geometrical line (Cf. Peirce).
Artistic intuition leads, through logical ways, to the emerging of something
other, something "alike" to life but that does not identify it!
Pictorial signs could be compared with the breaks of the world of jazz (M.
Leiris) which take their distances from the piece (yet dealing with it) in order
to create an effect of differing/deferral that strengthens its resonance by
enervating its musical impact.
In order to catch on canvas the same deferred effect of alikeness, the artist
does not look at life in a direct, immediate, frontal way. Rather, the artist
sets him/herself apart from the ordinary world so that he or she can deform
it or, in any case, alter it by using pictorial breaks.
Painting does not portray bodies, it does not portray landscapes, it does
not portray light.
Painting is (with)drawing of identity, painting is its parody. Painting draws
by (with)drawing: likeness as drawing one's self portrait by (sur)rending (to)
the other.
Painting does not want to reproduce, it has no model to represent or story
to tell (G. Deleuze) and it is not "art of collection" (K. Malevich) but it
is a work of translation (and not of transcription), it is a creative language
rich in never ending possibilities, combinations and interferences between signs
that differ and that are others in respect of the codes of dominion and globalization.
The pretension of "rendering the visible" reassures and quietens. Pictorial
work, instead, has the capacity of obsessing "the world of objects", of disquieting
life and of breaking the monotony of any wall on which it is hung on - by remaining
suspended and not fixed - exactly because of its powerful structural inclination
to the icon, to the "figural" (G. Deleuze), to likeness, to differing/deferral.
