Hubert Damisch e Stephen Bann: uma conversa

Abstract

Having studied with Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Francastel, Hubert Damisch (1928) raises as a key figure in the epistemological renewing of the disciplinary field of art history, having opened it up for the contributions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, anthropology and semiotics, while assigning to it a unique theoretical scope – far beyond the traditional jurisdictions that have set apart art history from the concerns of the theory of art. A jazz musician in his youthful, and attracted firstly by film before being driven towards visual arts, Damisch have always claimed a theoretical density for the field of art history, where he would work from a multifarous horizon of interests – painting, architecture, literature, photography, ethnology. He has produced a crucial reflexion on the logics of image, being author of referential studies on the subject, such as Théorie du nuage: pour une histoire de la peinture (Paris: Seuil, 1972), L’Origine de la perspective (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), Le Jugement de Pâris: iconologie analytique, (Paris: Flammarion, 1992), Un Souvenir d’enfance par Piero della Francesca (Paris: Seuil, 1997) and La Dénivelée: à l’épreuve de la photographie (Paris: Seuil, 2001). His oeuvre shows a singular and unconventional way of dealing with art history, marked by his methodological freedom to move with boldness between the art of the present and the past. Damisch has teached at École Normale Supérieure and afterwards at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. This interview, given to a group of art historians, theoreticians and art critics, and conducted mostly by the art historian Stephen Bann, editor of Oxford Art Journal, originally appeared in a special issue of this publication [vol. 28, n. 2, 2005, p. 157-181], as a result of a conference dedicated do Hubert Damisch’s work. The conference was promoted by the journal in partnership with Tate Britain, in October 2003. Besides Stephan Bann, the discussions also involved the participation, as interviewers, of Margaret Iversen, John Goodman, Stephen Melville and Yve-Alain Bois.