III. The image for children and the image-event

After a visit to a gallery, I had acquired an image that intrigued me so much that I brought it to a friend of mine, a renowned psychiatrist, with whom I had begun a discussion about it. I told him that, at first glance, I had thought this drawing did not belong in a gallery because it seemed naively illustrative.

But my friend Lucian replied:
— You’re confusing image-as-object with image-as-event. What one hangs is a support. What one experiences is an apparition. The image, therefore, is not something we look at, but something that happens. It occurs. It acts.
And that is why it can move us more deeply than an elaborate installation…
— Because it happens. It acts… And that is why it can move us just as much, or even more, than a sophisticated installation: because it takes place within us, not on the wall.

Caught in a whirlwind of thoughts, I repeated his words almost mechanically…

An idea crossed my mind before I could even see it coming… I saw the walls of the gallery as a kind of lake of memory, in which the artworks rise up and sink back down, like shapes of the collective unconscious. Suddenly I found myself speaking like Lucian, who was watching me with a smile — a kind, encouraging smile that urged me to go on.

— What we call “heritage” is a cycle of disappearances and returns… Let me remind you that the word patrimoine comes from paternity, from the father…
I asked him why he was pointing that out. To this he replied:
— Because you were speaking earlier of a child’s drawing… The child, then, would be linked to his father through heritage… that makes him a responsible heir… of what only appears and disappears… Thus, we might imagine that the lone figure on his rock is facing his heritage…

Each exhibition is nothing more than a resurfacing. And we — critics, visitors, spectators —
are the witnesses of these apparitions: those who watch for the ripples of the visible.

To be continued…