Diderot's hieroglyph: myth of language and birth of art criticism

Abstract

The emergence of Diderot's critical discourse on images, in the wake of his encyclopedic experience, rests on a faith in the resources of knowing reason. His art criticism proceeds, and never departs, from an overall project of knowledge which implies that single and unique works of art can be subsumed under general rules as well as general conditions of unity and universality. This also means that art criticism can have a scientific basis, although this was never clearly evidenced in the critical prose of Diderot. This claim to a scientific basis relies on the renewed interest in the origin of language, thus implying that to grasp the essence of painting, one had to understand the way language was formed. That verbal thinking underlies the understanding of painting in the eighteenth century is not surprising. This essay will specifically stress that this particular dimension acquired its legitimacy through a mythical construction of the common origin of image and word elements, so as to underline that the enunciation of the truth on painting is structured like a fiction.