Portrait de l'artiste en copiste Thomas Kling, Sigmar Polke et l'ekphrasis

Abstract

Ekphrasis – which roughly means the representation of a visual work of art through words – does not reveal an object to the reader in a transparent way but, on the contrary, screens the reader from it. Indeed, as some kind of meta-discourse, it takes part in the challenging of mimesis and of the referential illusion in modern times. That can be verified in S. Polke’s painting The Copyist and in T. Kling’s poem -pasbild (polke, « the copyist » 1982). What is at stake is showing how Polke stages the ambiguities of mimetic representation : do we see a copyist, a writer, or maybe a painter ? What is he copying ? Nature, an original book or a copy itself ? What status can we grant colours and light ?, etc.). In his poem, Th. Kling explores the enigmatic relationship between reality and copies through the use of a style which is at the same time fragmented, diverse and ironical. By hinting not at his work but rather at various (fictitious) discourses on his work and on old and modern techniques used for copying and for photomechanical reproduction, Kling dissolves the representation of Polke’s painting and thematises that dissolution, therefore abolishing the old hierarchy between the original and the copy. This way, his ekphrasis turns into a verbal analogon of Polke’s post-dadaist paintings. Polke’s scribe, revisited and demultiplied by Kling, becomes close to R. Barthes’ « scripteur » : as a copyist of intertexts which always pre-exist, he escapes the paradigm of origin and originality.