The "Protofigural" and the "Event"

Abstract

Translated by Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez, Tobias Keiling, Ian Alexander Moore, and Yuliya Aleksandrovna TsutserovaThe turnthat is taken by Heidegger in matters of art and aesthetics is less sharp than those carried out by him in other areas of his thinking. This should have become clear in Cezanne chapter [of Kunst als Enteignis1]. The reason that such is less than evident-and that artwork essay of 1935-36 still looms large as philosophy of art of Heidegger-lies in textual and publication history [of Heidegger's writings].Yet today, when one sets out to pursue with Heidegger2 one can avoid including attempts of late and latest Heidegger in matters of art and aesthetics as well. Future attempts at exploring such paths will receive support in now partly published notes on Klee from Heidegger's Nachlass.3 However, unnecessarily raised expectations concerning degree of elaboration and resolution of these sketches cannot be even remotely met: Heidegger's Klee notes remain a challenge for every interpreter; and latter-no less than in case of Cezanne-will be needed all more because of conjectural nature of these notations. It is now becoming more and more clear that (and why) Klee-beside Cezanne and East Asian art-marks one of three defining pinnacles of Heidegger's late art paths.The turn toward Klee is associated, in Heidegger, with a destructuring [Destruktion] of traditional-metaphysical-Western art, and alongside it, with a critique of his artwork essay of 1935-36. In opposition to such traditional art, Heidegger reserves for Klee an exceptional place, one he does not concede to abstract art following Klee; he rather accuses it of same metaphysical essence he attacks in art working in an objective manner. This is to be presented in section 1 and demonstrated exclusively on basis of Heidegger's Klee notes. The theme of section 2 will be properly Heideggerian perspective on, and interpretation of, art of Klee. In particular, following vanishing points of Heidegger's interpretation will be elaborated: prefigural [ Vorbildliche] as a kind of definition of preoccupation of earlier art (2.a), gained from new standpoint of protofigural [ Urbildlichen] in art of Klee (2.b). Heidegger seeks to grasp this specificity of Klee's art by means of concepts of bringingforth [Her-vor-bringen].''plasticity [Bildsamkeit] of and seeing (2.c). His innovation with regard to production and reception is to be discussed in section 2.d, Not images, but states; theme of last section will be the visible and invisible (2.e).i. Between Metaphysical Art of Past and that of Today: The Work of Paul Klee; Heidegger's Critique of Artwork EssayIn Klee notes, Heidegger continues what he had already begun in Contributions to Philosophy (of Even) and in marginalia of artwork essay:5 he subjects artwork essay to an immanent critique that keeps to path of his thought. He observes that artwork essay thinks historically-the works that have been. It is no longer constructing of and setting forth of as thematized in artwork essay, which are to be set as a task for future art, but rather bringing about of re-lation from out of [the]6 event of fugue.This step back, i.e., grounding of load-bearing categories of artwork essay, world and earth, within event, does not pertain solely to Heidegger's earlier attempt at philosophy of art. It pertains to art itself! In artwork essay, he had sought (and believed to have found) someone in Western art who would have been in solidarity with his struggle against metaphysics, and had therefore intended to protect Western art from aesthetico-metaphysical encroachments. Now he comes to suspect art itself-and not merely its interpretation and theoretical self-understanding-of possessing a metaphysical essence: 'Art' as such [is]7 of a metaphysical essence. …