The Restitution of Truth in Painting: Vincent Van Gogh's "Shoes" and their Explication in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida.

Abstract

Using Jacques Derrida's polylogue "Restitution, From truth to size" as a starting point of analysis, the article examines the problem of truth in painting. Derrida, referring to the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger and Meyer Sсhapiro over Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Shoes", not only reconstructs the details of this correspondence discussion, which stretched for many years, but also makes a sharp criticism of academic discourse, both philosophical and art criticism, equally limited in its total claim to knowledge truth in painting. Derrida comes to the conclusion that despite the external differences and internal opposition, the positions of Heidegger and Sсhapiro are completely in tune. Recreating the main directions of Derrida's analysis, the author reveals the idea of the "restitution of truth" in painting, embedding it in a more general philosophical context of the deconstruction of art. Restitution is inevitably associated with the appropriation and re-attribution of the meanings and images of an artistic work. This is exactly what happened in the "mirror speculation" of Heidegger and Sсhapiro, who sought to appropriate the truth of the "shoes" from Van Gogh's painting. Heidegger puts the shoes "on the ground", gives them to a peasant woman, Shapiro writes about their belonging to the artist Vincent himself, but, in the end, both famous professors only project their own identity onto Van Gogh's painting and force them to tell their truth, while embedding it in the framework of academic discourse.