Voir – connaître : Optique, représentation, voyance

Abstract

On the margin of the general problematic of the «synthesis of Arts» , the problem of vision definitely deserves particular attention in the framework of Silver Age studies. It is certainly possible to relate the painter Mixail Matjušin’s works on the «enlarged vision» to those by Jules Romain on the «extra-retinian vision» , and their further elaboration in the works by René Daumal. This constant interest, in France as well as in Russia (and certainly elsewhere) towards the functioning of the eye and its impact on the artistic creation is to be placed in a larger context of the 19th century scientific discoveries in optics, the works on the 4th dimension, and, finally, the theory of relativity. The objective of this article is to show how these purely scientific discoveries influenced artistic research and provided, at least partially, the theoretical foundation for it, even when the resulting theory itself gradually became fanciful, or at least unscientific. In a similar fashion, it is possible to relate the physiological notion of «peripheral vision» (Helmholtz) to the «enlarged vision» (Matjušin) and, a posteriori, to the discovery of abstraction. Furthermore, this problematic does not concern exclusively painting : vision theories have also had an important impact on poetry, which can be demonstrated by the experiments of Aleksandr Tufanov in the 1920s which followed the works by Matjušin or by the research of Daumal in the same years, which followed the works by Romain. All these elements allow to establish, in line with Arthur Rimbaud’s famous «Letter of the Clairvoyant» , a certain rapprochement of this problematic with the enthusiasm of certain representatives of the Silver Age for the phenomenon of clairvoyance.