Painting: Poignancy and Ethics

Abstract

This brief paper sets out some speculative propositions which arise from the experience of the encounter with painting, both as producer and spectator. In particular, it seeks to expand upon the event of being ‘moved’ by painting and seeks to register the shift in inclination which is enacted through this movement. It investigates, albeit in a provisional form, the affect of poignancy and the way in which the poignant might be said to be stirred by loss and the way in which particular kinds of loss intersect with the more generic condition of loss which is a defining characteristic of painting. It proposes that the poignant acts as a catalyst which prepares the ground for the reception of previously unforeseen, and more proximal, intersubjective relations. The encounter with painting is proposed as a minor, but nevertheless significant, corollary to the ‘Face to Face’, the exorbitant demand which Emmanuel Levinas proposed as the very foundational event of ethics.