Image and transtextuality
This enquiry starting grid focuses upon an image
analysis in following a perspective, which consists
of the relation it has to anything it does not stand
for: all of the phenomena, categories or the
elements that preceed it and which fundamentally
condition it. From this angle, the entire registry of
the image unveils a hermeneutical dimension that
we shall submit to the layering idea. So, from this
point on we shall say that a layered image will
always be an impure image, made up of several
levels of image, consisting of multiple
semnifications, and usually having rich historical
references.
1. What is basically the actuality of the matter?
It is no longer a surprise that postmodernity, among
its often paradoxal forms of cultural manifestation
goes espacially towards evoking history,
reconstructing it after the roaring period of the
modernist avantgarde, when the need for novelty
supresses the need for historical continuity. That
mechanism finds a powerful ally in Ihab Hassan’s
conception, one of the most important theorist among
other names such as J.F. Lyotard, Gianni Vattimo etc.
The post modern world - as far as the socio political
project perspective is concerned - lives under what
Marshal Mc Luhan defined as the „global village” .
So it is not at all an accident the fact that
contemporaneity proves its highly developed
inclninations toward mixing and blending, culturally
speaking, for hybrid, be it in matters of temporal to-s
and fro-s (blending cultural past with the present) or
the intertwining different cultural identities of the
moment. The ideea of hybrid or mingling is not
uncommon to our topic, the layerd image assuming
from the very start such a dimenssion.
2. What is transtextuality and to what extent can it be
related to the registry of the image?
In order for you to get better the idea of layerd image
we shall bring forward an analysis that Gerard
Genette applies on literature domain, but which is
thought as applicable to any other research fields. We
are talking about analyzing transtextuality, notion
included in his study: “Palimpsests. La literature de
second degree” and defines it as “anything that comes
into a direct relation or a less obvious, more hidden,
with other texts. In this respect, transtextuality
includes all the layring phenomena of a text.
Considering both notions, the one of “text” and that of
“image” as a specifically culturally and qualitatively
charged, we may use the French theorist analysis to
the image field.
3. What are the transtextuality subspecies?
In the mentioned study Gerard Genette presents 5
subspecies: paratextuality, metatextuality,
intertextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality.
Thus we shall squeeze out of the analysis upon these
five subs also the applications they provide,
analogically, with the visual arts.
3.1) Paratextuality
At the text level we can identify it by a text auxiliary
signs such as: titles, inter-titles, signatures,
illustrations, notes, etc. On the image level, the image
title, for instance, is not a part of it directly, yet, it
remains related to it such as signature or the author’s
notorious-famous name.
René Magritte: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
3.2) Metatextuality
At the text level it speaks about the comment relation
which unites a text to a second one to which it refers
oftenly on critical terms without necessarily quoting
it. As for the image level we identify those images
that took shape out of the author’s (critic’s one) need
to complete it by commenting upon other images or
realting his comment upon them. Also, without
quoting them necesarily. Often we can find images
that use a specific manner of a specific artist into a
totaly diffrent context.
Claudio Bravo: “Before the game”
3.3) Intertextuality
At the text level it presumes a relation of co-presence
between two or among several texts which actually
consists of two texts intertwined. A text is present
inside the other. It is easily noticable in the quotation
technique. At the image level, the „quotation” of a
visual element belonging to a constitutive detail
belonging to another image is a sign of intertextuality.
Roberto Camargo: “La Muerte de Cristo Segun
Hans Holbein”
3.4) Hipertextuality
At the textual level it is understood as a balance
between hypotext and hyper text in which the latter
maintains the structure and even several elements of
the former alterating it. A literary example to illustrate
the matter would be Daniel Defoe s novel, „Robinson
Crusoe” versus Turnier’s „Vendredi ou les Limbes du
Pacifique”. At the image level we recognize the
„d’apres” theme in which different painters create
pastiches that allude to other painters’ works,
maintaining the basic structural composition, the
chromatic or other constitutive elements offering new
interpretations and conferring them different
meanings according to the actual context thus turning
the whole assembly into an entire new message.
Gustave Dore: “Dante’s
Inferno, The gate of Hell”
Sandow Birk: “Dante’s
Inferno, The gate of Hell”
William Blake:”Dante s
Inferno”
Tom Phillips: “Dante s
Inferno”
3.4) Architextuality
At the literary level we see it in the both abstract and
general zone of the genre/species which determines
the genre of a literary work that influences the
manner the work finally turns out in the end. On the
visual level we see this subspecies in the visual arts
genres: painting, sculpture, graphics etc , or going
further to portrayal, equestrian sculpture. Worthy to
mention is that intermedia genres do reconsider in
debates the problem of architextuality to the extent to
wich, for instance, the installation is a hybrid genre in
which we find remixed and redefined other genres
such as sculpture or video art.
4. The instalation “ARS dantesca combinatoria”
of and the concept of transtextuality
“Ars dantesca combinatoria” is an installation, made
by Teofil Ioan Stiop, whose constructing is
particularly a transtextual foramatting one. Here we
deal with a space in which video art combines to
bidimensional image presented non/parietal. The
resulted images are the consequence of a sum of
graphical signs that belong to the illustrations made
for the Divina Comedia along the centuries. They are
reassembled back into the context and cut out ,
basically their existance is constructed on the blanks.
Also, the entire structure of the installation is
founded on the mold of the tripartite dantean poem.
What it states is it shall remain continuously related
to the poem as well as the illustrations it comes out
of. In this respect, with the illustrations as paratext to
the poem(backing the poem), and hypotext to the
installation images that are hypertext to the
illustrations, but, yet, paratext, too, to the poem. The
whole scenery is constructed on the rules of transitive
archtextuality of the installation genre where the
advised lecturer in
dantean imagery will instantly reckon the
intertextuality of the presented details. As for the
message, in order to bring about another layer to the
fore ones, the installation makes a connection
between the image graphic hypotext (a text unveiling
the direct message/ encoded message/ beyond direct
expressing words/image/graphic), the Divina
Comedia’s world beyond, and the world beyond, the
post hystorical world of postmodernity with the
purpose of invoking a reenchantment to purify.
Everything goes by through all layred inferno
of meannings, through the impure image, through the
fire. The graphic elements are burned in the process
with a laser plotter (the mark of the highest
technology), and impressed by smoke technique (the
mark of primeval technology).