Gravitational Twofoldness: About Watteau’s Faux-pas

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Abstract:

In Watteau’s Faux-pas, it is impossible to know whether the young man pushes or pulls the woman lying on the ground. Gravity is here used to create an ambiguity not only concerning the direction but also the intention of the figures, and about the forces which determine the action of the characters – the consequence of a fall due to chance or will. But, even deeper, it makes the beholder aware of the fact the picture is an image which can betray our senses : the static representation being such that it leaves open the interpretation of the movements. It can be related to Richard Wollheim’s notion of “twofoldness” to describe the capacity of the beholder to simultaneously perceive the picture as an image and as a material object. This double nature of the picture was already important in the “Querelle du coloris” at the end of the 17th century in France. What is at stake is a physical conception of pictorial illusion, replacing the old geometrical model, which has to be associated with the development of new knowledge about forces at the same period : generally speaking, Newtonianism, but also, more precisely, new questionings like the study of friction (tribology) or of elasticity.

Biography:

Étienne Jollet is Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He studied Art history, History, French literature in various institutions : Ecole du Louvre, University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, University Paris VII Denis-Diderot, Oxford University, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. His work follows three main directions. The first is the study of painting and sculpture of the 17th and 18th centuries (Watteau. Les fêtes galantes, 1994 ; Chardin. La vie silencieuse, 1995, Figures de la pesanteur. Fragonard, Newton et les hasards de l’escarpolette, 1998, to be translated at Zone Books) or the notion of place in the still-life (La Nature morte et la place des choses. L’objet et son lieu dans l’art occidental, 2007). He is currently preparing a monograph on Watteau (Watteau. Le simple, Cohen&Cohen). The second is methodology and historiography of art history, from art criticism in the 18th century (he edited in 2002 the complete works of the first major French art critic, La Font de Saint-Yenne) to more recent figures, with a special interest in Alois Riegl (he co-translated and published the French edition of The Netherlandish Group Painting (2007); he developed a study of temporality in visual arts and about the background (Le fond de l’oeuvre, 2022). The third is the link between art and power as in Jean et François Clouet (1997) or in the book on the French royal monuments of the Ancien régime he is currently completing, dealing especially with the notion of « ground » (La Figure et le Fond. Les monuments publics aux rois de France à l’époque moderne, Genève, Droz, to be published).