Lost Distance

"As far as I am a physical being, I am always present one place and only one place in space. Yet my sensation is not dependent upon this specific space. Nor is my sensation bound to my physical presence; in fact, it is capable of being elsewhere. In my perceptual space, far away from my actual physical presence, my sensation is free to roam at large. The omnipresent state of my sensation is in decided contrast to the specific space inhabited by my physical presence.

During the state of sensation the universe has absolute priority over the subject. Identification with the universe occurs during the state of sensation so that no trace of the individual remains; there is only universe. In the state of sensation we exist as devoid of individuality as regards the universe.

These are the words of K.E. Løgstrup, concerning sensation. His concern is of a metaphysical nature or should I say theological. Whether or not one shares his specific concern it is obvious that Løgstrup is dealing with one of the major experiences, perhaps the major experience behind modern art. Modern art has retained, and at times even emphasized the suspension of the basic ideas and concepts with which we orient ourselves in our daily existence.

The modernist work of art - (and I know I am generalizing here to the point of absurdity) - regards as its possibility or rather as its function the sense of infinity, a sort of radical alienation, a principle of undecidability, the boundary shattering volume, which enlarges the idea of the possible, while, at the same time, revealing its limitations. Since the philosopher Edmund Burke wrote his treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1759) the concept of the sublime has been employed to characterize the kinds of power that since Kant, has been invoked regarding the work of art. However much agreement there has been about the description of the sublime, so much disagreement there has been about where the sublime is actually located. Is it the universe itself (as according to Løgstrup) that makes itself present when sensation breaks down the barriers of symbolic order? Or is it the individual that suddenly is able to break through to a new perception? As different as these two questions are, they both could point from the work of art itself.

Not everything that we regard as art contains a sense of the sublime; the sense of suspension when objects burst upon our subjectivity. Not all art permits reality to insert itself upon the belief that it is the break that creates knowledge. There are types of art which do not intend to push back the boundaries of the possible, but prefer to dwell with that which is. This type of art, all things being equal, is realistic. Its idea has fulfilled the invention of photography. Its method is the linear perspective.

Perspective and familiarization are closely related. Perspective organizes the world according to laws; space is structured so that the eye can orient itself in regard to distance, priorities, time, and hierarchy. The effect of linear perspective's invention was no less to convince a whole civilization that it now possessed an infallible means of representation. This system revealed itself as an automatic and mechanical producer of axioms concerning the material and spiritual world.

Employing linear perspective as a weapon, the landscape painter was able to conquer nature that previously had been virtually impregnable in its majesty. In such paintings, we orient ourselves as we normally do in our everyday existence: right is to the right, left is to the left, and by God, there is a ruined castle over there. The perfect illusion of this type of painting invites the viewer with no further ado. There is no distance between the viewer and the painting; it is just like being there, we say. If there is no distance regarding the painting, then it is mainly due to the fact that the painting is a mirror image of the world which the viewer inhabits. Yet, this is a world that is totally structured through its use of distance. First and foremost, the distance between subject and object.

In modernity, this familiarization of space came to be regarded as dubious. It reveals a disastrous, paradoxically self-destructive principle seemingly rooted in Aufklärung itself: realization ends in unreality. Using human means to perfect the human we end up with a result that is inhuman. That is when art is forced into exile. Art regards itself as a contradiction of rationality and must therefore necessarily use its distinctive aesthetic nature with the language of knowledge. The key word, then, becomes: suspension. Only suspension can cause a crack in the wall of convention, thus revealing something entirely different.

In a linear perspective painting, the pictorial space consists of a constant measurement of distances. No matter how chaotic the motive, order is always re-established through the sublimated distance that linear perspective makes feasible. Through the use of linear perspective we literally are able to look down into oblivion at a safe distance. How then is it possible to avoid the deadly self-assured combination of distance and identification on the part of the viewer? There are two possible means: one is emphatic distance and the other is lost distance. Even though distance has a different connotation in the two terms, its intention is the same.

Emphatic distance attempts to eradicate the relationship between the art work and the viewer. That distance is emphasized: means that any attitude of identification and understanding is made impossible by the radical nature of the work itself. The artwork emphasizes its distance to the world of the viewer via its objective of suspending this world and presenting itself as a legitimate alternative to it. This distance makes the artwork seem removed or unresponsive to the viewer. It becomes unknowable, non-communicative. The experience of such a work is essentially of a negative nature since there is no coping with the artwork. The eye of the viewer is never free when confronting such a work. It is constantly blinded by the self-illuminousness of the work, its cut through as in the Andalusian Dog - by aesthetic terrorism. Emphatic distance is not especially well suited to painting as such. There are too many representational elements demanded by the picture; and representation defuses any form of radical alienation.

Lost distance is better suited to pictorial means since it is not primarily concerned with the relationship between the viewer and the work of art, but the relationships within the work itself. Lost distance means essentially that the orientation provided by linear perspective is no longer present. This does not sound especially earth-shaking and neither would it be if it were just a case of linear perspective itself disappearing from the artwork. What has actually disappeared is the possibility of an overall view-point to which linear perspective contributed. Any synthesis remains localized and thus becomes nearly a contraddictio in adjecto.

This notion of lost distance is a well-known technique in Oriental art, especially in Chinese painting (see illustration no. 2). Here it is seen not merely as a dismissal of linear perspective and recognizability, but as a simultaneous assertion of a new and lost form of perspective. The painting's pictorial space seems from the onset easily taken in at a glance. However, a closer study reveals that this pictorial space contains a variety of spaces, a variety of perspectives in various orders. The consequence of this discovery is not merely the fact that the eye must shift its angle of vision if the glance is shifted just a millimeter. Rather the important thing is that the eye is forced to abandon its customary reference point and its own point of view. Thus it is no longer necessary to construct a pictorial universe by measuring the distance from the eye to the perceived object. Distance is lost in so far that it no longer projects itself onto the consciousness of the viewer, but enacts itself within the picture. Thus lost distance is able to affect the relationship between the viewer and the work of art.

Whereas emphatic distance resisted the glance of the viewer, lost distance invites the eye into the picture. However, this invitation is similar to the sirens Odysseus heard on his voyage: beauty has its price. Each presence excludes, of necessity, the presence of something else. This is the paradox of concentration: only by looking away from something is it possible to see something. Standing in front of a picture, we do not wish to look away from it, but rather, in order to see the whole of it. We wish to see all of it, and, as far as possible, to see it as a whole. How then is it possible to see the variety of order and visual worlds that the lost distance aesthetic invokes? How can one free one's vision so that the eye can dwell in between the local and the universal? Is it at all possible to see in such a state? If it is possible it requires a qualified form of distraction; a nearly literal ability to temporarily see with each eye separately. It requires a sense of vulnerability, an emphatic feeling of being able to exist under conditions which are not created by oneself.

The lost distance aesthetic releases the eye from its prison so that it no longer identifies itself with the picture, or the object of vision. Instead it enables the eye to move according to the ever-changing conditions of the picture.

But is lost distance then really a loss of all distance or is it instead a transformation of distance as space to a distance in time? The question then is, is it possible to let distance in time be lost in a picture? It requires that in the distracted state, there is a sensibility for simultaneity. Is it possible to see more than one of a picture's visual conditions at one time?

It is important to maintain that the aesthetic of lost distance must retain distance as a basis for its deconstruction. Space and timing (space and time) are our only modes of perception even in regard to that which intends to abolish them. Total suspension is impossible since it must include the very medium in which it is formulated. The condition of pure suspension and lack of distance eludes us as soon as we attempt to grasp hold of it, since in this very attempt a distance is created.

Yet, there is a possibility to work along the edge of this: to elongate time, initiate gaps, point towards porousness, occasionally reveal an evanescence. To leave a fact in a state of meaninglessness is the opposite of what Roland Barthes considers the development of a fable (that is, to learn a lesson or glean some sort of meaning from each fragment of reality). Furthermore, Barthes claims in this deconstruction of the modern King Midas syndrome: that all that the touch turns into time, space and meaning: One can imagine a backward book, one which refuses at any time to elaborate a single meaningful sentence; it would be a book of haiku-like poetry.

The desire for a total lack of meaning to be replaced instead by being itself is in its intensity and presumed similar to the mysticism of ancient mystics. The limitation of this desire is its possibility of ever forming an aesthetic basis as more obvious in the fact that the experience of total loss eludes any statement, presentation or representation. Its absence in its pure form can not be described in a painting. Nor can lost distance be painted. Sensation with lack of distance can not be perceived.

To work with lost distance is to work in loss and in the space where it is lost. Loss of distance, loss of orientation, loss of synthesis and symbolizing, are established through loss itself. In the work of Dorte Dahlin this functions in a dual manner: first, in what we can call the historicity of vision; and secondly in the phenomenology of vision.

Even though the eye has retained the same anatomical basis since man began seeing, vision itself, has a history. This is what Gombrich meant when he remarked that "the innocent eye is blind." The strategy, where distance can be lost, can be grounded in the history of vision.

of vision. It is a strategy combining the notion of the romantic landscape, supremacist construction or expressionist discharge. The whole thing is assembled in a picture which disregards the law of never dividing the picture in two halves.

Even though vision has its own history, there seem to be certain phenomenological principles involved in order to see at all. One of these is referred to in perceptual psychology, when it is said that to see is always involved with seeing a figure against some sort of ground or background. The strategy where distance can be lost can thereby be incorporated in the phenomenology of vision. It is a sort of play between ground and figure. It can be seen as the play in an apparently monochrome texture where tiny accents in the quickly glanced grayness beat representation at its own game while not removing the sense of affection.

The duality consists in the fact that the two strategies are not separate from each other. There is an inter-play between phenomenology and history and this is precisely what prevents the picture from self-destruction. This means that the picture does not refuse its own speaking. It does not attempt to say the unspeakable, to paint pictures of absence or to describe the lost distance. What Dorte Dahlin's paintings attempt to do is to make it possible for distance to be lost.

It responds to any conventional concentration with disappearance or loss. It challenges the viewer to be more than just a viewer and to participate in a space that displaces itself whenever it is caught by the eye.

Poul Erik Tøjner, Ph.D. on Danish Literature and Artcriticism at the paper Information.
Translated by John Richard Towle

Bibliography:
Barthes, Roland: Af mig selvv., København 1988.
Løgstrup, K.E.: Ophav og Omgivelse, Metafysik III., København 1984.
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Iconology, Image, Text, Ideology., Chicago 1986.
Weiskel, Thomas: The Romantic Sublime., Baltimore & London 1976.

CUBISM confirmed what we already knew from medieval painting: that an image space can exist without a vanishing point—the infinitely distant point connecting all lines angled toward the picture plane. But how does the vanishing point behave in itself—can it thrive without space? This question arises during a visit to the newly opened Stalke gallery on Vesterbrogade, where Dorte Dahlin (b. 1955) is exhibiting her latest paintings.

Dahlin's works are constructed as polyrhythms where several universes meet: A further dimension with pure geometric shapes, a different one with Chinese-like Dutch landscapes created by the painting's texture. And finally—as a kind of intermediary form—there is a roof-shaped small section resembling remnants of an exploded picture space. Vanishing points?

What happens in these images is partly reflected in the exhibition title, Mi Yuan—Chinese for "distant distance." According to the catalog, its starting point is the perspectival shortcut and dispersion, which is a step into mass communication. When, however, this is formulated in Chinese, it is because the image planes’ coordination is an attempt to create a silent parallel perspective, leading the viewer into a meditative zone between the dispersed universes.

The effect is emphasized by the fact that the images are not abstractly different but share elements rooted in the hand, such as the almost tactile image where the still life-like smoothened shapes are traversed by a ruler. Despite this, Dahlin’s work possesses a captivating monumental appeal, and the exhibition at Stalke is by no means irrelevant.

JW

New Collage

'MI YUAN' is an exhibition that Dorthe Dahlin can be proud of. Not least because it is presented quite effectively and tastefully in the spacious and well-appointed venue that Stalke has lent its name to. To address the latter first: the former furniture store in a bright courtyard on Vesterbrogade 15 is something of a coup when you consider Vesterbro as a budding environment for advanced gallery operations.

The 600 square meters—a significant increase in both exhibition and office space compared to the now-abandoned basement location in Admiralgade—have, after months of renovation, been transformed into a delightful visual resonance space for five large paintings that Dorthe Dahlin has completed over the past year.

Her artistic path has been quite changeable, attentively following the abrupt fluctuations of the postmodern era, but it has never been as architecturally and monumentally elegant as now. The steel-framed paintings are massive in format and include vertical or horizontal alignments between image elements of vastly different character. Surfaces, with her neo-geometric clarity only interrupted by a darker stroke or a dark circular figure, contrast with areas where the color either flows freely or is applied with an unsettled pulse. Untrained souls might interpret it as a stark collision between neo-romantic foggy realms—something Dorthe Dahlin, for example, has displayed at Den Frie—and an influence, especially from Mogens Møller's large clean surfaces. However, the catalog text suggests a deeper explanation:

The modern human has lost their overview; their vision is fragmented between contradictory and composite information. Such chaos cannot be perceived or described unambiguously. Instead, the painting depicts the "lost distance" of the mass communication society with its abundance of images and visual worlds. This is referred to as "the aesthetics of lost distance as a project initiator" (Poul Erik Tøjner). Put simply, the paintings sustain "dispersal" as a form of life (the inability to grasp the whole at once) and connect "dispersed" ways of describing the world: partly central perspective, as mastered by the Renaissance, and partly with the aid of Chinese bird and parallel perspectives. One could also say that Dorthe Dahlin has invented a collage that simultaneously illustrates the philosophy of lost overview and decorates the large white-walled spaces.

PETER M. HORNUNG/politiken 29.9.1988

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