Oldal 37 [37]
OCR
LAURENS DE Vos The one will say: I can’t see the object that I want to represent, because it is what it is. And the other: I can’t see the object that I want to represent, because I am who I am. Those two kinds of artists have always existed, those two kinds of impediments, the impediment-object and the impediment-eye. But these impediments have been taken into account. One has been able to adapt. They were not part of the representation, or hardly at least. But here they are part of it. The biggest part I would say. What impedes painting is painted. Geer van Velde is an artist of the first kind (in my hesitant opinion), Bram van Velde of the second. Their painting is an analysis of a state of privation, an analysis in which the first one borrows his terms from the outside, light and the void, and the other one from the inside, darkness, plenitude, phosphorescence." Endgame is Beckett’s dramatic translation of the poetics he recognizes in the van Velde brothers’ oeuvre. Not only is his art criticism on their paintings an almost explicit comment on his own aesthetic stance, more than any other play Endgame serves as the artistic counterpart of these essays. Not coincidentally, a quotation that Beckett will later spin out in this play precedes the first of these articles and has also served as an inspiration for the title: THE CUSTOMER: God made the world in six days, and you, you are not even capable of making me some trousers in six months. THE TAILOR: But sir, look at the world, and look at your trousers.” Endgame is centered on the fundamental opposition between Bram’s darkness and Geer’s light. The place that is occupied by Hamm and Clov seems to have 1 Beckett: Disjecta, 136; my translation. French original: “Car que reste-t-il de représentable si l'essence de l’objet est de se dérober à la représentation? Il reste à représenter les conditions de cette dérobade. Elles prendront l’une ou l’autre de deux formes, selon le sujet. Lun dira: Je ne peux voir l’objet, pour le représenter, parce qu'il est ce qu’il est. L'autre: Je ne peux voir l’objet, pour le représenter, parce que je suis ce que je suis. Il y a toujours eu ces deux sortes d'artiste, ces deux sortes d'empêchement, l'empêchementobjet et l'empêchement-oeil. Mais ces empêchements, on en tenait compte. Il y avait accommodation. Ils ne faisaient pas partie de la représentation, ou à peine. Ici ils en font partie. On dirait la plus grande partie. Est peint ce qui empêche de peindre. Geer van Velde est un artiste de la première sorte (à mon chancelant avis), Bram van Velde de la seconde. Leur peinture est l'analyse d’un état de privation, analyse empruntant chez l’un les termes du dehors, la lumière et le vide, chez l’autre ceux du dedans, l'obscurité, le plein, la phosphorescence.” Ibid., 118; my translation. French original: ‘LE CLIENT: Dieu a fait le monde en six jours, et vous, vous n’étes pas foutu de me faire un pantalon en six moins. LE TAILLEUR: Mais Monsieur, regardez le monde, et regardez vortre pantalon. + 36 +
