Plaire, instruire et émouvoir : le rôle du lecteur dans la définition de la visée de l’œuvre d’art

Abstract

This paper deals with the kinds of works of art — in this case Rembrandt’s famous “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” — that link the esthetic function to the documentary function. Both of these functions can be actualized or virtualized to a greater or lesser degree, depending on context parameters (an exhibition location), but above all on the viewer’s standpoint. The viewer could receive the work of art in a reflexive way and in a “what appears” mode, or on the contrary in a transitive way and a “what I see mode”, based on his/her encyclopedic competences. The paper compares two different readings, the one from Masquelet and Bouchet, and the other from Sebald’s Rings of Saturn. The first two authors find in the image what their medical competences allow them to recognize: the documentary function. Sebald, on the other hand, is more interested in the treatment of the corpse, the composition, the pictorial and plastic details, and the “esthetic visible” for a reflexive reading, at the expense of a “common visible” for a transitive reading.

Keywords

• art
• iconicity
• image
• rhetorics
• tensivity