Peter Greenaway: BOOK / contents
Stojan Pelko
Writing to Vermeer
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Jan Vermeer, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, c. 1662-64, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam
Jan Vermeer, A Lady Writting, c. 1665-66, National Gallery of Art, Washington
D.C.
Writing to Vermeer
What was it that attracted us so strongly
in Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract?
Perhaps construction would be a proper term for something which gives,
literally, a three-dimensional view of a particular image: firstly, the
image is incorporated into a series of minutely structured episodes -
let us say, the "outside of the image"; secondly, its framing
within the shot (with various draughtsman's instruments) empties it from
within and thus creates the "inside of the image"; and thirdly,
using the formula of the impossible bargain between the lady (customer)
and the draughtsman, every image is radically duplicated with a kind of
perversity - for which reason I choose not speak of the depth of the image,
but rather of its distortedness or, better, its radical otherness. If
construction is the proper word for such a resulting complex image, which
manages to expose its outside, inside, and otherness at the same time,
then perhaps the film-maker's activity, which brings us to such an image,
could be called constructivism.
No image exists by itself, it has to be composed, constructed, torn out
of the flow of visible images, articulated with other torn-out images;
only then it might become clear what has really preceded its genesis,
what hides behind the picture.
Note
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Barbara Bulc for her great
kindness, without which this text would never be written.
Stojan Pelko
Born on 27 September 1964 in Bre¾ice. MA in philosophy,
BA in extended studies (DEA) of audio-visual research at the Université
de la Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III. He is a film publicist and essayist.
He held lectures in Warwick, Urbin, Cerisy-la-Salle and Paris.
In the early nineties he was the editor-in-chief of the Ekran film magazine.
He conducts a course of seminars in film theory and history at the Department
of Sociology of Culture at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.
He is preparing his doctor’s thesis (under dr. Slavoj ®i¾ek) about the
genesis of Deleuze’s philosophy of film, entitled How To Think Film?
Selected bibliography: Joseph Losey, Kinoteka, Ljubljana, 1989; »Ocividci«,
Filmski pogledi, Problemi, Ljubljana, 1994; Pogib in pocas. Premene podob
Wima Wendersa, SH - Apes, Ljubljana, 1998; Matja¾ Klopcic, Slovenska kinoteka
(in print).
The authors he translated from French to Slovene include Lacan, Deleuze
(Image-mouvement, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?), Virilio (La vitesse
de liberation) and Baudrillard (Le crime parfait).