Defacement

Abstract

Consider the most trivial occurrence—that of an icon, an object of worship, before it is lost in “a work of art”: the visible surface of the wood there gives to be seen, surrounded by a face, two eyes; these two painted eyes, however, permit themselves to be intentionally pierced (thus under a mode that is irreal) by the invisible weight of a gaze; in short, in these two dots of basically black paint, I discern not only the visible image of a gaze that is (like all gazes) invisible but, provided that I acquiesce to it, this gaze in person, which, in fact, envisages me. Through the merely painted icon, I discover myself visible and seen by a gaze that, though present in the sensible, remains invisible to me.1 Jean-Luc Marion