DOI Heft:
Zwrot kinematograficzny w praktyce i teorii sztuki / The Cinematic Turn in Art Practice and Theory
DOI Artikel:Lipiński, Filip: Cinematic art (history) and Mieke Bal's thinking in film
Zitierlink:https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/artium_quaestiones2020/0021
Cinematic Art (History) and Mieke Bal's Thinking in Film 15
rience of the object under discussion.28 Although visuality became the object
of particular interest to Bal, she has been adamant about not essentializing vi-
sion and the immanent aesthetic impurity of images.29 Similarly in her more
recent work on diverse aspects of film and the cinematic, nowhere can one
find any attempt to either universalize or historicize the impact of cinema on
arts and its theory, not to mention according it the umbrella term "cinematic
turn."30 However, if we tentatively agreed that there is a tendency, even if not
a dominant one, to think cinematically, to "think in film," and to "practise
film," as both an artistic and theoretical endeavor, it is difficult not to "frame"
Bal (again, one of her preferred concepts), even against her will, into some
kind of theoretical and practical "movement" around what is broadly defined
as film, of concepts and practices leading to rethinking art and its histories.
What follows, then, is an attempt to trace the ideas related to film and the cin-
ematic in Bal's writing and point to the most productive aspects of her "think-
ing in film," especially the diverse ways of understanding movement and the
question of temporality. Even if Bal often uses art history as a negative point
of reference, exemplifying a conservative field, entrenched in its own convic-
tions and procedures of evaluating and analyzing art objects, I would like to
believe that her work is in fact also one of an art historian, one who agrees to
the necessity of operating within the transformed regime of knowledge and to
a redefinition of what art and history mean today. Implicitly, her publications
testify to the challenges and benefits of an encounter between art history and
film (studies). As Deleuze remarked in a quote aptly used by Bal in a chapter
on "cinematic" aspects of Edvard Munch's painting, "The encounter between
two disciplines doesn't take place when one begins to reflect on another, but
when one discipline realizes that it has to resolve, for itself and by its own
means, a problem similar to one confronted by the other."31
28 See M. Bal, Traveling Concepts in the Humanities, Toronto-Buffalo-London 2002.
29 See Bal, Visual Essentialism...
30 The notion of the cinematic or cinematographic turn has been more and more often
used to describe the more intensive interest of visual artists in Elm and cinematic aesthet-
ics, especially since the 2000s, as well as in the Held of curating, e. g. the transition from the
white cube to the black-box format of exhibition space. It also entails theoretical interest in
film in contemporary art history/criticism. See for instance: Kino-Sztuka. Zwrot kinemato-
graficzny w polskiej sztuce współczesnej [includes English translation: Cine-Art. The Cin-
ematographic Turn in Polish Contemporary Art], eds. J. Majmurek, Ł. Ronduda, Warszawa
2016; Exhibiting the Moving Image, eds. F. Bovier, A. Mey, Zurich 2015.
31 G. Deleuze, "The Brain is the Screen. An Interview with Gilles Deleuze," in: The
Brain is the Screen. Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, ed. G. Flaxman, Minne-
apolis-London 2000, p. 367. Bal cites this fragment in: Bal, Emma & Edvard..., p. 25.
rience of the object under discussion.28 Although visuality became the object
of particular interest to Bal, she has been adamant about not essentializing vi-
sion and the immanent aesthetic impurity of images.29 Similarly in her more
recent work on diverse aspects of film and the cinematic, nowhere can one
find any attempt to either universalize or historicize the impact of cinema on
arts and its theory, not to mention according it the umbrella term "cinematic
turn."30 However, if we tentatively agreed that there is a tendency, even if not
a dominant one, to think cinematically, to "think in film," and to "practise
film," as both an artistic and theoretical endeavor, it is difficult not to "frame"
Bal (again, one of her preferred concepts), even against her will, into some
kind of theoretical and practical "movement" around what is broadly defined
as film, of concepts and practices leading to rethinking art and its histories.
What follows, then, is an attempt to trace the ideas related to film and the cin-
ematic in Bal's writing and point to the most productive aspects of her "think-
ing in film," especially the diverse ways of understanding movement and the
question of temporality. Even if Bal often uses art history as a negative point
of reference, exemplifying a conservative field, entrenched in its own convic-
tions and procedures of evaluating and analyzing art objects, I would like to
believe that her work is in fact also one of an art historian, one who agrees to
the necessity of operating within the transformed regime of knowledge and to
a redefinition of what art and history mean today. Implicitly, her publications
testify to the challenges and benefits of an encounter between art history and
film (studies). As Deleuze remarked in a quote aptly used by Bal in a chapter
on "cinematic" aspects of Edvard Munch's painting, "The encounter between
two disciplines doesn't take place when one begins to reflect on another, but
when one discipline realizes that it has to resolve, for itself and by its own
means, a problem similar to one confronted by the other."31
28 See M. Bal, Traveling Concepts in the Humanities, Toronto-Buffalo-London 2002.
29 See Bal, Visual Essentialism...
30 The notion of the cinematic or cinematographic turn has been more and more often
used to describe the more intensive interest of visual artists in Elm and cinematic aesthet-
ics, especially since the 2000s, as well as in the Held of curating, e. g. the transition from the
white cube to the black-box format of exhibition space. It also entails theoretical interest in
film in contemporary art history/criticism. See for instance: Kino-Sztuka. Zwrot kinemato-
graficzny w polskiej sztuce współczesnej [includes English translation: Cine-Art. The Cin-
ematographic Turn in Polish Contemporary Art], eds. J. Majmurek, Ł. Ronduda, Warszawa
2016; Exhibiting the Moving Image, eds. F. Bovier, A. Mey, Zurich 2015.
31 G. Deleuze, "The Brain is the Screen. An Interview with Gilles Deleuze," in: The
Brain is the Screen. Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, ed. G. Flaxman, Minne-
apolis-London 2000, p. 367. Bal cites this fragment in: Bal, Emma & Edvard..., p. 25.