Beauty: Writing on the Cadaver

Abstract

The heyday of the image has led to the inevitable comparison between the different natures that these may acquire. Technique, always linked to creation, characterizes the form taken by a particular image. At present the video, a modern medium of reproduction, is opposed to the painting in terms of its effect upon the spectator: while the brush-stroke separates the background from the figure—that is to say, generates it—the video incrusts. A review of the meditations of such varied authors as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michael Fried, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Didi-Huberman or Timothy Clark, together with the examples of artists—again of disparate nature—such as John Donne or Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, leads us to a deep reflection on the significance of the image. The question this work seeks to resolve involves the complex relation established between presence and image in contemporary life.