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THINKING BLUE SKY
SKIES
WHAT IS UP THERE?
WHERE HAVE ALL THE GODS GONE?
HOW TO TAME THE SKY?
CORY ARCANGEL
LISE AUTOGENA
GASTON BACHELARD
JAMES BENNING
CORREGGIO
GILLES DELEUZE
SIMON FAITHFULL
CAMILLE FLAMMARION
WERNER HERZOG
DEREK JARMAN
GERHARD RICHTER
JACQUES TATI
JOELLE TUERLINCKX
RICHARD WILSON
PETER WEIR
QUADRATURA
WHAT OF OUR PLANETARY SKY?
ABOUT
REFERENCES
GASTON BACHELARD The Last Romantic
The most recent account of the aesthetics of the blue sky is to be found in the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. As part of his inquiry into the poetics of air, Bachelard considered the image of the blue sky drawing upon the work of poets such as Friedrich Hölderlin, J.W. Goethe, Percy B Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Bachelard cites Coleridge who famously decreed that 'the sight of a profound sky is, of all impressions, the closet thing to a feeling. It is more a feeling than a visual thing, or it is the definitive fusion, the complete union of feeling and sight' (Coleridge, 1796). Bachelard attempts to take account of 'the weight' of dynamic images such as that of a 'profound' sky. He sets out to 'measure' the 'unfathomable oneric depth’ of an image that is 'the closest thing to a feeling'.
One of the remarkable things about Bachelard’s account is its detail. In what he calls an ‘odography’, he categorises and defines a range of images, producing what he refers to as a ‘drawing’ of the different ways in which the poetics of the blue sky impact upon our thoughts and feelings. Air and Dreams, and the previous book Water and Dreams (1942), mark a radical departure from his previous writing on epistemology. In defense of this shift Bachelard argued:
I
will be told once again, that I have stopped being a
philosopher to become a mere collector of literary images. But
I will defend myself by repeating my thesis; the literary
image has its own life; it moves as an autonomous phenomenon
above profound thought. It is this autonomy that I have set
out to establish. (Bachelard, 1943)
For
Bachelard, his epistemological inquiry fed naturally into an
account of the images that shape and inform the way we think:
"Really knowing the images of words, the images that exist
beneath our thoughts and upon which our thoughts live, would
advance our thinking in a natural manner" (Bachelard, 1943). In
'The Blue Sky', a chapter in Air
and Dreams, he argues that the sky is one of the primary
images that shape and inform the way we think. His argument is
convincing.If fault is to be found with Bachelard’s account it is not, as he anticipated, in the activity of collecting images, nor is it to be found in the drive to explore the connection between image and thought. The fault lies in the scope of the ‘odography’, the scope of the images he referenced. Bachelard was writing in the mid-twentieth century, yet his frame of reference earned him the title 'the last romantic' for his poetics appear to be informed by an innocent eye, and his topofilia of blue sky exists in a time and place far removed from the material reality of twentieth century Europe. How could Bachelard fail to register that the sky no longer operated solely as a space of quiet contemplation but also made meaning through the shifted perspective and speed of flight? He could have traced these changes in the work of his peer, the poet and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, or in the skies captured by Giacomo Bella and later by Paul Nash. But he could also have traced these changes within his own daily reality. Air and Dreams was written as aerial warfare came of age in the skies of occupied Europe. How could Bachelard fail to register these changes?
Despite this startling omission, this ‘blind spot’ within Bachelard’s poetics, his account of the image of the blue sky is invaluable. Not only is this study part of his philosophy of the imagination, a philosophy which has shaped contemporary aesthetics from the 1960s onwards, but his detailed analysis of the poetics of the blue sky is the basis from which to understand the way our contemporary skies make meaning. Building on Bachelard's odography, in which he weighed images for the reverie they induced and the spiritual depth evoked, we need to add what Paul Virilio might describe as some 'arse-over-heels' vertiginous poetics. An extreme sports aesthetics in which, in the words of Kodwo Eshun, "metaphysics comes down to the earth and into the mouth" (Eshun, 2001).
Images (from top to bottom): Giacomo Balla 'Abstract Speed - The Car has Passed' 1913, oil on canvas;
