PANG!

On Didi-Huberman’s Concept of Pan from Annunciation to Crucifixion

Authors

Abstract

Pan is Didi-Huberman’s concept for the spot where or moment when the materiality of the painting makes itself present in a way that draws away attention from what the painting represents. This article examines the concept of pan, as Didi-Huberman defines it in the appendix to Devant l’image, but also based on the analyses he presents in the book’s first and last chapters of an annunciation and a crucifixion image, respectively. I will argue that pan can be a lack of figure or an excess of matter, and that these two variants (or shifts in accent) can be linked art-historically to the motifs of the annunciation and the crucifixion respectively, both of which are decisive scenes in the central evangelical event: the incarnation, which for Didi-Huberman is also a concept for the materialisation that the painting performs. Finally, the article points to instances of pan in paintings by Anna Ancher.

Author Biography

Lilian Munk Rösing, University of Copenhagen

Lektor
Institut for Kunst- og Kulturvidenskab

References

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Published

2023-12-15