Spencer Alley: Parmigianino Drawings from the British Museum

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Parmigianino Drawings from the British Museum

Parmigianino
Study of a seated woman seen from the back
ca. 1518-40
drawing
British Museum

Parmigianino
Design for a frame with mourning putti
ca. 1518-40
drawing
British Museum

Parmigianino
Figure of a youth, half-length
ca. 1518-40
drawing
British Museum

"The stereotype is the word repeated without any magic, any enthusiasm, as though it were natural, as though by some miracle this recurring word were adequate to each occasion for different reasons, as though to imitate could no longer be sensed as an imitation: an unconstrained word that claims consistency and is unaware of its own insistence. Nietzsche has observed that "truth" is only the solidification of old metaphors. So in this regard the stereotype is the present path of "truth," the palpable feature which shifts the invented ornament to the canonical, constraining form of the signified. (It would be good to imagine a new linguistic science that would no longer study the origin of words, or etymology, or even their diffusion, or lexicology, but the progress of their solidification, their densification throughout historical discourse; this science would doubtless be subversive, manifesting much more than the historical origin of truth: its rhetorical, languaging nature.)"

- from Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller, 1975