The Phenomenological Structure of Self-Consciousness in Dutch Still Life Painting

In this paper I investigate the representation of self-consciousness in the still life tradition in the Netherlands around the time of Descartes’ residence there. I treat the paintings of this tradition as both a phenomenological resource and as a phenomenological undertaking in their own right. I begin with an introductory overview of the still life tradition, with particular attention to semiotic structures characteristic of the vanitas still life. I then focus my analysis on the representation of self-consciousness in this tradition, identifying both a Cartesian mode of representation of self-consciousness but also a counter trend. The proper methodology of phenomenology has been endlessly debated, and it is not my intention to enter here into that debate. But it is worth noticing an assumption shared by most of the parties to the dispute. Whatever the proper method for phenomenology -be it empirical or pure, transcendental or historicist, straightor hetero-, ... -it is generally assumed that the product of phenomenology is words. Lots of them, preferably in German or French or academic English. The literary form of the product may vary dramatically (a Treatise or a Meditation, a Manifesto or Research Article, an Ontological Poem or an Essay), but the medium remains the same. This paper questions that assumption by examining a set of phenomenological studies undertaken not in words but in oil: Dutch still life paintings of the first half of the 17th century.1 My most general thesis here -that still life painting can be viewed as phenomenology -may be surprising or indeed offensive to some. (I imagine the objection that one diminishes the art by treating it as some kind of cognitive science -a complaint to which I am sensitive but by which I find myself 1 For the canonical positions in the debate over phenomenological method, see Husserl 1913 and the respective Introductions to Heidegger 1927a and Merleau-Ponty 1945a. For recent naturalistic approaches to phenomenology see Dennett 1991 and Petitot et. al. 1999. On the contrast between ‘straight’ and ‘hetero-‘ phenomenology, see Cerbone 2003. There are some important counterexamples to the general assumption that phenomenological articulation must be verbal. Most notably, Merleau-Ponty treats Cézanne’s paintings as phenomenological studies (Merleau-Ponty 1945b). Foucault’s treatment of Las Meninas is perhaps less directly phenomenological, but nonetheless serves as an important example of the use of painting to explore structures of representation (Foucault 1966). For a recent discussion of phenomenology in the medium of film see Dreyfus and Dreyfus 2002.