Summaries

Violaine Anger : "White, space, interval? Exploration at the heart of speech"

The first ways of writing the song have opposed a line of alphabetical, phonological signs (because of the Latin language used) and a line of features having an obvious iconological dimension, which is called "neumes". Between these two lines relies a space that cannot really be called "white" since it would be an anachronistic term borrowed from the printing press; it is neither a space, nor even a spatium, nor an interval, and certainly not an intervallum: in any case, the parchment is left bare. It is a matter of visualizing the word: the alphabetical line can be read aloud, but when one sings, it is impossible to separate the elements other than by an intellectual operation passing, precisely, by writing. This neumatic writing is therefore an analysis of speech which presupposes a hollow in his heart. Two ways of writing followed historically this first step : one of them, called "dasian" notation, introduces horizontal lines but removes this hollow; the next introduces lines of height inside this hollow, this void, but traces them at the dry point on the parchment. The paper will examine the nature of this void left in «white» by the colour of the medium and the imaginary revealed by its various evolutions.

Eduard Cairol : "Deep inmerged into the white: Joan Miro and the poetics of empty. A transdisciplinary perspective"

Along the last period of his production, the catalan painter Joan Miro is deep immerged into the white: two of the most famous and ambitious works of those years, the triptychs titled L’esperança del condemnat a mort (1974) and, above all, the very radical Pintura per a la cel·la d’un solitari (1968), both present big white and completely empty surfaces. Actually, the works of Miró where white and empty are the main themes (like a new triptych, Bleu, dated in 1968), became more and more frequent after the artist’s first journey into Japan in 1966, which was a true revelation to him. Thus, from full to empty, one could say that the metamorphosis of Miró was the reaction to the doctrines of the Eastern Masters, for instance Nagarjuna (The Foundations of the Middle Way) or Lie Zi (The Book of the Perfect Empty)… But in fact, one can already find a big white (or almost empty) panel in Miro’s painting of the twenties, the very same years he created La masia or Carnaval d’Arlequí, now under the influence of Surrealism. At the point that the relationship between oneiric life and white (or empty) seem to be exposed like a thesis in the very mysterious canvas titled Photo. Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves (1924). Furthermore, one can also find a state of mind which is called Empty or with no images Sleep in the Hinduist doctrine of Vedanta! So, in conclusion, several paths contribute to suggest a rich Hermeneutics of White in the work of Miró.

Hélène Campaignolle-Catel : "Contours and hollows of a concept: blank in Anne-Marie Christin's work"

Conceptual evanescence, linguistic lability, cultural obstacle, blankness  as a notion is neither easy to define nor to circumscribe. Our contribution will attempt to identify the way in which Anne-Marie Christin chose to give shape to the blank in her critical work: what words express this notion ? What texts question it ? From what corpus and using what method? And what place does this concept occupy in the overall theory supported by the researcher? We will try to explore these few questions by focusing in particular on the work Poétique du blanc, published in 2000.

Dominique A. Casimiro : "Between something and already almost nothing: the spaces of white in Mira Schendel"

The artist Mira Schendel (1919-1988) is from the unclassifiable family. Before arriving in Brazil in 1949 at the age of 30, she drank in multiple alluvium, following an education first Jewish in Switzerland then Catholic in Italy ‒ then becoming infatuated later Asian philosophies ‒, and hes European wandering to escape fascist barbarism. This European soil and these successive identities explain the complexity of this plethora of work, conceptual and "artisanal", too contradictory to join a movement. However, by borrowing the spaces occupied by white throughout this artistic trajectory, Mira Schendel's asthetic immediately becomes clearer: thus, from a method consisting in questioning the materiality of white and its variations (acrylic, cotton, rice paper, grainy texture, tempera ...), we will then perceive that white is much more than a simple concept between writing and figure, and if there is not a lack, it is this "inframince" (Duchamp) in which the essential seems to play out. Between materiality and immateriality, opacity and transparency, readability and illegibility, between the Far East and the Far West, we will try to highlight the implication of Zen-Buddhist philosophy at the origin, it seems to us, of this asthetic between something and already almost nothing. The spaces of white are, in Mira Schendel's work, this field of possibilities and these curls of mysteries in which the spirit of a philosopher artist is better reflected than all. 

Margaux Coquelle-Roëhm : "‘I arrange the blank in the dark’ : poetic of blank in J. Roubaud’s work"

By reversing the common use of blanks, often approached as voids, Jacques Roubaud sees the layout of his poems as an enunciative gesture that participates in the construction of meaning. Blanks give the poem its own iconic dimension and "vi-lisibilité" [visibility-readability]. They enable “space play” (as in word play) that delinearize reading and foster thinking on temporality. Based on a body of texts showing a poetic use of blanks (paragraph, blanks within the line, tabular display), we will define a category of "topographic blanks" that organise the form of the poem in the graphic space. We will then define different functions that Roubaud assigns to those blanks. Roubaud conceives the poem as a shifting "quartet of forms" - two external, spoken and written, two internal, "aural" (the inner voice), and "wRitten" (the mental picture of the page). Blanks enable to suspend the state of the poem - the reader will take a moment of silence if they are reading out loud, or see that the poem briefly stops on the page - while preserving its potential. Blanks help redefining the verse as an "effecteur de mémoire" [the verse triggers a memory process] through its rhythm. We will thus show how the poetry as a mediation and a "memory of the language" is accomplished within the page, through the use of blanks.

Norbert Danysz : "White Deer Plain drawn by Li Zhiwu: what functions for whiteness?"

Comic art in China is intricately linked to painting and makes extensive use of traditional Chinese art principles, such as the incompletion and the multiple potentialities of whiteness. The vast majority of Chinese comics, in particular the lianhuanhua form, are drawn with the brush and printed in black and white; they often use whiteness and emptiness to contrast with the mark, the black, the full. The contemporary comic book by Li Zhiwu revives those principles of composition and balance while exposing a graphic style specific to the author. But whiteness in Li Zhiwu’s art also has a particular meaning, it holds a power of suggestion as well as of indistinction, which transposes in the images the magical elements of the original novel by Chen Zhongshi.

Sylvie Decorniquet : "The energetic space of blanks in André du Bouchet’s poetic writing"

André du Bouchet’s poetic writing is characterized by a dissemination of words on the page, granting a visual preponderance to blanks. This visual aspect proves his desire to combine poetry and painting. The poet feeds his thoughts on Cézanne’s blank use, these unpainting spaces which don’t fall into omission but intentionally form a part of the canvas, and question what a recurring term designates as "support". This term first refers to the page on which the words of an incomplete text appear. But the delimitation of a pictorial or scriptural space to the only dimension provided by paper or canvas is challenged by a conception that includes its object within the space of which it is only a provisionally differenciated fragment. The blank then refers to that unfigurable transparent envelope which is called "air". Both the canvas and the page are inscribed into a colorless space that includes them and is related to the aerial element. This element, like an optical fluid, specifies the binder between items, which makes the visible. The transparency of the air feeds painters’ research in that it carries luminous refractions. The poet reflects in his writing this very fascination for vibratory intensities, points of blindness, through the blank areas which are akin to the universal ether vibrating under the light, primary principle without which nothing could take any existence.

Blanche Delaborde : "The use of white space in manga multilayer layouts"

Manga is a narrative medium that has taken on varied formats over time. In regular layouts, the grid neatly separates the white space outside of the panels, which takes on a syntactic role, and the white space inside of the panels, which pertains to the iconic representation of space. The gradual development of irregular layouts in certain manga genres, and more specifically the creation of multilayer layouts in manga intended for young girls (shōjo manga) in the 1960’s, has changed the status of white spaces in the narrative economy of these manga. In these multi-layered layouts, the elimination of part of the frames and the encroachment of the images on one another give certain white surfaces a syntactic function of logically relating several figures without relying on the frames and panels. These surfaces are then the place of a tension between this syntactic function, the iconic function of representing space, and to a certain extent the expressive function of representing the mental states of the characters. I propose to study the various ways in which multilayer layouts use white spaces by investing more or less this tension. Moreover, the question of the representation of time in manga and comics in general is deeply connected to to that of the organization of the page, and we will investigate the specific role that white surfaces can play in this regard in multilayer layouts.

Catherine Denis : "The crucial gaze of the white space: the active emptiness"

In the text "From Chinese character to alphabetical letter", I wrote: "At the very beginning was the sound. I could hear the notes played on the piano [...]. And when I was upstairs, they let me feel the space of silence which welcomed them." (Catherine Denis, Du caractère à la lettre, par Yves Bergeret et Nathalie Woog, Apogée, 2005, p. 8). It is clear that before the sound, there is silence; before the trace of the brush, there is the white space of the Chinese paper or the full printed space of the newspaper page, which attract the movement of my brush. Both spaces are blank as I have not yet touched them. The practice of Chinese calligraphy which I experienced for nearly ten years in China, taught me to observe the space of the paper before using the brush to enable myself to experience fully the drawing of the line. Indeed, it is important to note that the « blank » space is already there before the movement of my brush, and so it is the bearer of my intention:  意在笔先 (yi zai bi xian, intention precedes the movement), postface to Plan de bataille du pinceau by Wei Furen (题卫夫人“笔陈图”后，王羲之，历代书法论文选，上海书画出版社  Wei Furen "Bi chen tu" hou, Wang Xizhi, Lidai shufa lunwen xuan, Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe). The "blank" space as well as "the full printed space", are perceived in my mind in the same order of emptiness which let forms appear and at the same time will take shape by receiving and reflecting my artistic movement. I look at the blank space, and this space looks back towards me.

Nathalie Dietschy : "Post-photographic blanks: Erasing, emptying, revealing"

In black and white silver photography, white is trace of light, whereas it can become a proof of an iconoclastic gesture in a number of contemporary projects that erase the content of pre-existing photographs (Mishka Henner, Less Américains, 2012; Michael Schirner, Bye Bye, 2006-09). Since the rise of digital technologies and the post-production manipulation of images, blank spaces can be understood as a gesture of questioning the nature of digital photography. The color white as seen as absence of content bear witness to a practice of photography or "post-photography" inscribed in an ecology of images that aims to recycle images already produced in order to give them new meanings. Elements are isolated, objects are erased. These strategies can be interpreted as a response to today’s image abundance. This communication proposes to analyze the ways in which white constitutes a lacunar space that not only questions the status of evidence assigned to photography but also reveals new (post-)photographic practices in a society overwhelmed by images.

Estelle Ingrand-Varenne : "The Conquest of Spaces: Inscriptions in Latin writing and “Blank Space” in the Middle Ages"