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206 7 Shades—Of Painting at the Limit Instead of a prologue or a foreword, Sallis titles the opening section of Shades—Of Painting at the Limit1 “Adumbrations.” One might initially substitute the synonymous “foreshadowings,” and read this word as signaling a hint as to what is to come, but in doing so one might overlook the originary sense of the word. An adumbration is “a sketch in shadow, sketch, outline, from adumbratus, pp. of adumbrare to cast a shadow, overshadow , represent (a thing) in outline, from ad- ‘to’ + umbrare ‘to cast in shadow,’ from PIE *andho- ‘blind, dark.’”2 Perhaps curiously, “Adumbrations” concerns itself almost entirely with light, and indeed with pure light. The words with which it opens invite the reader—perhaps even test the reader: “Imagine light” (1). Platonic figures occur on the first page. The first echoes the Phaedrus, in which Sallis enjoins the reader in this way: “spur your phantasy on past every limit, as though it were a winged steed drawing you ever higher, on toward the purest of visions, the vision of light” (1). The second echoes the Republic: if such an impossible unlimited ascent were even imaginable , then “to redeploy the ancient phrase in an abysmal formulation— it would be beyond being” (1). Given the sense of the title of this opening section, one cannot but note the play of shadow and of pure light evoked here. This play will serve as a depth of the Sallisian discourse throughout Shades. One way this play makes itself manifest occurs in the relation of painting to what Sallis has called pure light. While it would seem that any representation would contaminate pure light, such an opinion fails to take into account the nature of painting. To be sure, a representation of an object would raise the issue of contamination. However, what the painter paints—at least the painter who paints with an art that is analogous in power to the thought of a great thinker—is never a representation . Rather, the painter paints what is unpresentable, and what shines forth in service to the light this shining forth makes visible. “In painting . . . the light that brings visibility to things would itself become visible without being utterly contaminated and set merely in service to things” (2). Speaking of an excess in painting, that is, an exceeding of that which is depicted in the painting, Sallis notes that this excess problema- 207 S H A D E S tizes the question of meaning in painting, and in so doing, opens up the “what” in the question “what is painting?” In a passage that shows both why Sallis has no “aesthetics” in any sense resembling classical approaches and how he approaches art philosophically, he writes: The question would be opened beyond the classical determinations precisely in and through a turn to the very things themselves that would be put in question. Without supposing that it could ever simply match the spectacle itself, the question could at least be specified and articulated in a movement proceeding from the painting itself. (4) The phenomenological residue in this passage cannot be missed, nor can the way Sallis has interpreted the “things themselves.” However, in Delimitations, where he enacted a deconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology , he concluded that there were no mere “things themselves.” All “things” occur for us only within a certain interpretive horizon. What, then, are we to make of these “things themselves” called paintings? They are not interpreted as objects, but—consistent with all of Sallis’s thought—ways of showing. What is painting’s way of showing? Above all, then, one will say that the genius of the painter has recourse to shades. Even when it would be a matter of painting light itself. Precisely then. Precisely when he would paint the pure passage of pure radiance. (5) “Shades” has many yet-to-be-determined overtones. One may rush ahead to think of shades of color; of the shades in Hades; of the shade provided by a plane tree; of a shadow cast on a wall or road. But Sallis’s discourse concerns shades—of painting at the limit. The words of the title direct eye and thought to shades that emerge from the limit. It is crucial to recall that for Sallis, limit calls forth both end and point of origin at once. The way limit makes itself manifest in painting , the way shades provide for the way of showing in painting—these are the matters that...

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