Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Stretched Along Garrowby Hill

David Hockney's painting discloses the "there" of Garrowby Hill. More precisely, it captures the moment of "going up" it. "The 'there' is disclosed," says Heidegger (not about Hockney specifically of course), "in a way which is grounded in Dasein's own temporality as ecstatically stretched along, and with this disclosure a 'time' is alloted to Dasein; only because of this can Dasein, as factically thrown, 'take' its time and lose it" (Being and Time, H. 410).

In Hockney's painting, we might say, the hill (and, especially, the way over it, the road) is "resolutely there". This is not the case in a photograph of the hill.

Photographic perspective divorces the road up the hill from "what it is for", its equipmentality, and replaces it with what it looks like, its mere appearance. Hockney's painting recovers the Being of the landscape. Quite literally, he displays Being-in it or, more precisely, moving through it.

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