Gewänder als Parerga. Zu Herders „Plastik“

Abstract

This article analyses J. G. Herder’s essay on sculpture, particularly the relation between seeing and feeling, outside and inside, surface and body, painting and sculpture in aesthetic theory in the second half of the 18th century. Herder’s intention is the foundation of autonomous sculptural art upon the physiology of touch, not performed, however, through the act of touching, but through visual imitation, by observing the statue. In this sense, the distinctiveness of sculpture would not only be the compactness of the body but the tense relationship between compactness and its articulation, the accessories. In the tension between work and accessories – erga and parerga –, the clothes of statues constitute a “dead” addition, that disturbs the effect of the “living” body. The “wet” clothes of antique statues, on the other hand, would be so “transparent”, that they would appear as a second skin. Parerga of this kind would not represent something superfluous and inconvenient, but rather a necessary element of sculptural art, by covering – yet not completely denying – the organic interior that refers to death.