Traumatic Fixation in Caravaggio

Gabriela van den Hoven

As if emanating from his very bones, Caravaggio painted without hesitation directly onto the canvas. It is said he created a new language of theatrical realism, by choosing his models in the street1. In every scene, he depicts the most dramatic instant, immortalizing moments in which jouissance imposes itself beyond words - particularly in sacred themes like The Taking of Christ or The Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Such dramatic representations of an “Other jouissance” - a jouissance of the body, as A. Stevens explains2 - differ from those emanating from dreams or symptoms, which express either a prohibition or lifting of repression.

The use of diagonals and lines shifts the picture, decentering and dividing the viewer to make room for the new in repetition3, as in The Fortune Teller. He captured the object whilst alluding to something else - e.g. using prostitutes as models in religious paintings - prompting critics to call his work “incongruous”. In other paintings, like The Crucifixion of St Peter, Caravaggio creates a series of sharp compositional diagonals that amplify the traumatic drama4. Depicted against a background of impenetrable darkness, traumatic moments charged with libidinal energy point to the eruption of a “real” beyond realism in the body of the suffering saint. Capturing the moment St. Peter’s cross is raised; he creates a long diagonal across the composition that draws the viewer’s eye towards the “jouissance” of the body turning in agony. St Peter’s gaze appears empty, yet present, vainly seeking something “Other”, a word, a God, from outside the scene. The frozen figure with his mouth agape accentuates the outline of an empty mouth, becoming a border, a signifier, while evidencing the futility of speech and language to assimilate the real5 . J.-A. Miller points out that this “jouissance One” is a “jouissance” of the body linked to a “traumatic fixation” as such outside the frame of fantasy6.

References

1 Graham-Dixon A., Caravaggio, A Life Sacred and Profane, New York, Norton & Company, 2011.

2 https://www.amp-nls.org/nls-messager/towards-the-nls-congress-2022-argument

3 Miller J.-A., “La Logica del Significante”, Matemas II, 1994, 22-51.

4 Lambert G., Caravaggio, Taschen, 2004.

5 Miller J.-A., L’Être et l'Un, lesson of 15th March 1995, Quarto, n° 121, 2019, 17.

6 Miller J.-.A, Being and The One (unpublished).