The silent apostrophe, an essay on the portraits of Fayoum.
Macula Editions| N° d'inventaire | 28001 |
| Format | 13 x 19.5 |
| Détails | 156 p., color illustrations, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2023 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782865891481 |
The Fayum portraits are this silent population embodied by faces that excavations have gradually brought out of the tombs. Produced in Roman Egypt in the first three centuries AD, and belonging to both a Greek mimetic tradition and a specifically Egyptian ritual accompaniment, they were not intended to be seen. But since they were found and identified, they have never ceased to fascinate. Scattered across the world, their enigma remains intact, we are with them before a threshold: from the side of death into which they have fallen, they look at us, eyes open, as if they were alive. Suddenly, through their names, their adornments, and as if emerging from the network of bandages surrounding the mummies in which they were embedded, they refer us to a whole world that no longer exists and which was once theirs. With them, the entire history of the portrait and its relationship to death is inaugurated, in a strange and insistent gentleness.
Fascinated by these faces, Jean-Christophe Bailly, while reconstructing the workshop of thoughts that freed them, has attempted to make transparent the relationship that we can now have with them. This edition is based on the one published in 1997 by Hazan Editions, adding a preface that underlines the endlessly renewed relevance of this exceptional moment when several Mediterranean civilizations met around images that were initially gestures of observance.
The Fayum portraits are this silent population embodied by faces that excavations have gradually brought out of the tombs. Produced in Roman Egypt in the first three centuries AD, and belonging to both a Greek mimetic tradition and a specifically Egyptian ritual accompaniment, they were not intended to be seen. But since they were found and identified, they have never ceased to fascinate. Scattered across the world, their enigma remains intact, we are with them before a threshold: from the side of death into which they have fallen, they look at us, eyes open, as if they were alive. Suddenly, through their names, their adornments, and as if emerging from the network of bandages surrounding the mummies in which they were embedded, they refer us to a whole world that no longer exists and which was once theirs. With them, the entire history of the portrait and its relationship to death is inaugurated, in a strange and insistent gentleness.
Fascinated by these faces, Jean-Christophe Bailly, while reconstructing the workshop of thoughts that freed them, has attempted to make transparent the relationship that we can now have with them. This edition is based on the one published in 1997 by Hazan Editions, adding a preface that underlines the endlessly renewed relevance of this exceptional moment when several Mediterranean civilizations met around images that were initially gestures of observance.