TRUTH BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION: BOLTANSKI, LANZMANN, RICHTER, AND THE SHOAH

Abstract

The article tackles the question of truth in the visual field and in the visual arts, referencing the work of Claude Lanzmann, Christian Boltanski and Gerhard Richter, that is the way they dealt with the trauma of the holocaust, thereby rethinking the status of images and approach to making images and/or art after WWII. The focus is the definition of truth, which can no longer be seen as being merely on the commonsensical level of facts or evidence, but also, within the frame of all arts, as closely connected to the structure of fiction. In fact, it is only by way of fiction that another level of truth beyond mere factuality can reach us. This entails a discussion on the mechanism of the signifier (as interplay of presence and absence) and the hallucinatory aspect of a heightened sense of reality (the experiences of something unreal or fictitious in reality). Furthermore, the topic of the holocaust in the visual arts leads to a broader question of the impossibility to capture death/dying and consequently to the question of an atheistic image.