The image as a living atlas in the world
An introduction to George Didi-Huberman’s image theory project and curatorial
practice

This article delivers both an overview of the ongoing work of art historian Georges Didi-Huberman (b. 1953) and an attempt at analyzing the incarnational conception of images that runs through Didi-Huberman’s image theory. In the Christian tradition, images are the result of an incarnational double-economy. Didi-Huberman’s early interpretations in Fra Angelico, dissemblance et figuration are central to our understanding of this incarnational economy. The visible is capable of entering our flesh; to control this incarnational
invasion, Christian tradition has developed a reflexive capacity to read these invasions as images in acts of exegesis. This reflexive exegetical economy is pivotal for Didi-Huberman’s political position regarding our modern use and abuse of images. Confronted with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s conviction that we live in a fascistic state of emergency that blinds our senses with total illumination, Didi-Huberman insists in believing that the described reflexive double-economy is still enabling us to let the visible enter our bodies and light up the darkness of our flesh from within as images – thereby developing our imagination
and freeing us from the deadening total image that is fascism.