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What Is a Parergon?
Although historically the parergon (para: beside, the historical parergon, we need to look beyond
ergon: work) contributes much to our understand- its current incarnation in critical theory to trace
ing of such weighty matters in art theory and crit- its history as a critical term in art history under
icism as the hierarchy of the genres, the role of three distinct but closely related heads—as frame
the subject, and pictorial composition, it has never or border, as accessory to the main subject, and as
been in wide circulation in the manner of other ornament. Only then will we be able to gauge the
critical terms such as disegno, imitatio, or beau importance of this uncommon word that, despite
idéal. Yet this infrequence of use is not the only its relatively infrequent use by artists and critics,
reason for our ignorance. Much of our present offers the possibility of filling a gap that is not
disregard of the parergon’s broader historical im- otherwise adequately addressed in the discourse
portance is due to its current celebrity as the key on art.
term in Jacques Derrida’s The Truth in Painting,
where the parergon’s character and function are
largely understood to denominate a threshold or i. parerga without borders
border—in particular, that of a frame (Derrida
1987, 15–147).1 Historically, ‘parergon’ does not reference an in-
It is not my purpose here to rehearse Derrida’s dependent entity, but “something subordinate or
argument in extenso, nor to question the impor- accessory to the main subject” (Oxford English
tance of boundaries, borders, and frames in the Dictionary 2018). A classic account of this kind
constitution of the artwork; rather, I want to con- of pictorial accessory appears in Strabo’s Geogra-
sider the role of the parergon in antiquity and phy, where the first-century BCE geographer and
early modern history in order to engage with a historian describes a painting by Protogenes of a
broader understanding of the term than that al- flute-playing satyr leaning on a column:
lowed by Derrida. Why this is important will, I
hope, become clear as this article unfolds, but the On the top of the column was a partridge. The bird
fundamental justification may be stated immedi- strongly attracted, as was natural, the gaping admira-
ately. In order to assess the scope and meaning of tion of the people, [such that] . . . the Satyr, although
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77:1 Winter 2019
C 2019 The American Society for Aesthetics
24 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
executed with great skill, was not noticed. . . . When Pro- one work, the principal figure is admirably beautiful,
togenes observed that the principal [έργον: ergon] had and the adjunct, or assigned emblem or attribute, is far
become the subordinate part [πάρεργον: parergon] of inferior to it, then I believe we may conclude from this
his work, he obtained permission of the curators of the circumstance that the part which is deficient in form and
temple to efface the bird, which he did. (Strabo 1857, 30, workmanship was regarded as an accessory or Parergon,
vol. 3; translation modified) as it was also termed by artists. For these accessories are
not to be viewed in the same light as the episodes of a
Protogenes’s decision to include the partridge con- poem, or the speeches in history, in which the poet and
flicted with established ideas of what constituted historian have displayed their utmost skill. (1850, 246).
the subject. The satyr is the subject (ergon), and
to. In identifying the representation of a historia of the body or argument thereof is Landskip, Par-
(subject) as the artist’s principal task, he connects ergon, or by-work,” he is categorically excluding
historia with Aristotle’s description of tragedy as parergon from the “body or argument” of the
“a mimesis of an action, and only for the sake “poesia,” instead identifying it with background
of this is it a mimesis of the agents [characters] or landscape. He drives home his point with an
themselves” (Aristotle 1987, 38). example:
While Alberti cites the demands of historia
to justify the compositional order of painting, [I]n the Table of our Saviour’s Passion, the picture of
Gabriele Paleotti, archbishop of Bologna, insists Christ on the Rood (which is the antient English word
on a doctrinal distinction based on decorum: for Cross) the two Theeves, the blessed Virgin Mary, and
museum. The painting was the object of a dispute 2005, 690–691). As artists from Protogenes to
in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculp- Le Brun realized, to applaud a painter for the
ture over whether Poussin should have included uncritical depiction of external nature was to
the train of camels—conspicuous by their absence praise the lesser achievement of mimesis over
in his painting—described in the Bible. The di- invention. This explains Protogenes’s anger that
rector of the Académie, Charles Le Brun, offered his satyr was overlooked in favor of an avian
cogent reasons why the inclusion of such “bizarre interloper; the partridge was never intended to be
objects,” and therefore parergonal to the sacred the principal part of the painting—a frustration
narrative, would militate against the decorum of that must have only intensified when he realized
the “principal action” of the representation: his popular success was at the expense of his
then the minor genre could be what the main hierarchy. While this mattered little to the lesser
subject always intended such elements to be—a genres (they were already lumped together as ir-
parergonal support to the narrative; but if there is redeemably minor, forever excluded from history
no main subject, no Aristotelian emphasis on dra- painting’s charmed circle), it mattered crucially
matic action, then the subject would exhibit a lack when it was a question of maintaining the author-
for which no amount of skill in the depiction of an- ity, and representational practices, of narrative
cilliary elements could compensate. Jean-Baptiste painting. This collapse of subject into setting
Dubos refers precisely to this kind of absence in allows for the dissolution of the ergon/parergon
his 1719 treatise, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie relationship and the consequent marginalization
et sur la peinture: of the ergon. In this scenario the loss of a subject,
De Vigenère’s comment encompasses the usual instancing a pictorial trope that ornaments the
range of motifs that may be called parerga— landscape (Gilpin 1792, 27–28; 55–56). There is
“shrubby trees, little animals, old ruins, and col- nothing here that suggests Gilpin wishes for any
lapsed buildings, mountains and valleys” (131)— other subject other than a picturesque prospect
but in characterizing parerga as “superfluous addi- or seeks to raise the standing of landscape paint-
tions, besides what is needed,” he anticipates what ing in the manner of Claude or Poussin, through
I might call the definitive characterization of orna- reference to the Bible or mythology. Rather, he
mental parerga that appears in Henry Peacham’s explains his intention more fully by drawing on
Graphice, or The Most Ancient and Excellent Art the vocabulary of picturesque sketching:
of Drawing and Limming, published early in the
of the artwork, Derrida focuses on what one critic beautiful form, if it is, like a gilt frame, attached merely in
has called the “logic of the frame” to challenge order to recommend approval for the painting through
the idea that the artwork possesses an essence its charm—then it is called decoration, and detracts from
that is already present and complete (Bernstein genuine beauty. (Kant 2000, §14, 110–111).6
1992, 168). The frame around a painting is just
such a device, and Derrida argues that the par-
ergonal frame comes to trouble the either/or, in- When Kant defines “the borders of paintings” as
side/outside, pure/impure binaries that establish “that which is not internal to the entire represen-
the identity of the artwork in the first place: tation of the object as a constituent, but only be-
longs to it externally as an addendum,” he seems
Although footnoted in all recent editions, few theory has paid scant attention to its historical
critics have remarked that neither “parerga” nor importance for much of the time. It is wrong to
“borders of paintings” were included in the first blame Derrida for this oversight; he merely bor-
edition of the Third Critique. Kant added them rowed the term from Kant, without bothering, it
to his revisions for the second, 1793 edition. So must be said, very much about Kant’s intentions
why are they there? If we reread his comments in employing the term in the first place (Jonietz
with these terms mentally excised, the reference 2016). As a corrective, I have focused on the par-
to a “gilt frame” appears somewhat abruptly, un- ergon in two areas—its connection to the question
related to the examples that precede it. It seems of subject matter (the hierarchy of the genres) and
probable that Kant belatedly included “the bor- as ornament or pictorial embellishment. If this has
At the same time, it is important to avoid a Grasskamp Anna. 2015. “Frames of Appropriation: Foreign Ar-
proliferation of the term where it has scant rele- tifacts on Display in Early Modern Europe and China.” In
Qing Enounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the
vance. We need to be guided by historical usage if West, edited by Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding,
we are to avoid narrowing the parergon to a frame, 29–42. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
on the one hand, or adding unwarranted examples Heidegger, Martin. 1993. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” In
Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of
with the otherwise laudable intention of associ-
Thinking (1964), edited by David Farrell Krell, 143–212. San
ating the term parergon with concepts that have Francisco: HarperCollins.
little of the parergonal to recommend them.10 Heller-Andrist, Simone. 2012. The Friction of the Frame: Der-
rida’s Parergon in Literature. Tübingen: Franke verlag.
Heuer, Christopher P. 2009. The City Rehearsed: Object, Archi-
PAUL DURO tecture, and Print in the Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries.
Wood, Christopher S. 2014 (1993). Albrecht Altdorfer and the section §13, “The pure judgment of taste is inde-
Origins of Landscape. London: Reaktion Books. pendent from charm and emotion” (Kant 2000, 107).
8. A similar point may be made about the inclusion
1. An early version of Derrida’s essay “Parergon” ap- of ‘parerga.’ Kant had used the term in his treatise Reli-
peared in the journal Digraphe 3 and 4 in 1974. gion within the Limits of Reason Alone, published, like the
2. Winckelmann is a little wayward with his analysis. It second edition of the Third Critique, in 1793, to describe
is not a question of whether the “principal figure” is beauti- four “General Observations” appended to the treatise “as
ful or not. The perceived inferiority of the accessory comes it were, parerga to religion within the limits of pure rea-
not from any weakness in the representation, but from its son; they do not belong within it but border upon it” (1960,
subordinate status with respect to the principal subject. 47–48). It is ironic that its inclusion in the Third Critique,
3. There is an informative discussion of “”Metal purely as a clarification of ‘ornament,’ has been mistak-
Mounts as Parerga” in Grasskamp (2015, 29–32). I regret enly paired with ‘border of paintings,’ thereby misrepre-