Georges Didi-Huberman's Homage to Simon Hantaï

The artpress tribute to Simon Hantaï (1922-2008) reprints excerpts from Georges Didi-Huberman's 1998 book "L'Étoilement." Didi-Huberman explores the metaphor of the shroud (linceul) in Hantaï's work, linking it to the painter's concepts of folding and unfolding. He notes that Hantaï once said his canvases "gave him skin" and referred to a large Tabula as a "maternal shroud." The text traces this motif to Hantaï's 1950 painting based on a photograph of an Egyptian shroud, which he called "my mummy." Didi-Huberman argues that for Hantaï, the question of flesh became a matter of the canvas's material life, not representation. The shroud unites two processes: "entoilement" (canvasing) and "étiolement" (fading), the former providing the field for the latter's decomposition. This approach, which Hantaï called "folding as method," would define his subsequent work with folded and unfolded spaces.