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The ttr*pp«d purnps James Van ona Zbe. Family Po*trait. 1926

0954); all very touching, amusing, but what I śrub-bornly sce are one childs bad teeth. Kcrtćsz, in 1926, took young Tzara’s portrait (wirh a monocle); but what I noticc, by rhat additiona] vision which is in a sense the gift, the grace of the punctum, i$ T2ara's hand resting on the door frame: a large hand whosc nails arc anything bur clean. /"’*    \

HoweyerUighrning-Iik^/it may be, the punctum has, morę or less^-petemńłTly, a power of cxoansion. This power is often mcronymic. Thcrc is a photograph by Kcrtćsz (1921) which shows a blind gypsy vio!inist being led by a boy; now what I see, by mcans of this "thinking eye" which makes me add somerhing to the photograph, is the dirt road; its texture gives me the ccrtainty of being in Central Europo; I perceiye the referent (herc, the photograph rcally transcends irsclf: is this not thesote proof of its artOfo anmhilare itself as Medium, t£> be no ionger a sign but the thing itself?]), I rtfcngrtTze^ with my whole body, the straggltng villagcs I passed thtough on my long-ago travels in Hungary and Rumania.

There is another (less Froustian) expansion of the punctum: when, paradoxically, while remaining a "de-raił,' it fills rhe whole picrure. $)uanc Michals has photo-grapheti^- Andy” Warhol: a provocativc portrait, sińce Warhol hides his face behind both hands. I have no desirc to commcnt intellectually on this gamę of hide-and-scek (which belongs to the Studium); sińce for me, Warhol hides nothing; hc offers his hands to read, quitc opcnly; and the punctum is not the gesrurc but the slightly repel-lent substance of those sparulatc nails, at once soft and hard-edged.