FETISH A: COMMODITY
In his Natural History, Pliny uses facticius (the Latin root of fetish) to describe certain useful objects, which have been adapted from nature through human ingenuity. For Pliny, what distinguishes the facticius thing is not the labor that went into acquiring it from nature, but rather its distinctly artificial mode of production.
A diamond manufactured by high-pressure-high-temperature crushing of carbon could be described as facticius. A diamond extracted from a mine cannot.
Pliny’s own example is a fragrant resin by the name of ladanum that can be produced in two distinct ways:
“Goats, they say, an animal very destructive of foliage in general, but especially fond of scented shrubs, as if understanding the prices they fetch, crop the stalks of the shoots, which swell with an extremely sweet fluid, and wipe off with the nasty shaggy hair of their beards the juice dropping from the stalks in a random mixture, and this forms lumps in the dust [that are] baked by the sun; and that is the reason why goat hairs are found in ladanum.”1
In this instance, the ladanum is a byproduct of the goat’s grazing, a recuperated waste product demonstrating the generosity of nature.
Pliny also describes a technique for extracting ladanum: the plant’s “fat juices [are sweated-out], and consequently the plant is rolled up in bundles by tying strings round it, and so made into cakes. Therefore there are two varieties … the natural sort mingled with earth [terrenum] and the artificial [facticium].”2
Here, facticius describes the human technique of adapting nature to human ends. More than gathering up the fruits of nature, it is a metabolic relationship to the natural world that transforms it into something artificial, something deeply marked by human capacity and desire. Nature is no longer understood as the principle force of production, but instead as so much raw material to be transformed by human ingenuity.
Pliny also uses facticius to describe the deceptive manipulation of natural materials. For example, the red-tinted flower of salt found along the Nile can be counterfeited: “it is adulterated too and colored red ochre, or usually by ground crockery; this sham is detected by water, which washes out the artificial [facticium] color, while the genuine [versus] is only removed by oil.”3 Here, fetish is the artifice in artificial coloring, a cosmetic effecting only appearances, a bad imitation.
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In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber describes how the Reformation lead to the glorification of industriousness as an end in itself. The kind of manufacturing described by Pliny as facticius is valued not so much for its capacity to transform nature into useful objects, but because such instrumental activity is considered inherently pious. Usefulness is valued above any particular use. Although frugality and industriousness are seen as the hallmarks of a pious life, these are supposed to lead inevitably to the accumulation of riches, which then have a potentially corrupting influence on the soul. So religion simultaneously demands the accumulation of worldly goods and taboos the enjoyment of them. Wealth becomes a sign that one leads a virtuous life, and at the same time opens up the danger of a calamitous fall into the spiritless world of mere things. An imperative to accumulate is put in place, with no ethical mode for the enjoyment of worldly goods. There is no possibility of resting in abundance individually or collectively. On the earthly plane, accumulation becomes an end in itself, justified only after the fact through ascension to heaven.
Weber lays out this interpretation of Protestantism in an attempt to account for what he calls its “innerweltliche Askese,” or worldly asceticism. The spiritual renewal ushered in by Protestantism was not a straightforward withdrawal from worldly affairs. Despite their clear affirmation of the ascendancy of the spiritual over the material, Protestant communities exhibited a distinct capacity for social organization and domination of the material world through the twin forces of capitalism and colonialism. The second part of Weber’s book is an attempt to trace the religious foundations of this powerful but paradoxical worldly asceticism. The tensions of this paradox are not equally pronounced in all Protestant thinkers. Weber cites Johannes Hoornbeek, a seventeenth century Dutch Reformed theologian, who used Matthew 5.5. (“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”) to justify the claim that “God takes care of his own,” making material wealth a sign of God’s favor.4
In an earlier passage Weber emphasizes the individualistic character of the Protestant notion of virtue, an individualism tinged with the spirit of competition. He writes, “For, as is often pointed out in Protestant literature, God never commanded ‘love thy neighbor more than thyself,’ but only as thyself. Hence self-regard is also a duty. For instance, a man who can make better use of his possessions, to the greater glory of God than his neighbor, is not obliged by the duty of brotherly love to part with them.”5 So, not only is wealth a sign of election to the kingdom of heaven, but this election becomes a justification for the hoarding of wealth, since being favored by God is the sole guarantee that such wealth will be properly employed.
Not all Protestants are so comfortable with this imperative to prosper. In the eighteenth century the Methodist theologian John Wesley laid out the paradox clearly, “Religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches … So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent this — this continual decay of pure religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; We must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they can, that is, in effect, to grow rich.”6 Wesley is explicit: to be virtuous is to accumulate wealth; to be wealthy is to endanger the soul.
Weber describes how this contradictory relationship to prosperity led to an unexpected reciprocity between acquisitiveness and asceticism: “The idea of a man’s duty to his possessions, to which he subordinates himself as an obedient steward, or even as an acquisitive machine, bears with chilling weight on his life. The greater the possessions the heavier, if the ascetic attitude towards life stands the test, the feeling of responsibility for them, for holding them undiminished for the glory of God and increasing them by restless effort … The worldly Protestant asceticism, as we may recapitulate up to this point, acted powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted consumption, especially of luxuries. On the other hand, it had the psychological effect of freeing the acquisition of goods from traditional ethics. It broke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition in that it not only legalized it, but looked upon it as directly willed by God.”7
In the worldly asceticism of the Protestant ethic the process of accumulation is as infinite as God Himself. Industrious acquisitiveness has been split off from earthly pleasure. What is gained through industrious activity must be dedicated to God, and used only in ways which can be justified spiritually. The manipulation and domination of nature is valued above the creaturely enjoyment of what nature yields (more or less) on its own.
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Dutch still life painting comes into its own in the early seventeenth century, in the wake of independence from Spain and the capitalist and colonial expansion of the Netherlands. In early flower paintings of the genre, the still life collapses the space of the scientific specimen with that of the commodity. Both spaces are abstract, and therefore flexible, able to incorporate into their schemata a wide array of objects with far-flung origins. Objects of knowledge and objects of the market require similarly, apparently neutral, spaces for presentation. Ambrosias Boschaert’s Bouquet in a Stone Niche (1618) brings together a variety of flowers that reflect the global reach of the Dutch colonies and their trading partners.8 Each specimen is rendered with the specificity of a botanical illustration, tulips, roses, carnations, and lily of the valley are all readily identifiable. Impossibly, each variety is in full bloom, a feat accomplished by studying each flower at a botanical garden at the height of its perfection, and then incorporating these studies into the final image. Boschaert’s painting is not tethered to a particular season, instead we have an image freed of temporal constraints, able to incorporate each perfect bloom, however temporally or geographically heterogeneous, into the unity of the bouquet, and the greater unity of its pictorial space.
Boschaert’s flowers have more in common with Pliny’s facticius ladanum than they do with the fragrant clumps of natural ladanum, formed spontaneously around the stray hairs of grazing goats. His flowers are the products of vast commercial, technological, and political networks. Rather than the bounty of nature, these blossoms exemplifying the power of human ingenuity and the valuable commodities it produces. Indeed, the value of the painting comes in part from the value of the precious commodities it depicts. The atemporal, abstract space of the painting, allows the flowers to appear as objects of value and objects of knowledge, but always at a distance from the habits and rhythm’s of daily life, rejecting the casual use of objects that has an intimacy with the needs and pleasures of the body. Geographic, economic and political space are collapsed into a nearly flat plane of diagrammatic clarity, a space designed for the coolheaded accumulation and classification of objects.
Boschaert’s bouquet is positioned on the sill of an open niche, framed against a faraway, mist-enshrouded archipelago. The bouquet and the shells at the foot of the vase loom over the distant, miniaturized landscape. This jump in scale gives the hazy backdrop an unreality, especially when compared with the vivid clarity of the flowers. The stacking up of two distinct, rather flat spaces, one quite near and the other quite far, evokes the Hollywood technique of rear projection, suturing together foreground and background, transforming the landscape into a feeling, an ambience, rather than a specific place.
Willem Claesz Heda’s Breakfast Piece (1637) depicts the remainders of a solitary meal. Unlike Boschaert’s painting, there is an implied narrative, the uneasy transition from appetizing abundance to abject leftovers, unfolding over the course of a decadent breakfast. Material wealth teeters between harmony and chaos, between virtue and vice. The opulent trappings of the meal, have been thrown into disarray by immoderate, creaturely consumption. While the content of Heda’s painting produces a tension between the disorder of the table and the precise craftsmanship of the luxurious goods on display, the consistent flawlessness of Heda’s painting technique reunifies the image. The visual precision of his technique is equally attuned to the broken surface of nut shells and the extremely fine metalwork of the soiled dishes and cutlery. His labor-intensive treatment of the painted surface affiliates itself with the values of industriousness and control, reabsorbing the depicted scene of hedonistic consumption into the sphere of production. A delicate harmony is restored. Unlike the counterfeit red flower of salt described by Pliny as facticius, the seamless artifice so dazzlingly displayed by Heda in his counterfeit reality, is untainted by inferiority. It represents the righteous disciplining of nature, and natural appetites. The painting displays the logic of worldly asceticism laid out by Weber. Wealth is justified through the production of more wealth, just as the value-adding perfection of Heda’s technique redeems the depicted scene of unruly enjoyment. Pleasure is dangerous and must be carefully regulated by both the religious and visual order.
The kind of realism employed by Heda can tip over into the hallucinatory, seeming to propose an infinite logic of simulation and embellishment. If objects as highly crafted as the tableware in Breakfast Piece can become more refined, more valuable, through representation, can another layer of artifice be added? This is one way to understand the popularity of tromp l’oeil painting in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.9 These paintings seem to fold all of reality into the image space, generating a totally fabricated world, malleable through and through. As artifice threatens to cannibalize reality, the limits of nature fall away, yielding a hall of mirrors. The temporal and spatial dislocation of the still life becomes absolute. It is curious how, on the brink of total domination of reality, a dizzying sense of unreality is produced. According to the ethic of worldly asceticism, the righteousness of material accumulation – which finds its parallel in the superb artifice of still life painting – was guaranteed, not by worldly ends such as shared abundance, happiness, or even pleasure, but by the glorification of God. If the link to God weakens, there is no recourse to meaning, or virtue in this world. Reality becomes infinitely unstable, even hostile.
The curiously abstract space of the Dutch still life painting, particularly when simplified into the darkened wall and table-top combination preferred by painters such as Heda, prefigures the seamless so often used in product photography. In fact much of the visual language of product photography can be traced back to the still life genre — the over abundance of detail, vivid, contrasting textures, the careful modulation of value, and the outsized imaging technologies equally applied to the humblest and to the most precious objects. The curved shape of the photographic seamless smooths out the line demarcating the transition from foreground to background. The viewer is presented with an open field, a voided-out non-space, out of which the manufactured object of desire shines forth. Like the still life, the product photograph presents an uneasy space for the management of earthly and artificial pleasures.
