| Saturday, 05.10.2019 Liminale Räume

Walking Towards the Threshold

The main theme of this paper finds its roots in the unique methodological approach chosen within the frame of the experimental project Migrating Art Historians. The latter mainly sought to investigate the phenomena of medieval pilgrimage and its artistic forms, topics which are, at least since the studies of Turner, at the core of liminal theories and their interdisciplinary nature. The contribution wishes to dwell on the notion of liminality on two levels. On the one hand, it considers the corporeal as well as intellectual experience of the modern scholar pilgrim, crossing the line between theoretical and empirical scientific research. This dramatic change of daily reality, social status, short-term goals and mindset while walking towards objects of art is mirrored in the medieval reality of pilgrimage.
On the other hand, this theoretical basis will then be applied to the case of the Cathedral Notre-Dame du Puy-en-Velay (France) and its surrounding landscape, an exemplary case of liminal interactions in pilgrimage art. Taking the notion of liminality in its wider sense, the aim is to describe the various liminal steps – both mental and physical – inherent to the approach of a sacred building. We will assess notably the significant role of the landscape in this process, as well as the capacity of sacral architecture to metaphorically transcend its own limits and expand towards the viewer through his expectations. The liminal experience of the subject encountering art at the threshold will be demonstrated especially with help of the porch of the Cathedral of Le Puy. The latter not only presents a unique spatial arrangement, but also multiple images – made from various materials – which are able to call forth associations with the notions of transition between sacred and profane, heaven and earth, or human and divine. In a pilgrimage context – in the past as today – this place is
a significant site of arrival and departure, an imaginary borderline where thoughts of a  beginning or fulfilment were evoked by various means. As a result, the paper will try to merge the broad definition of liminality here suggested both with the encounter of the space and its images today as in the past, trying to assess how entering or stepping out of this immense threshold in its tangible, as well as intangible sense, is an experience endowed with significant value.