‘A work of art does not contain the least bit of information’: Deleuze and Guattari and Contemporary Art
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2017.33145Keywords:
philosophy, Deleuze, Kant, contemporary art, photography, aesthetics, sublime, immanenceAbstract
Deleuze and Guattari’s rejection of Conceptual art is well known, and sits awkwardly with the current hegemony of ‘post-conceptual’ artistic practices. Equally awkward is Deleuze’s ontological and political dislike of photography, which produces a ‘snapshot’ or representation of becoming, placing cliched images directly into our brains, controlling our actions and reactions by denying us the power to think creatively. In Cinema 2 Deleuze will extend this argument to the new ‘electronic image’, which like Conceptual art turns the plane of composition into a ‘flatbed’ plane or ‘screen’ that simply formats information, and with it our interfaced brains. Today, conceptual practice, photography and digital technologies are all simply taken for granted by contemporary art, which is also happy to use “D&G” as well. But doesn’t Deleuze and Guattari’s thought require a more critical application? Doesn’t it demand a minor war-machine? What would this be in the case of contemporary artistic practice? Amongst various possibilities this paper will explore the sublime ramifications of a Deleuzean image of ‘thought’, and its position as the ‘immanent outside’ of art’s post-conceptual trajectory.
References
Alliez, Éric with collaboration from Jean-Clet Martin. 2016. The Brain-Eye: New Histories of Modern Painting. Translated by Robin Mackay. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Bergson, Henri. 1944. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. New York: Random House.
Bleyen, Mieke, ed. 2012. Minor Photography: Connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Photography Theory. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1978. Deleuze - Second lesson on Kant, 21 March, 1978. Translated by Melissa McMahon. Accessed September 2016. Available at www.webdeleuze.com
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1, The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2, The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Roberta Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Negotiations, 1972–1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1999. “Cold and Heat.” In Photogenic Painting/La Peinture Photogénique, edited by Gérard Fromanger, translated by Dafydd Roberts. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1999. Foucault. Translated by Sean Hand. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London and New York: Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two Regimes of Madness, Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Edited by David Lapoujade. Translated by A. Hodges and M. Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux, Capitalisme et Schizophrénie. Paris: Minuit.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1991. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? Paris: Minuit.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press.
Duchamp, Marcel. 1973. The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Edited by Michael Sanouillet and E. Peterson. New York: Da Capo.
Guattari, Félix and Antonio Negri. 1990. Communists Like Us. Translated by Michael Ryan, New York: Semiotext(e).
Guattari, Félix. 1995. Chaosmosis,: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm. Translated by Paul Bains and Julien Pefanis. Sydney: Power Publications.
Guattari, Félix. 1996. The Guattari Reader. Edited by Gary Genosko. New York: Blackwell.
Guattari, Félix. 2013. Schizoanalytic Cartographies. Translated by Andrew Goffrey. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Osborne, Peter. 2013. Anywhere or Not At All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art. London: Verso.
Raunig, Gerald. 2007. Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century. New York: Semiotext(e).
Sylvester, David. 1987. The Brutality of Fact, Interviews with Francis Bacon. London: Thames and Hudson.
Vanhanen, Janne. 2010. Encounters with the Virtual: The Experience of Art in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal, provided it is for non-commercial uses; and that lets others excerpt, translate, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
