Francis Bacon

The "La Vue / Le Texte" series brings together writers and artists from Europe and America who complement and illuminate each other's work. This series presents these collaborative efforts in two volumes, one by an artist and the other by a writer. Each participant uses his or her own medium to express a common interest.

Using the paintings of Francis Bacon as a continuing point of reference, Gilles Deleuze provides a treatise on aesthetics in the plastic arts. Deleuze considers aspects of Bacon's paintings, from the point of view of the logic of sensation, progressing from the most simple to the most complex. He takes up, among other things, figuration in ancient paintings; the way in which Bacon continues Cezannes battle against the cliche; the connection between hysteria and painting; the manner in which every painter, in his own manner, recapitulates the history of painting; colour and the three elements of painting - structure, force, and contour; and the different connections, in painting, between the hand and the eye.

The paintings cited are reproduced in a separate volume and cross referenced by number in the text. Gilles Deleuze is one of France's foremost philosophers who has written on Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche and, in the arts, on Proust and Kafka.