The Expressive Becoming of Matter: Art in Deleuze

Abstract

In this article we have tried to highlight the intimate solidarity that exists between Deleuze’s ontology and his aesthetic theory. The connection is so narrow, that it is materially impossible to approach Deleuze’s art theory without having a clear understanding of some of the main notions of his thought. Deleuze’s concepts are not static but mobile, which allows them to vary in physiognomy as the research horizon moves. This is the reason why the work of art receives a conceptual treatment that is tributary of theses elaborated by Deleuze in the sphere of the most rigorous ontological speculation. Deleuze conceives art as an antidote too the sad passions of which Spinoza spoke, a revulsive against a society that stifles creativity with its clichés, a «new» landscape that we can only inhabit on condition that we strip ourselves of our pretended identity.