Painting and the Question of Concepts

Following nearly a decade teaching material included in his and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, and also in his first year at St. Denis, Deleuze turned his attention, first, to Spinoza, and then to eight sessions on painting and its intersections with philosophy. These newly transcribed, annotated and now translated sessions are devoted to diverse questions: What relation does painting establish with catastrophe and with chaos? How does a painter ward off greyness and attain color? What is a line without contour? What is a plane, an optical space, a regime of color? Why paint today? Through works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Turner, Klee, Pollock, Mondrian, Bacon, Delacroix, Gauguin and Caravaggio, Deleuze entertains important philosophical concepts, such as the diagram, code, modulation, the digital and the analogical, renovating these concepts in dialogue with his students.

For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, many of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki. Individual sessions have been updated significantly, with revised descriptions completed in October 2023 and updated transcripts and sessions in Feb-May 2024.