Excerpt from "Francis Bacon" by Delueuze, Bacon, Smith :
Mutual resonance*
Deleuze and Guattari define philosophy as an activity that consists in the creation or invention of concepts." One can very easily think without concepts but a soon as there is a concept, there is truly philosophy. Yet art itself is an equally creative enterprise of thought, but one whose object is to create sensible aggregates rather than concepts. Great artists are also great thinkers, but they think in terms of percepts and affects rather than concepts: painters think in terms of lines and colors, just as musicians think in sounds,filmakers think in images, writers think in words and so on. None of these activities has any priority over the others. Creating a concept is neither more difficult nor more abstract than creating new visual , sonorous or verbal combinations in art; conversely, it is no easier to read an image, painting or novel than it is to comprehend a concept. Philosophy, for Deleuze, can never be undertaken independently from art; it always enters into relations of mutual resonance and exchange with these other domains, thought for reasons that are always internal to philosophy itself.
New Orleans
16 years ago
