An "archaeology" of contemporary art, between Matisse and Duchamp, between art and philosophy: a book to deconstruct the aesthetic regime of the image, for a new diagrammatic thinking, after Deleuze and Guattari.
With Défaire l'image (“Undoing the Image”), Éric Alliez explores a contemporary art-thought with the regime of the diagram as a driving principle. The author put together a collection of essays, or boxes, with his masters and sources of inspiration Deleuze and Guattari. Using Matisse-Duchamp as an “arc of forces,” these texts subject the contemporary to an archeological study and perform a genealogy of practices, including theoretical practices (Buren, Brus, Matta-Clark, Oiticica). This experimental book aims to position itself “in between Art and philosophy” and oscillate between the two, in an attempt to answer abstraction's century-old challenge to philosophy.
Close to Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, who directed his doctorate, Éric Alliez is a professor in the philosophy department of Paris 8. He has led an international career that has taken him to teach in Rio de Janeiro (State University), Vienna (Academy), Karlsruhe (Hoschschule), and London (Middlesex, then Kingston), where he still teaches. He is the author of many major works of philosophy and multiple writings between art and philosophy.
