What a Cliche!
Boring Cliches…
Deleuze, in Painting and Sensation, informs us of an innovative approach to seeing art. Not art as an imitation, but art as a sensation. When Deleuze talks about sensation, he tells us about the immediate force we receive in our body — the figurative force — in which the cliche or the ready-made is opposed. It is affective on our nervous system; the sensation is felt by the body, and it is in the body. This can be best illustrated in the paintings of Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon’s paintings are one prime example of opposing the cliche. We can see from his artworks, a series of crucifixions, of popes, self-portraits, or smiles or screams. This cliche that we are referring to is the premade conception or representation we are conceiving as we look at art — he is suggesting that cliches numb our perception, they dull our senses due to the lack of art’s intensity. In Bacon’s art, we can see the deformity of the figure; how Bacon’s figure is distorted, fragmented as if it evokes violence, pain, and suffering. This kind of distortion is achieved through figurative force. As Bacon bypasses the cliche through the figurative force, we are brought to a new domain in which art directly affects our body, and our being, consequently bypassing our rational faculty and triggering emotional responses.
Deleuze and Bacon both critique the “cliche.” Deleuze sees how Bacon transforms art as visceral. Visceral in such a way, it invokes an inward and intense sensation. Again, when we say sensation, for Deleuze, it is our perceptual experiences, the immediate impression we get from the world through our senses. I think perception takes place prior to the conceptual and representational aspects of our experience, hence why Deleuze is right when he says that sensations should have a logic of their own. As sensations affect our being, our body, experiences, and thoughts that mold our reality.
