Stenography of the Void. The Work of Art as an Intensive Interval
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2039-9251/32300Keywords:
emptiness, Francis Bacon, Gilles Deleuze, śūnyatā, Buddhism, TaoismAbstract
Emptiness is often understood as deprivation, absence, or the negation of being. In the Western metaphysical tradition,
nothingness has frequently been conceived as the opposite of being, as a limit or a lack. However, in contemporary
thought and in dialogue with Eastern philosophy, emptiness takes on a different form: no longer mere absence,
but a field of possibilities, a dynamic matrix, a potential form. This essay aims to explore emptiness as a potential
form of the work of art, drawing in particular on the work of the painter Francis Bacon and the thought of Gilles
Deleuze, while interweaving these perspectives with certain strands of Indian and Eastern philosophy, notably the
Buddhist notion of śūnyatā and the Taoist conception of emptiness as efficacy. The underlying hypothesis is that art
does not merely fill a space, but creates zones of emptiness—intensive intervals in which the power of the artistic
gesture condenses and becomes operative.
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