ABSTRACT
The preceding lectures have tried to bring the world ofperception back to life, this world hidden from us beneath all the sediment of knowledge and social living. In so
doing, we have often had recourse to painting because paint-
ing thrusts us once again into the presence of the world of
lived experience. In the work of Cézanne, Juan Gris, Braque
and Picasso, in different ways, we encounter objects – lemons,
mandolins, bunches of grapes, pouches of tobacco – that do
not pass quickly before our eyes in the guise of objects we
‘know well’ but, on the contrary, hold our gaze, ask questions
of it, convey to it in a bizarre fashion the very secret of their
substance, the very mode of their material existence and which,
so to speak, stand ‘bleeding’ before us. This was how painting
led us back to a vision of things themselves. Reciprocally, a
philosophy of perception which aspires to learn to see the
world once more, as if in an exchange of services rendered, will
restore painting and the arts in general to their rightful place,
will allow them to recover their dignity and will incline us to
accept them in their purity.
