ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I ask if it must be the case that, since Deleuze focuses almost entirely on modern artistic expression, this emphasis signifies his depreciation or even contempt for the art of the past. One advantage of thinking through the couple ‘face/landscape’, as it operates in A Thousand Plateaus, is to be able to open contemporary art onto a different apperception of itself. But not only this, for it also allows, beyond thought, the sense (truly Deleuzian and deterritorializing) of desire. In order for Western space to be divided in every sense according to the logic of identity and resemblance, it needs specific types of organization, among them the processes of facialization. The characteristics of faciality take away from the organization of the face. This brings forth the question, what use is the art of portrait painting?