ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the common ground between the abandonment of representation in painting and in philosophy, through an examination of Deleuze's remarks about Plato and modern art in the course of Difference et repetition. This discussion also raises the question of the nature of the Deleuzian "overturning" of Platonism. In the visual arts in particular, the transition to modernity was precipitated by a crisis in and eventual abandonment of the representational theory of art. Plato's texts provide a conception of a world whose basic structure is that of a system of representation. Derrida does not pursue the interrogation of representation in Plato beyond showing that difference is internal to both the notion of simulacrum and that of likeness or copy itself. In particular, he does not ask whether it is in fact the same difference in each case. Aesthetic modernity provides Deleuze with one example of a world in which difference has free reign.
