Neither Forms nor Signs. The Modern Destiny of the Ghost Image

Abstract

Taking certain exploratory assumptions of «modern art» as a starting point for an emergency destiny of the ghost image (from the reading of the Sophist by Deleuze), the possibility  is examined  in these page of the sovereignty of the modern image not residing predominantly in its formal values and purity, but in its power of resistance to understanding. Kant, Baudelaire and Lautréamont, regarding the definition of the irreducible image to «realistic» perception, or Ingres, or the last Goya and a more enigmatic  than merely plastic Manet, guide us towards aspects (the dispute over images versus signs, the notions of figure and estrangement) and authors (Redon, Picabia, among others) less heeded by the historiography of the «autonomists» and formal conquests.