Metamorphoses of the Subject: Kandinsky Interpreted by Michel Henry and Henri Maldiney

• Authors: Anna Yampolskaya

Abstracts

EN

In this paper I compare how Michel Henry and Henri Maldiney interpret Kandinsky’s heritage. Henry’s phenomenology is based on a distinction between two main modes of manifestation: the ordinary one, that is, the manifestation of the world, and the “manifestation of life.” For him, Kandinsky’s work provides a paradigmatic example of the second, more original mode of manifestation, which is free from all forms of self-alienation. Henry claims that this living through the work of art is transformative; it is akin to ascetic practice or mystical experience that goes beyond the distinction of the subject and the object. Maldiney acknowledges Kandinsky’s work as an attempt to provide access to an a-cosmic and ahistoric experience of one’s inner self; yet for him this is not a positive characteristic. For Maldiney, the key distinction is not between modes of phenomenalisation, but between the dimensions of meaning (sens). For him there is no radical self-transformation which is not a transformation of one’s being-in-the-world and one’s meaning of the world, and so Kandinsky’s a-cosmic paintings cannot induce a true transformation of the self. I conclude that the disagreement of Henry and Maldiney on Kandinsky does not unfold on the level of phenomenological description of concrete aesthetic experience, but on the level of metaphysics.

Keywords

EN

aesthesis; French phenomenology; Henri Maldiney; Michel Henry; phenomenological aesthetics; Wassily Kandinsky

• Publisher: Ośrodek Badań Filozoficznych - Centre for Philosophical Research
• Journal: Avant
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 157-167

Dates

published

2018

Contributors

author

Anna Yampolskaya

Identifiers

DOI

10.26913/avant.2018.02.10

Biblioteka Nauki

2158919