ESSAY
Under this fine rain: the phenomenology of artistic creation
10 December 2024 – Vol 2, Issue 4.
To create art, one must embark on something entirely new, approaching the journey with fresh eyes and a willingness to explore the unfamiliar. The process calls for emptiness, moments of silence, and forgetting. It is a state of suspension where one lets go of preconceived notions and begins to see the world anew – with innocent, unburdened eyes. Through this, art transcends representation and becomes a direct encounter with the essence of being – an authentic ‘presence’.
Emptying the Self through silence and forgetting
Paul Cézanne explains his pre-pictorial moment of creation as a state of silence, appearing eternal:
“Under this fine rain, I breathe the virginity of the world […] A sharp sense of nuances overwhelms me. I feel coloured by all the shades of infinity. At that moment, my painting and I are one single being. […] It seems to me, when night falls again, that I will not paint and that I have never painted. Night is necessary so that I may detach my eyes from the earth, from this corner of earth in which I am merged” (Gasquet, 2012).
‘Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir’, by Paul Cézanne. 1904–1906, Bridgestone Museum of Art. Image in public domain.
Similarly, Henri Matisse described a state of emptiness in his creative process: “When I draw, I naturally try to completely empty my mind of all memories to fully embrace the present moment”. Two years later, he elaborated: “Then a void occurs – and I am merely a spectator of what I do” (Matisse, 1992). The act of creation necessitates forgetting and detaching from prior knowledge. The painter’s work is not simply a matter of covering a blank canvas but involves an inner cleansing – a state of absence that opens the door to creativity.
In the act of cleansing and forgetting, the artists put aside previous knowledge to create an interior space. That vacant space is where imagination can freely move without constrictions of the intellect. This is where a spontaneous creation of the imagination arises independently of past experiences or intellectual reasoning. It is a state of a ‘poetic image’, in Bachelard’s terminology (Bachelard, 2023). For the mind to find inspiration it needs space – an emptiness that welcomes the new. Jean Lescure, reflecting on Lapicque’s work, noted:
“Although his work testifies to great culture and knowledge of all the dynamic expressions of space, he does not apply them […] Thus, knowledge must be accompanied by an equivalent forgetting of knowledge. This ‘not-knowing’ is not ignorance but a difficult act of transcending knowledge. Only at this price can a work be, at every moment, a kind of pure beginning that turns its creation into an exercise of freedom” (Lescure, 1956, p. 78).
Creation requires a deliberate clearing or emptying to make room for new energy, and for inspiration to flow. This process mirrors the natural rhythm of the universe, where balance is achieved through cycles of presence and absence. It is through this absence, this prior emptying, that energy is able to flow (Rubin, 2023, p. 140). By embracing this emptiness, artists open themselves to new ideas and energies, allowing art to become an authentic act.
Silence, contemplation, and wonder are precursors to creativity. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy, as Aristotle explained. It is the starting point of knowledge and, one might argue, the foundation of true artistic creation.
Paul Virilio extended this discussion to modern visual arts. For him, the silence surrounding modern art has been broken, packaged, and commodified (Virilio, 2003). He refers to Schlegel’s commentary on Raphael’s Sistine Madonna to illustrate the authentic ‘absent silence’: “The effect is so immediate that not a word comes to your lips. For the rest, why words before what is offered as such luminous evidence?” This ‘luminous evidence’ conveys the immediacy of perception, an experience that transcends verbal articulation.
In the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari wrote about the silent yet overwhelming experience in the presence of art. Reflecting on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, he marvelled:
“[…] seen as a whole, at the proper distance, it suspends the spirit, without noticing the difference between what is alive and what is painted, since the figure seems to live, breathe, move with the slight movements of the person who, even if it rests calmly, it can be seen that it exists […] In short, this portrait is such that it makes the artist-painter who examines it tremble, since it is impossible for anyone in the trade to do something similar, no matter how daring and skilled he may be in handling brushes” (Vasari, 1966, p. 53).
Both Vasari and Virilio’s critiques suggest that silence is essential to the heightened intensity of observing and interacting with artistic work. In this sense, silence seems to be a required component of making art as well as enjoying it. This silence is not a void but an active presence, what Walter Benjamin might call an ‘aura’, which allows the artwork to occupy its space and project its meaning outward.
Thus, true creation requires not only a skill but a deliberate act of unknowing – a willingness to pause, to empty, and to let silence shape the work. In this way, art becomes not just a product but an encounter, a luminous presence that invites both the artist and the audience into its profound, boundless space.
Manifesting the original state through a primal feeling of detachment
If the act of creating is connected to an act of emptying rather than merely producing something, we can suggest that inspiration involves stripping down assumptions and representations. Deleuze often spoke about the necessity of “undoing resemblance” in order to achieve a “deeper resemblance” – undoing in order to help the image emerge; to bring forth a presence.
The word ‘re-presentation’ can signify either the act of reproducing what already exists or the process of reinterpreting something in a new and transformative way. Deleuze critiques traditional modes of representation for their dependence on pre-existing forms and resemblance, particularly those rooted in mimesis (imitation). These approaches often confine art to mirroring reality, reducing it to a mere replication of the familiar.
Instead, Deleuze envisions an art that transcends representation altogether, focusing instead on capturing forces, intensities, and presences. This approach liberates the artwork from imitation, enabling it to create entirely new ways of perceiving and experiencing the world.
Deleuze explains that the surface – the representation of things – does not convey the underlying essence (Deleuze, 2023). As the surface cannot capture the depth or essence of something, then relying solely on resemblance or re-presentation is insufficient. We need to shift our perspective and find a new way to express the inner essence. Deleuze suggests a ‘third way’, distinct from resemblance or representation. In the context of art, the third way allows the emergence of a presence – a figure that rises from chaos and from nothingness. Such a figure is not merely a reproduction or representation of something pre-existing but rather an image that carries within it the trace of its own genesis. It is a presence rather than a re-presentation.
To achieve a ‘true image’ in art, the artist needs to enter a state of openness and emptiness – a pause, a ‘waiting’. This waiting is free from objectification and conceptualisation that shape perception, thus allowing one to encounter the world in its original state.
Conceptualisation makes things recognizable to us, influenced by prejudices and knowledge. To create, instead, it is necessary to let go of this knowledge and approach the world with an open heart and no expectations – with a primal feeling. Maldiney describes this feeling as an act of direct contact, an ongoing interaction of enveloping and detaching, allowing for an unmediated engagement with existence.
It is in this sense of Maldiney’s ‘feeling’ that one can understand Cézanne’s message in a letter to Bernard: “I continue searching for the expression of those confused sensations we bring with us when we are born” (Bernard, 1978). For Cézanne, artistic creation is the returning to a pre-conceptual, original encounter with the world. Similarly, Maldiney describes art as a transformation of openness, revealing the ‘truth of feeling’ by uncovering the buried foundation of experience, free from the constraints of objective perception (Maldiney 1973, p. 24).
Here, Maldiney advocates for existential art. The creative process becomes a critical act of revealing or manifesting the true being, the presence, where the outcome is not guaranteed. The outcome depends on the artist’s ability to transcend representation and achieve authenticity. This contrasts with figurative or illustrative art, which assigns fixed qualities to objects.
The limitations of representation call for a mode of creation that transcends mere depiction. From a phenomenological perspective, the act of creation is not about extracting pre-existing themes, ideas or images, but rather a process of formation of feelings with forms, where the whole canvas becomes a space of active energies. Space, in artwork, is not merely a backdrop for images but an active, evolving ground. In Cézanne’s paintings, for example, the elements are charged with movement and transformation:
“The Cézannian space is not a receptacle, a container of images or signs. It is a field of tensions. Its elements or formative moments are themselves events: bursts, ruptures, encounters, modulations, some of which, equivalent, resonate in space, and others, opposites, change reciprocally and totally within a monadic duration” (Maldiney, 1993, p. 131).
Cézanne aspired to “paint the space and time so that they become the forms of sensibility for colours” (Bernard, 1978). For Cézanne, colours are not merely pigments but living entities, “noumenal beings” that exist independently of human perception or sensory experience, and which give rise to a world in its ‘virginal state’. Through the act of painting, the world comes into being, revealing itself as a transformative field rather than a collection of static objects.
A similar dynamic is found in the work of Francis Bacon, whose paintings wrestle with what Deleuze refers to as “clichés” (Deleuze, 2002). These clichés represent the familiar narratives and habitual images that structure our perception of the world. Bacon’s creative task, as Deleuze interprets it, was to clear away these preconceptions and reach a raw, unmediated level of expression. In his paintings, Bacon rejects the illustrative and figurative dimensions of the image, seeking instead to capture the invisible forces and tensions that act upon the figures. His contorted bodies, isolated in fields of colour and suspended on beds, chairs, and mattresses, reveal energies that seem to form and dissolve. They are in flux, never fixed or final. This suggests that creation or existence is not static but an ongoing transformation – shapes or ideas emerge, shift, and fade away, only to evolve into new states. Bacon’s works do not impose structure onto inert matter; instead, they allow the form to emerge organically from within.
Creation, the act of giving form to something, is not merely an act of representing or reproducing, but autogenesis. If a figurative form has an intentional representational aspect, by which we can recognize it as an image, then it must also have a genetic-rhythmic dimension, which makes it alive. As Maldiney say (Maldiney, 1973), within works of art, forms are never “made” but always “in the making”, always in formation. Artistic form coincides with its genesis, its self-formation. As Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty, 2013) would say, it radiates from its space, which radiates from it. In short, it opens a space: it does not represent; it manifests. In the works of art, in the forms, signification and manifestation are one.
At a Glance:
Creation = Emptiness (silence, forgetting) + Presence (detachment, manifestation).
Artistic creation comes from a sense of emptiness and presence. Emptiness is achieved through silence and forgetting, and presence is cultivated through detachment and authentic manifestation.
© Journal of Creativity and Inspiration.
Anna Piazza is an academic writer, translator, and editor with a PhD in Philosophy from the Max Weber Kolleg at the University of Erfurt, Germany. She has lectured in Humanities, Political Theory, and Philosophy of Art, while also being a practicing artist whose work integrates theoretical inquiry and creative expression.
References
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Maldiney, Henri. (1973). Regard, Parole, Espace, L’Age d’Homme, Paris.
Maldiney, Henri. (1985). Art et existence, Klincksieck, Paris.
Maldiney, Henri. (1993). L’art, l’éclair de l’être, Comp’act, Paris.
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Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2013) Phenomenology of perception, Routledge, New York.
Rubin, Rick. (2023). El acto de crear: una manera de ser, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona.
Vasari, Giorgio. (1966). Lives of Great Artists, Porrua, Mexico.
Virilio, Paul. (2003). El procedimiento silencio, Paidós, Barcelona.
