Gilles Deleuze, "On Painting" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Oct 26, 2025

Charles J. Stivale, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and Dan Smith, Professor of Philosophy, dive into Deleuze's groundbreaking seminars on painting. They discuss the nuances of translating Deleuze's seminars, revealing rich material often overlooked in his published works. The duo explores Deleuze's pedagogy, highlighting the dynamic interactions with students that shaped his ideas. They also debate the interplay between philosophy and art, using Francis Bacon as a lens to examine concepts and affects, all while intertwining themes across Deleuze's broader oeuvre.

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INSIGHT

Seminars Reveal Hidden Conceptual Work

The Deleuze seminars contain rich, experimental material not present in his books.
Dan Smith says seminars reveal concepts and student interactions erased in condensed published works.

INSIGHT

Planned Lectures Become Live Experiments

Deleuze taught with both a plan and openness to students' interventions.
Dan Smith notes student input sometimes diverted him but enriched the seminars' experimental quality.

ANECDOTE

Guattari's Notes Versus Deleuze's Editing

Guattari frequently sent Deleuze copious notes and then resented Deleuze's editorial condensation.
Charles Stivale recounts Guattari felt channeled and sometimes outraged by Deleuze's reworking.

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Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss:

Deleuze, Gilles. 2025. On Painting. Edited by David Lapoujade, translated by Charles J. Stivale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Although Charles is the translator of this New Book, he has been working with Dan for years on The Deleuze Seminars (website here). Dan is also the translator of Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, which Deleuze published shortly after giving this seminar. I thank Charles for bringing him in to contribute to our discussion!

From the inside flap:

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Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze’s 1981 seminars on paintingFrom 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze held a weekly seminar at the Experimental University of Vincennes and, starting in 1980, at Saint-Denis. In the spring of 1981, he began a series of eight seminars on painting and its intersections with philosophy. The recorded sessions, newly transcribed and translated into English, are now available in their entirety for the first time. Extensively annotated by philosopher David Lapoujade, On Painting illuminates Deleuze’s thinking on artistic creation, significantly extending the lines of thought in his book Francis Bacon.Through paintings and writing by Rembrandt, Delacroix, Turner, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Klee, Pollock, and Bacon, Deleuze explores the creative process, from chaos to the pictorial fact. The introduction and use of color feature prominently as Deleuze elaborates on artistic and philosophical concepts such as the diagram, modulation, code, and the digital and the analogical. Through this scrutiny, he raises a series of profound and stimulating questions for his students: How does a painter ward off grayness and attain color? What is a line without contour? Why paint at all?Written and thought in a rhizomatic manner that is thoroughly Deleuzian—strange, powerful, and novel—On Painting traverses both the conception of art history and the possibility of color as a philosophical concept.

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