Deleuze's Concept of "Diagram"

Hello everyone, I'm posting a brief "mapping" on the concept of "diagram"

Diagram
(Gilles Deleuze)
(Francis Bacon’s “graph” or diagram p.82)

…the marks are made, and you survey the thing like you would a sort of graph (diagramme). And you see within this graph the possibilities of all types of fact being planted
(Bacon in Deleuze, 2003, p.160)


Definition (s) /List of concepts

1. The diagram in Bacon
– preparatory work that belongs to painting fully, and yet precedes the act of painting p.81
– done in sketches or invisible and silent, yet extremely intense p.81
– make random marks (line-traits); scrub, sweep, or wipe the canvas in order to clear out locales or zones (color-patches); throw the paint, from various angles and at various speeds p.81
– presupposes that there were already figurative givens on the canvas (and in the painter’s head), more or less virtual, more or less actual p.81
⇓
– it is precisely these givens that will be removed by the act of painting, either by being wiped, brushed, or rubbed, or else covered over p.81
⇓
– ex.1) a mouth elongated, stretched…p.81 ex. 2) the head, part of it cleared away with a brush…p.82
a zone of the Sahara inserted into the head or a piece of a rhinoceros skin, viewed under a microscope, stretched over it p.82
And in a way you would love to be able in a portrait to make a Sahara of the appearance – to make it so like, yet seeming to have the distances of the Sahara (Bacon in Deleuze, 2003, p.160)
– the unit of measure were changed (micrometric, cosmic)
units were substituted for the figurative unit
outstretched diagram
in a midst of the figurative and probabilistic givens, a catastrophe overcame the canvas
emergence of another world
p.82
– as agent of analogical language
notion of modulation and not similitude, nature of analogical language or the diagram p.95-98 (see also p.146)
the diagram acts not as a code but as a modulator, defining possibilities of fact p.98
– operative set of asignifying and nonrepresentative lines and zones, line-strokes and color-patches p.145
– the term designates a mapping of the elements of chance, a selection and distribution of clichés, and a condition that shapes creative accident p.144
– a Figure emerges from the diagram when the later extends across the whole picture, when it is conferred with a new radiance and power of vibration that cannot be limited to one zone or another p.145
– By the way of the diagram, a compositional strategy, there can be a breakage with representation or figurative resemblance p.146


2. Its manual character
– marks and traits: irrational, involuntary, accidental, free, random, nonrepresentative,
nonillustrative, nonnarrative
they are no longer significant or signifiers; they are a-signifying traits
traits of sensation (Cézanne confused sensation that we bring with us at birth)
manual traits
p.82
it is here that the painter works with a rag, stick, brush or sponge; that he throws the paint with his hands p.82
⇓
– involuntary (manual) marks p.160: the hand assumed an independence, and began to be guided by other forces, making marks that no longer depend on either our will or our sight p.82
⇓
– blind manual marks attest to the intrusion of another world into the visual world of figuration p.82
⇓
– they remove the painting from the optical organization that was already reigning over it and rendering figurative in advance p.82
⇓
– shake the dependence of the hand and break up the sovereign optical organization ==> catastrophe, chaos p.82
– the turning point of the painting p.82
– two ways in which the painting can fail: visually (figurative givens and optical organization of representation) and manually (spoil the diagram, overload it, rendered inoperative which is another way of remaining in the figurative) p.82
– operative set of asignifying and nonrepresentative lines and zones, line-strokes and color-patches p.83
– destined to give us the Figure, traits and color-patches break with figuration p.83
⇓
– traits and color-patches are not sufficient in themselves, they must be utilized
they mark out possibilities of fact, but do not yet constitute a fact (pictorial fact)
they must be reinjected into the visual whole which, through the action of these marks, will cease to be an optical organization
p.83
– the manual diagram produces an irruption like scrambled or cleaned zone, which overturns the optical coordinates as well as the tactile connections p.110
– the diagram is never an optical effect, but an unbridled manual power p.111
– it is a frenetic zone in whichthe hand is no longer guided by the eye and is forced upon sight like another will, which appears as chance, accident, automatism, or the involuntary (the optical world, and the tactile-optical world, is swept out, wiped away) p.111

3. Painting and the experience of catastrophe
– chaos and catastrophe (in relation to the figurative givens) / germ of order or rhythm (in relation to the new order of the painting) p.83
it unlocks areas of sensation (Bacon in Deleuze, 2003, p.83).
– ends the preparation work and begins the act of painting p.83
– experience of the chaos-germ, the collapse of visual coordinates (pictorial experience not psychological although it can have an immense influence on the psychic life of the painter)
confrontation with danger (painter)
p.83
the chance that the abyss or catastrophe will give way to rhythm p.83
Paul Klee’s chaos, the vanishing grey point and the chance that this gray point will leap over itself and unlock dimensions of sensation p.83
– painters pass through the catastrophe themselves, embrace the chaos, and attempt to emerge from it
painters differ in their manner of embracing this nonfigurative chaos, and in their evaluation of the pictorial order to come, and the relation of this order with this chaos
p.84
– being itself a catastrophe, the diagram must not create a catastrophe p.128
– chaos and catastrophe imply the collapse of all the figurative givens


4. Abstract painting, code, and optical space
Abstraction
turns chaos into a simple stream in order to discover the abstract and signifying forms
elaborates a symbolic code on the basis of formal oppositions, instead of a diagram
p.84


5. Action Painting, diagram, and manual space
abstract expressionism or art informel
the abyss or chaos is deployed to the maximum, the entire painting is diagrammatic p.86
ex. Pollock’s all over drip paintings p. 160
ex. Action Painting p.86
conversion from the horizon to the ground p.86
imposes the hand on the eye p.87
line without contour p.89
the diagram expresses the entire painting at once, that is, the optical catastrophe and the manual rhythm p.86
domain of the irrational trait and the line without contour p.89

Current evolution of abstract painting:
1) the extension of the diagram to the spatial and temporal whole of painting (displacement of the beforehand and afterward) p.86
2) the abandonment of any visual sovereignty, and even any visual control, over the painting in the process of being executed
3) the elaboration of lines that are more than lines, surfaces that are more than surfaces, volumes that are less than volumes p.87

the painting ceases to be an organism or an isolated organization in order to become a division of its own surface, which must create its own relations with the divisions of the “room” in which it will be hung p.88

(Three paths each of which designate a “modern” function of painting:
– abstraction p.84
– abstract expressionism or art informel p.85-88
– Bacon p.88-90 plus)


6. What Bacon dislikes about this ways
Why Bacon did not become involved with this two preceding paths? p.88:
1) the code is inevitably cerebral and lacks sensation, the essential reality of the fall, that is, the direct action upon the nervous system p.88
the code can easily become a simple symbolic coding of the figurative p.89
(by internalizing tension in the optical form, abstract painting neutralized it p.89)
2) the diagram covers the entire painting, its proliferation creates a veritable mess
sensation is attained, but it remains in a irremediably confused state
p.89

7. Frame
– necessity of preventing the diagram from proliferating, the necessity of confining it to certain areas of the painting and certain moments of the act of painting p.89
Save the contour p.89
the diagram must not eat away at the entire painting; it must remain limited in space and time, it must remain operative and controlled p.89
it must remain localized in space and time p.128
it must not cover the entire painting p.128
possibility of fact, not the fact itself p.89
– not all the figurative givens have to disappear; and above all, a new figuration, that of the figure, should emerge from the diagram and make the sensation clear and precise p.89
– emerge from the catastrophe rather than submerging us further p.89
– the precision of the sensation, the clarity of the figure, the rigor of the contour p.89
⇓
– power of vibration and nonlocalization

8. Hand
– values of the hand:
digital (maximum subordination of the hand to the eye) p.124
tactile (tactile referents, virtual referents: depth, contour,…) p.124
manual (what is imposed on sight is a space without form and a movement without rest which the eye can barely follow and it dismantles the optical; reversed relationship) p.125
haptic (when sight discovers itself a specific function of touch) p.125

9. The law of the diagram
One starts with a figurative form, a diagram intervenes and scrambles it, and a form of a completely different nature emerges from the diagram, which is called the figure p.125
It is from the diagram – at the center of the painting, at the point of close viewing – that the entire series emerges as a series of accidents “mounting on top of another” p.126

10. The function of the diagram
– the operation of the diagram, its function: to be “suggestive” p.83
– form ==>completely different relations ==> figure p.126
– diagram-accident scrambles the intentional figurative form, it imposes non-formal color-patches and non-figurative traits from where the final whole emerges p.126
– The diagram acted by imposing a zone of objective indiscernibility or indeterminability between two forms, one of which was no longer, and the other, not yet: it destroys the figuration of the first and neutralizes that of the second. And between the two it imposes the figure p.127
– the diagram has introduced or distributed formless forces throughout the painting p.127
– the figurative lines will be scrambled by extending them, by hatching them, that is, by introducing new distances and new relations between them, out of which the non-figurative resemblance will emerge p.127
ex. you suddenly see through the diagram that the mouth could go across the face (Bacon in Deleuze, 2003, p.127)
– the essential about the diagram is that it is made in order for something to emerge from it, and if nothing emerges from it, it fails p.128
– what emerges is the figure gradually (series) or all at once p.128

Related concepts

– Origin of the word traits:
Traits and color patches (transl. French traits and taches)
Two different conceptions of painting: the optical (the visual perception of the line and color by the eye) and the manual (the application of traits and patches of color by the hand). p.160
Traits asignifiants (Latin tractus, the past principle of trahere, to draw). Etymologically, it refers to a graphic line i.e. to the action of drawing a line or set of lines (a stroke, a draft, a “touch” in a picture). Also used do designate a distinguishing quality or characteristic mark, a feature that allows one to identify or recognize a thing.
Deleuze refers to both meanings: it is the marks or strokes on the canvas that introduce traits of animality into the human figure, thereby constituting a “zone of indiscernability” between the human and the animal.
Translation note: trait = stroke when Deleuze is referring to the activity of the artist’s hand on the painting. p.154
– Fact
How to pass from the possibility of fact (diagram) to the fact itself (pictorial fact)? p.128
several forms may actually be included in one and the same Figure p.128
one movement, and which makes these apparently arbitrary elements coagulate in a single continuous flow p.129
we witness the revelation of the body beneath the organism, which makes organisms and their elements crack or swell, imposes a spasm on them, and puts them into relation with forces p.129
we will capture the fact p.129

Bibliography:
Bacon, Francis. 2003. The Logic of Sensation. Transl. and Introd. Daniel W. Smith. Afterword Tom Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


ANA MIRA
2008