Painting and Plurality

The images: can we picture to ourselves, when we hear of a plurality of images, not a collection of discrete individual images but an abundance unsurveyable and without internal di!erentiation? Just as one hears in so many languages of the waters: die Wässer, les eaux. . . . In the "ux of experience it may be no more possible to isolate a singular “image” than it is to isolate a singular “water.” #e waters, according to Roberto Calasso in his meditation on Hindu mythology, Ka, symbolize the glittering "ow of inner images, the ceaseless proliferation of specters and simulacra, that constitutes consciousness.1 Nevertheless, in the most prevalent theories of images developed by theology, by classical epistemology, by the academies of art, premodern and modern alike, and by anthropology, the image is paradigmatically still, framed, and graspable. #e image stands alone, outside time. Whereas in experience, which is a "ow of images in time, every image is in the process of becoming another image, for percepts, memories, and dreams are images generated and coordinated by the body. According to Henri Bergson, perception is nothing other than an aggregate of images “referred to” one particular image, the body.2 #e body itself is an image insofar as it receives movement, and in