Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts

Deleuze's work is complex and often difficult, especially for the reader who comes with an interest in art, music, and literature but little familiarity with (or perhaps tolerance for) late-twentieth century philosophy.In this study of Deleuze's writing on music and painting, Ronald Bogue distills the essence of the philosopher's decades-long interest in these disciplines. This is no "Deleuze for Dummies"--some familiarity with Deleuzian concepts is assumed and expected. As with similar texts (Harari's _How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan_, for example, or Rochlitz's _The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin_), _Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts_ tells us probably as much about Bogue as it does about Deleuze.This is useful, however, because Bogue has read widely and with comprehension not only in Deleuze but in the whole network of related subject matter touching on his concerns--Jacob von Uexkull, Susan Oyama, Paul Griffiths and Alois Riegl among others. Additionally, Bogue's consideration of Modern music is exemplary for its clear-sighted and vivid engagement with difficult (what Adorno might even call radical) music. Take as an example this brief segment from the discussion of Messiaen's spectacular _Catalogue d'oiseaux_: "...Messiaen never approaches an individual bird's song in isolation, but instead juxtaposes it with the songs of other species and situates it within an evocative sonic landscape....Such pictorialism might suggest that Messiaen's aesthetic is purely mimetic, but the actual results of his practice belie this suspicion." He goes on to discuss the piece's motivic development and the composer's modal style.Deleuze is at his most brilliant in the writings on Messiaen and Francis Bacon, and Bogue's book allows easier access for readers without the necessary time or desire to wade through thousands of pages to find what they're looking for. Of course, the ideas about music and painting are inextricable from the other ideas in those pages (there are, after all, 'a thousand plateaus', and it is not impossible that the reader may feel the need to explore further to obtain a more complete understanding--which is, after all, not such a bad thing....)At the beginning of the twenty-first century we could do worse than immerse ourselves in a study of Deleuze. For the student of music and art, as well as for those interested in expanding their knowledge of one of the great thinkers of that long, dark, and now late century, this is a valuable book.