L’identité du dormeur en question: De l’expérience du sensible à la représentation du cauchemar

Abstract

AbstractHow does one depict a man or woman asleep while preserving their identity? If the official portraits displayed in the salons of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture have no answer to this question, the representation of anonymous sleepers, both male and female, their senses tantalised by smell, sound and touch, echoes sensualist philosophy’s enquiry into how the feeling of existence is constructed. It goes alongside a renewed conception of what an individual asleep is: s/he is no longer merely a body at rest but has become an identity which is being formed, unformed and transformed by the dreams that also find their way into the painting.