Was wir sehen blickt uns an

How can we see without sacrificing the visible to belief? And how can we resist the temptation to reduce the visible tautologically to itself? Between two parables borrowed from Joyce and Kafka, we will seek an answer to these questions in front of the simplest image that a sculpture can offer us. A cube, a large black cube by the sculptor Tony Smith, will gradually reveal its dark fascination, intensity, and eeriness to us. To achieve this, it will be necessary to reflect on Benjamin's concepts of "aura" and "dialectical image" and to clarify, with their help, why what we see before us always resonates within us, gazes back at us, and concerns us. The aim of these reflections: an anthropology of form, a metapsychology of the image.