Images are not the representation of anything.

“Les images ne sont les représentation de rien. Sans langage elles ne signifient pas. Que veulent dire les scénes qu’on voit sur les parois des grottes paléolithiques? Nous l’ignorerons toujours faute des récits mythiques qu’elles prélettraient ou qu’elles condensaient.” Quignard, Pascal. (2002). Les ombres errantes. Chapitre XXIX.

“Images are not the representation of anything. Without language they signify nothing. What do the scenes we see on the walls of Paleolithic caves mean? We will never know, for lack of the mythical stories that they once conveyed or condensed.” Quignard, Pascal. (2024). The Roving Shadows. capter 29.

Quignard treats image and text almost as one. The connection between picture and story is what modern epistemology has missed. It is a lost aesthetic link. Modern human beings have broken this chain. They have lost the link of dreaming. They have lost dreaming that signifies.

The co‑vibration of picture and story conceives meaning. Image and text form a shared zone and generate meaning. Substantia and existentia create meaning in their folding together. Essencia cannot intervene there directly. This is the meaning of Quignard’s statement that “Images are not the representation of anything.”

Essence must be anointed with secret desire, cupiditas. Only then can that forma reach the hidden place. At the entrance of that hiding place, the thinking being, res cogitans, hesitates. It is because it is still conceiving transparent representation. The being captured, res capta, at the entrance of that hiding place goes into the dark cave. The playful being, homo ludens is thus seized by the work of art.

The human is erect prey, and the work of art is a wet predator.

• Homo praeda erecta est, et opus artis praedator madidus est.*