An intellectual revolution: Andre Malraux and the temporal nature of art

Abstract

Very little has been written in recent decades about the temporal nature of art. The two principal explanations provided by our Western cultural tradition are that art is timeless ('eternal') or that it belongs within the world of historical change. Neither account offers a plausible explanation of the world of art as we know it today, which contains large numbers of works which are self-evidently not timeless because they have been resurrected after long periods of oblivion with significances quite different from those which they originally held, and which also seem to have escaped history because, though long-forgotten, they have 'come alive' again for us today. In his two key works on the theory of art, Les Voix du silence and La Métamorphose des dieux, André Malraux offers an entirely new account of the temporal nature of art based on the concept of metamorphosis. Unlike the traditional explanations, Malraux's account makes sense of the world of art as we now know it. He revolutionizes our understanding of the relationship between art and time.