I have tried to stay away from aesthetic theory for a while – focusing instead on the emotional side of art making. But then this book by Hanneke Grootenboer called: Pensive Image. Art as a Form of Thinking caught my eye.

This is how Grootenboer describes ‘the PENSIVE image’

I would define pensive images as those that confront us in such a way that our wondering about the work of art—its subject of meaning—is transformed into our thinking according to it.

In this book, I argue that art is a form of thinking, and that painting is capable of offering us a thought, rather than a meaning or a narrative.

which definitely sounds very liberating from an artist’s point of view.

Unlike what is put forth on some of the writing on artistic research, for me, pensive images produce not knowledge, per se, but rather a theoretical insight (as Benjamin would have it) that leads us to the realm not of the unknown but of the unthought. As such, art practice is a powerful argument for the hypothesis that philosophy is not the exclusive property of philosophers; it is instead a practice that can be done in and through art, as long as this happening that Heidegger speaks of is taking place.