Concept, Sensation, Intensity: Deleuze's Theory of Art and Cinema

Abstract

In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze & Guattari consider art as a bloc of sensations, composed of percepts, affects and images. Such notions are also crucial to the understanding of Deleuze’s idea of cinema, as elaborated by the philosopher in his two books Cinema 1. The Movement-Image and Cinema; 2. The Time-Image, and further investigated in other essays and interviews. In Deleuze’s theory, concepts and sensations are forms of intensity, and they are flows, rather than firm configurations. And cinema is, in an exemplary way, a flow of images, a continuous variation of intensity. For Deleuze, intensity may finally be defined as one of the fundamental features of cinema and art. Intensity is dynamism, it is a flow of variable strength and of differential processes, chiefly tied to sensation, but also to forms and concepts, and connected to becoming. And intensity is an essential concept to comprehend Deleuze and his thought.