Research On The Problem Of Genesis In Maurice Merleau-ponty’s Early Theory Of Painting

In the early stage of thought represented by the "Phenomenology of Perception",Merleau-Ponty rewrote Husserl’s theory of the body in "Ideen II",transforming the body from the organ of will in the structure to the perception with its own comprehensive capabilities.The subject thus formed its own genetic phenomenology with the problem of body perception as the core.The problem of painting lies in the perception of the subject’s renewed grasp of the world.The body can be compared with art.The production of art is the process of the body’s original perception of the world in its spatial ability.The connotation of body genesis lies in the transformation from the concept of habitual self to the body schema.The process of the artist facing the world is also the perceptual process of expression in the body schema,and this process is always in an unfinished state.Different from the way of constructing the world through the pure self in genetic phenomenology,Merleau-Ponty renews the relationship between the pure ego and the world through body intentionality,as the original coexistence of the "je peux" body and the world.Painting is trying to express this "perceived world".In the incompleteness of phenomenological reduction,the pursuit of truth in painting is a passive synthesis of the body.The meaning of painting is presented in the internal genesis of "body-habits-world".Therefore,the genesis of painting lies in the fact that painting itself is the process of the body’s perception of the world.From Husserl’s genetic phenomenology to Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual phenomenology in early stage,we can see the genetic phenomenology characteristics in Merleau-Ponty’s painting theory,which is also dual source of perceptual phenomenology and art theory.Merleau-Ponty formed his own unique interpretation of art,especially Cézanne’s painting,from the inherent tension between the static and the genetic,the purity of the transcendental ego and the objectified natural world in Husserl’s phenomenology.Following this trajectory of thought history,we can see in what sense Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual phenomenology has transformed Husserl’s phenomenology of pure consciousness with the transcendental subject at its core,thus conforming to Merleau-Ponty’s " "see the world anew" goal.The inherent variation caused by the process of entering and deepening the phenomenological grasp of the world is precisely in the process of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of art.