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John Thackara|Essays

March 9, 2011

Images de Pensée

Darwin, Freud, Descartes, Goethe, Klee, Beuys, Marinetti, Nabokov, among others, left behind these “images of thought.” They have been found in notebooks, on the pages of manuscripts, in the margins of letters, on paper napkins. These rough and transient, but nonetheless evocative sketches, trace the birth of ideas, some not yet articulated, that have gone on to shape our culture. The sketches collected by Marie-Haude Caraës and Nicole Marchand-Zanartu for their book Images de Pensée were never intended to be published. “To look at these images” say the editors, “is perhaps to penetrate the heart, the origin, of thought.”

See more images here.