André Malraux is preparing his work on art: The Imaginary Museum

André Malraux (1901.1976)

Autograph manuscript.

One page in quarto. No place [1946 or 1947]

Working manuscript, preparatory to his work The Imaginary Museum initially published in 1947 then taken up again, in 1951, as the first part of The Voices of Silence.

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Our art also depicts what cannot be seen.

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Valéry. In the light of twilight, the last death throes of the powerful idea of ​​beauty.

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The art of the dead and the art of the living. The latter has not undergone metamorphosis.

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The romantic "World of Art" rediscovers the dialogue between art and the unknown.

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We are not in front of the M [usée] Imag [inaire] but inside it.

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The questions that our art does not ask, because the M [usée]. I [imaginaire] asks them in its place.

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It is the reference to nature that has blinded us to the problems of art.

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After the war years, Malraux's work turned resolutely towards aesthetic questions. Between 1947 and 1949, the Geneva-based publisher Skira released * The Imaginary Museum *, *Artistic Creation *, and *The Currency of the Absolute* , forming the three volumes of *Psychology of Art*. Revised and corrected, these works were collected in 1951 by Gallimard under the title *The Voices of Silence*.