What happens with the sacred in our profane world? Inspired by the mythical scene in which Picasso, at the Trocadéro museum, feels the magic character of the masks, Malraux wonders about the agonic relationship between forms and forces. Against the common perception which tends to see in the aesthetic a substitute for the sacred - which would lead to a closure in immanence -, perhaps we should, at the same time, refuse the illusion of empathy and affirm the unfinished character of the metamorphosis of fetishes into works of art - incompleteness designed by Malraux by the terms of empreinte (imprint) or aura (aura).
Malraux; Picasso; african sculpture; museum