The Pensive Image: On Thought in Jan van Huysum's Still Life Paintings

In The Origin of Perspective, Hubert Damisch wrote that 'painting not only shows but thinks'. This paper starts from the question whether a painting can have a 'thought' in addition to showing a narrative, conveying a message, or carrying a meaning behind its realistic appearance. Within the framework of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's What is Philosophy? which offers a theory on thought in painting and Nicolas Poussin's notion of la pensée, it will be argued that paintings can be pensive in that they offer a visual reflection on issues on truth and resemblance, the finite and infinity, or the status of a point versus that of the sign in painting. A comparison between an early eighteenth-century flower still life by the Dutch painter Jan van Huysum and Paul Klee's Equals Infinity (1932) will demonstrate that both early modern and modern art may struggle with quite similar, philosophical problems, which, rather than illustrating, they "think through" visually.