DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2706-6185/55/54-62
Abdelkader Boudouma
University of Tlemcen
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2130-3320
abdelkader.boudouma@univ-tlemcen.dz
Niccolò Grimaldi: The Aesthetic Experience …
An Experience of Understanding and Teaching
Abstract
This article explores Niccolò Grimaldi’s philosophy through the concept of waiting (attente) as the fundamental condition of consciousness arising from the gap between desire and fulfilment. It argues that disappointment constitutes the negative origin of philosophy and grounds an ontology marked by solitude, melancholy, and expectation. The study further examines Grimaldi’s understanding of aesthetic experience as distance, play, and a metaphysical journey, in which art both estranges and reorients human existence. Focusing on painting, particularly Grimaldi’s reading of Van Gogh, the article analyses the autonomy of artistic creation, the expressive power of colour, and the fragmentation that leads to aesthetic synthesis. Ultimately, it shows that for Grimaldi, aesthetic experience is an experiential mode of understanding that reveals truth beyond conceptual knowledge and situates art at the intersection of ontology, desire, and lived experience.
Keywords: Niccolò Grimaldi, aesthetic experience, Waiting (Attente), desire and disappointment, Philosophy of Art