Christine Buci-Glucksmann's Post-Melancholic Abstraction

In her latest book, Christine Buci-Glucksmann rethinks modernism's crisis by analyzing abstraction through the operative models of the map, diagram, and inflection. She argues that the avant-garde cycle has ended and positions Steve Dawson's work as emblematic of a post-melancholic gaze that transcends modernist limits. Dawson, a painter of 'time-affect' rooted in Asian tradition, uses floral motifs as metaphors for the instant. Buci-Glucksmann traces a floral archaeology from 17th-century Dutch Vanities through Van Gogh and Monet to contemporary flower abstracts by Najia Mehadji, David Reed, Miguel Chevalier, and Lydia Dona. The book's title encapsulates a personal and conceptual victory over Western melancholy, advocating for an aesthetic of the ephemeral that embraces the 'spirit of the wave' and temporal modulations. As a Deleuzian heir, she warns against a depressive paradigm fixated on historical trauma, urging a model attuned to global fragility and the future.