Deleuze and the image: an aesthetic problem

The present article seeks to investigate possible meanings of the word "image" that can be deduced from Deleuze's writings on the arts, respecting the chronology of his works. The notion of image, which is fundamental to aesthetics, appears in Deleuze's comments on Proust, the cinema, Bacon, and Beckett, whether with the use of the term "image" or with the correlated terms "sign" and "idea". Thus, there is found in Deleuze's writings a vacuum in the 1970's: the notion of sign is studied in the previous decade when dealing with Proust and the notion of idea in Difference and repetition, and the theme of image is intensely taken up again in the following two decades in dealing with Bacon's painting, the cinematographic universe, and Beckett's theater and television work.