André Malraux: Metamorphosis – The Life of Art in Time

This paper was delivered as the keynote address at a conference at the University of London on 19/6/2026. It examines a key aspect of André Malraux’s theory of art – his argument that art endures not through a power of timelessness, as Western culture has believed since the Renaissance, but through its power of metamorphosis. “Metamorphosis,” Malraux writes “is the very life of the work of art in time, one of its specific characteristics”. The paper also contrasts Malraux's thinking with the position of traditional aesthetics (such as analytic aesthetics) which has effectively ignored this issue.