L’art classique chinois dans la pensée française et francophone contemporaine

Abstract Chinese art, in particular literati calligraphy and painting in the Chinese classical period, is an important object of reflection and imagination for contemporary French and Francophone theorists. Focusing on the interpretation of Chinese art among these theorists, this article will first examine how Chinese classical painting and calligraphy entered the French theoretical horizon of the twentieth century; secondly, it will try to make a synthesis of some emblematic theorists concerned (Henri Michaux, Hubert Damisch, Jacques Maritain, Jean-François Billeter, François Jullien, François Cheng) and their theoretical works related to Chinese classical art, in order to draw some main lines and orientations on the history of the approaches of Chinese classical art in the West; finally, it will attempt to propose the perspective, intercultural and intermedia, to analyze the dialogue between the French and Francophone contemporary thought and the Chinese pictorial and calligraphic classical art.