Ontological imagination of the painting machine Alfred Jarry, On Kawara, Nam June Paik, Michael Snow, Anish Kapoor

This article is an investigation. Alfred Jarry, poet and writer, proposes at the end of the 19th century the apocalyptic representation of a creative machine in a ruined Paris. But this vision is still partly ours. The being of this painting machine is in question. Is it a mechanic gone mad, a beast, a dehumanized double or on the contrary revealed, a demiurge? And where do these questions come from? Which scientific and technological ontological imaginary is invested there? What place does it occupy in the work of contemporary artists?