Ideamorphism: Paris Artist Arnaud Quercy Submits His Own Art Theory to Public Audit
Ideamorphism.org publishes the first notes of Disputationes, an open series in which Ideamorphism is subjected to its own method: each proposition is tested against the philosophical record and given a verdict — including verdicts that correct or relocate the author's own claims.
Paris, France, September 30, 2026 --(PR.com)-- Arnaud Quercy, an artist and the founder of the Art Quam Anima studio-gallery at 28 rue du Dragon in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, has published through Ideamorphic Studies the first six notes of Disputationes, a series examining, one by one, the propositions of his framework, Ideamorphism.
Each note follows the scholastic disputatio: a proposition, the strongest objections and precedents from the literature, a reply, and a verdict from a closed scale — vindicated, anticipated, displaced, undervalued, withdrawn, open. So far, propositions have been found anticipated, displaced or undervalued, and several founding formulations have been corrected.
Why audit one's own theory
The practice came first. For years Quercy worked under rules before any theory existed; the Manifesto and the 31 Propositions, written in 2026, were an intuition set down to account for that practice. The Disputationes treat that intuition as the practice treats any rule: stated in advance, executed against the literature, with the gap between what it claimed and what holds kept on record. The theory is not exempt from the method it describes.
What Ideamorphism does not claim
Each note names its debts: Goodman and Langer on structure and realization, with Locke, Saussure, Jakobson and Ingarden before them; Searle's constitutive rules; Gadamer, Peirce and Eco on how a signal is received; Aquinas and Simondon on what precedes a work; Gombrich, Iser and Dewey on the viewer. The word diffraction, used only for what happens in the viewer, comes from Donna Haraway, with a declared departure from her use. None of this is presented as new.
What it does claim
Ideamorphism describes one artist's protocol, not a general theory of meaning. Its material is inherited; what belongs to the artist is the act of instituting this rule rather than another. The rule binds two domains with no natural relation, such as a musical note and a colour. It is a stipulation, not a perception: it reports nothing the artist sees when he hears, and claims no natural link between a pitch and a colour. It is published before the work. The work is that rule, executed by hand, and the gap between what the rule prescribes and what the hand realizes is measured and kept.
No one is in command
The sixth note turns to the viewer. It starts from a scene at the studio-gallery: a couple before an abstract canvas whose rule had just been disclosed and played at the piano. One saw a smiling face; the other saw "just shapes." What arrives in a viewer can have causes and rest on what has been learned, without anyone deciding it, the viewer included. The artist's authority stops at the rule; his responsibility for the conditions does not.
Harmonic Crossing
The series Harmonic Crossing, now more than four hundred works, moves through all twenty-four major and minor triads and many other chords. Take D-flat major: a dozen paintings and counting, each from a different voicing. Quercy writes the voicing as a composer would; the published rule, binding each note to a colour, turns it into a score. The painting is his performance of that score: the relation between the notes, laid down by hand. It is a pianist's interpretation of a piece he composed himself. He works in series because the series is also his scales: the same material taken up again and again, to hear small differences. Each painting repeats a question, not an answer.
The sculpture of an idea
In 2020, Quercy published EGO, a short story set in ancient Greece. A poet and Aristotle cannot agree on the nature of the universe, so a sculptor is commissioned to carve both, from identical marble and with the same care. Aristotle's cosmos becomes a monument; the poet's, made of stars and void, is carved so faithfully that nothing remains but dust and space. The vote is tied. The Disputationes apply that commission to Ideamorphism itself.
"I wrote the Manifesto to explain what I was doing, and I knew from the start I'd treat it like every rule: play it until I could hear where it breaks," says Quercy.
The notes are published in English and French under CC BY 4.0, each with a DOI on Zenodo, and are listed on PhilPapers. Manifesto: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19953317. 31 Propositions: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19955299. Note 06: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22878684.
About Arnaud Quercy
Arnaud Quercy is a Paris-based artist and the founder of Art Quam Anima, a studio-gallery in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His catalogue raisonné is published at https://arnaudquercy.art. His theoretical work, Ideamorphism, is carried out within Ideamorphic Studies at https://ideamorphism.org. ORCID 0009-0000-2662-7790.
Each note follows the scholastic disputatio: a proposition, the strongest objections and precedents from the literature, a reply, and a verdict from a closed scale — vindicated, anticipated, displaced, undervalued, withdrawn, open. So far, propositions have been found anticipated, displaced or undervalued, and several founding formulations have been corrected.
Why audit one's own theory
The practice came first. For years Quercy worked under rules before any theory existed; the Manifesto and the 31 Propositions, written in 2026, were an intuition set down to account for that practice. The Disputationes treat that intuition as the practice treats any rule: stated in advance, executed against the literature, with the gap between what it claimed and what holds kept on record. The theory is not exempt from the method it describes.
What Ideamorphism does not claim
Each note names its debts: Goodman and Langer on structure and realization, with Locke, Saussure, Jakobson and Ingarden before them; Searle's constitutive rules; Gadamer, Peirce and Eco on how a signal is received; Aquinas and Simondon on what precedes a work; Gombrich, Iser and Dewey on the viewer. The word diffraction, used only for what happens in the viewer, comes from Donna Haraway, with a declared departure from her use. None of this is presented as new.
What it does claim
Ideamorphism describes one artist's protocol, not a general theory of meaning. Its material is inherited; what belongs to the artist is the act of instituting this rule rather than another. The rule binds two domains with no natural relation, such as a musical note and a colour. It is a stipulation, not a perception: it reports nothing the artist sees when he hears, and claims no natural link between a pitch and a colour. It is published before the work. The work is that rule, executed by hand, and the gap between what the rule prescribes and what the hand realizes is measured and kept.
No one is in command
The sixth note turns to the viewer. It starts from a scene at the studio-gallery: a couple before an abstract canvas whose rule had just been disclosed and played at the piano. One saw a smiling face; the other saw "just shapes." What arrives in a viewer can have causes and rest on what has been learned, without anyone deciding it, the viewer included. The artist's authority stops at the rule; his responsibility for the conditions does not.
Harmonic Crossing
The series Harmonic Crossing, now more than four hundred works, moves through all twenty-four major and minor triads and many other chords. Take D-flat major: a dozen paintings and counting, each from a different voicing. Quercy writes the voicing as a composer would; the published rule, binding each note to a colour, turns it into a score. The painting is his performance of that score: the relation between the notes, laid down by hand. It is a pianist's interpretation of a piece he composed himself. He works in series because the series is also his scales: the same material taken up again and again, to hear small differences. Each painting repeats a question, not an answer.
The sculpture of an idea
In 2020, Quercy published EGO, a short story set in ancient Greece. A poet and Aristotle cannot agree on the nature of the universe, so a sculptor is commissioned to carve both, from identical marble and with the same care. Aristotle's cosmos becomes a monument; the poet's, made of stars and void, is carved so faithfully that nothing remains but dust and space. The vote is tied. The Disputationes apply that commission to Ideamorphism itself.
"I wrote the Manifesto to explain what I was doing, and I knew from the start I'd treat it like every rule: play it until I could hear where it breaks," says Quercy.
The notes are published in English and French under CC BY 4.0, each with a DOI on Zenodo, and are listed on PhilPapers. Manifesto: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19953317. 31 Propositions: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19955299. Note 06: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22878684.
About Arnaud Quercy
Arnaud Quercy is a Paris-based artist and the founder of Art Quam Anima, a studio-gallery in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His catalogue raisonné is published at https://arnaudquercy.art. His theoretical work, Ideamorphism, is carried out within Ideamorphic Studies at https://ideamorphism.org. ORCID 0009-0000-2662-7790.
Contact
Arnaud Quercy Creations
Arnaud Quercy
+33603911304
arnaud-quercy-creations.com/
Arnaud Quercy
+33603911304
arnaud-quercy-creations.com/
Contact
Categories