The Album of Images According to André Malraux

<jats:p> Georges Didi-Huberman argues that with the Museum Without Walls, André Malraux invented a new type of art book based on the concept of the family album. Here, the family – with its resemblances, dissemblances, portraits in beauty and monstrosity – is Malraux’s attempt to encompass art from the world over. If he was largely successful in this endeavor, it was not only because Malraux had a broad vision honed in the heyday of collage and montage, but also because he knew how to assemble a peerless team of technicians to help him realize the vast project. Despite their extremely divergent idioms, the explorations of Walter Benjamin and André Malraux met at several surprising points: Didi-Huberman identifies yet another of these affinities by showing the parallels between the Museum Without Walls project writ large and the general theory of the creator in Benjamin’s ‘author as producer’. </jats:p>