Bergson's aesthetics lies within a philosophy of nature, whose metaphysical principle is far from any determinism or chance as it refers to the irreversibility of time. Instead of an intellectual discipline that seeks the nature of beauty, it is rather defined by a vital conduct, a process of virtual differentiation towards the position of radical novelties, which may or may not culminate in artistic activity. Therefore, art is not a set of actual attributes or the practice of specific skills; it is on the other hand, a mode of action that interweaves the regimes of the virtual and the actual, never allowing its existence to overlap its consistency. Its realization indeed relies in its own opening. If the impulse of life is what makes spirit and matter communicate, by inserting liberty into necessity, it follows that artistic activity is one of the ways in which the élan flows, alongside living beings and mystical expression. The individuation of a piece of art involves certain degrees of freedom and levels of consciousness that cannot be explained neither by the species nor by the individual, since the duration assumes other tones of vitality. Touched by a creative emotion, one goes from the perspective of the open Whole to the placement of new worlds. The vehicle of action then merges with the action itself, creature with creator, so that the artistic body is pure overflowing vitality, a triumph which makes time regain consciousness of itself.
