Like a spirit painter, Häussler “paints without ever having learned.” Painting becomes possible for her only when mediated through the identity of another. But who—or what—within this fiction, this modification, decides what she paints or how she paints it? What unconscious—what repressed—what deceased—entity returns here under the ruse of a detour through another, and of a painting that reveals itself by hiding? The trap Häussler sets is very complex, and is all the more effective for ensnaring us in a net of pleasure—that of history and painting, and of bodily sensuality which goes as far as the exhaustion of the flesh and the withering of flowers. Faced with the revelation of the fiction that has been set up, this pleasure will make the public’s regret of its revelation all the more violent. Let the public console itself and exchange this truth for another. It is no less true that it is Sophie La Rosière who has invented Iris Häussler...