If Michaux’ painting originates in an ancient anger with “the Verb”, it nonetheless never completely gave up on writing. In trying to invent his own “ideograms” Michaux, transforming his pen into a brush, finds his way to signs through the movement involved in calligraphy. Each gesture, first an exorcism in character, leads the sign to the line and finally purifies itself as pure elementary line tracing. Rid of language little by little, it is no longer the expression of something that preceded it: it creates the present, through its rhythm.