This article proposes looking at the artistic act in terms of action and production. This proposal relies on the understanding that aesthetics does not suffice for an essential reckoning with the artistic act and the complexity of its reality. Following the observations of Jacques Rancière, this article goes back to the contours of Aristotelian “poiesis” in an attempt to return to the understanding of the artistic act before the rise of the aesthetic regime. This brings to center stage not just the productive nature of the artistic act but also its habitudinal nature: the artistic act is considered a habitude of human reality. A tradition called “the philosophy of French spiritualism” – mainly the writing of its two central thinkers, Félix Ravaisson-Mollien and Henri Bergson, which offers tools for such poietic thought – serves the article’s reconstructive act. Those two philosophers had a unique approach to understanding the habitudes that construct reality in general and human reality in particular. Finally, the article poses that Bergson’s model of “laughter” can open a window to understanding the artistic act on the poietic basis of the habitudes.