Idalina Sardinha | UMa Universidade da Madeira (original) (raw)
Papers by Idalina Sardinha
Da compreennsão da Arte
“A arquitectura e o design dos anos 80, por exemplo, constituindo-se como duas das faces de maior... more “A arquitectura e o design dos anos 80, por exemplo, constituindo-se como duas das faces de maior relevo nas artes deste período, sobretudo da primeira metade da década, recusam a ideia de A. Moles, de que a função do
designer (e também do arquitecto) seja a de aumentar a “legibilidade do mundo”. Complexificando-a, antes, e recusando a imemorialidade e a ficção funcionalista modernas. Ao “less is more”, o criador contrapõe agora, pois, como Robert Venturi, um “less is a bore”.
SARDINHA, Idalina - A fruição da arte.Oeiras, Celta,2007, p.53
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Though we may think of History as taking note of change and documenting it, and sociology more as... more Though we may think of History as taking note of change and documenting it, and sociology more as revealing change, as far as I am concerned, history is simply about why, about questions, whereas sociology is much more about functions that actual artistic facts and phenomena as historic-social facts play out in the human-social process of becoming. One and the other must provide, in turn, a causal explanation and/or a functional one, respectively, to use Durkheim’s terminology.
In fact, these distinctions are important from an operative viewpoint only. The
human does not yet find it easy to assume multiple standpoints, the circularity of the gaze. Yet bit by bit under the more or less intuitive or enlightening effect of theories we haveb been looking at, such as deconstruction and neoperspectivism, cross-disciplinarity gains
momentum: analysis in the history of art become the fruit of multiple perspective and unitary perspective, combining multiple durations, synchrony and diachrony, and gleaning knowledge—inevitably—from aesthetics, a discipline without which art cannot be studied, no matter what the perspective. The History of Art is therefore, in Fernández Arenas’s opinion, “…history, technique, philology, sociology, psychology [and more]. It is an eminently humanistic discipline, that demands plurality in the choice of method.”
Simultaneously riding the crest of the wave and surfing the tunnel, to pick up on Braudel’s metaphor, “there is not one history, the trade of an historian, but trades, histories, a sum of curiosities, points of view, possibilities…”3 either in general history or in the history of art.
So, you will find a few things attached to the structural form of the history of art: analyses that would fit micro-history, events disseminated across historic structures and conjunctures, piecing together fine, fine strands that should be drawn together, tighter and tighter, to capture the human in their net. Not an easy task, to be sure, seeing as it is “…the ability to imagine that makes the past concrete…scientific imagination…manifesting through the power of abstraction”4. As historical narration, it “…dies, because the sign of history is [as Le Goff reminds us, quoting Roland Barthes] …not so much the real as the
intelligible…” (see note 3 on Braudel below) and thus changes with the growth of the human itself.
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
If students of the arts have become familiar with the Neo-Conceptual (the popularity of which has... more If students of the arts have become familiar with the Neo-Conceptual (the popularity of which has spread everywhere over the last decade, especially to milestone events such as the Kassel Documentas, and to specialty magazines detailing current research of relevance), a careful foray into Conceptual Art (late 60s to early 70s) will allow them, with recourse to
interrelationships with Dadaism, to discriminate among different modes of being in art as found in Conceptualism, and to reflect on the many similarities the movements bear.
This foray, however, must be framed by historical analyses at once far-reaching and focused (zooming in and out of the subject), so as to interrelate the connecting nodes of a network that interweaves and articulates synchrony and diachrony. If we do so, we will find that 1960s Conceptual is a complex reality, diverse from current Neo-Conceptual operations,
possibly subsuming a slew of other movements under different nomenclatures, and, naturally, allowing elbow room to different trends and schools within the movement. The point is we would then have a systemic development (necessarily abridged, though), one that to the teacher would correspond with an initial stage in the organization of his or her own scientific knowledge, giving him or her a foundation from which to differentiate 1960s Conceptual from contemporary Neo-Conceptual.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
We certainly want the best we can get. However it would be erroneous to believe the new school we... more We certainly want the best we can get. However it would be erroneous to believe the new school we are fighting for will only come about through the aid of the latest technology, including complex computing solutions. As I have often stated, new technological means must also be transformed into truly new, innovative, life-giving tools.
Nothing could be worse, in my opinion, than the turning of pedagogical and didactic means and instruments into educational ends in themselves. Educational progress can not be gauged by ascertaining the number of schools connected to computer networks (I have however amply discussed this elsewhere.).
The emerging pedagogical paradigm is, as I have said, a paradigm of change, one of harmony and autonomy, respect for one’s own as well as other cultures, growing almost organically (according to the principles of an educational ethnography), by making the most of, exploring and transforming (according to one’s own models) constantly shifting perspectives, motivations, strengths and means. This project will subsist only in accordance with the principles set forth by the Principle of Subsidiarity determined by the EU. Growing as determined by their needs, the different parties involved in the educational whole may gain in efficacy. That precludes the archaic authoritarianism of anachronistic state bureaucracies. There is a need for adaptation to the principles of EU Law, and articulation with rules such as the Principle of Proportionality, Primacy, Cohesion, Community Loyalty and/or Cooperation, etc., established by the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam.
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
There is a certain difficulty in establishing platforms of understanding when it comes to certain... more There is a certain difficulty in establishing platforms of understanding when it comes to certain artistic realities. These platforms must be valid for the whole of the class-group (teacher and students). I am specifically discussing those realities bound with aesthetic categories which in turn rely on abstract entities and categories that are apprehended subjectively. When in sharp focus they gain a quasi-metaphysical character. This is the case with the concepts of naturalism/realism/idealism as applied to the arts. Evidently these concepts have been defined, studied, done to death. Is it easy, however, to
Da compreeensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
Especially where the 19c and 20c are concerned, these issues would merit discussion in greater d... more Especially where the 19c and 20c are concerned, these issues would merit
discussion in greater depth. To understand not only art but its relationship to science and knowledge in general may yet prove fundamental to an understanding of the world and of life. This subject is something we can go back to very often in the classroom. You simply can’t say enough. At any rate, we have to point out to our students why it is thatthe whole project fell through. Analyses differ according to one’s ideology, and this too must be discussed with our students: for some, and I believe they are the majority, there had been attempts at revolution without taking care to renew mentality. This renewal would necessarily arise from radical awareness—not in sudden, abrupt fashion, but over a period of cultural maturing. Others feel that the lesson taught by May ’68 was bitter yet effective. “Bourgeois vous n’avez pas rien compris” was a dour indictment, born of humiliation, yet at the same time it was a veiled threat. Little by little almost everyone realized that art would have to become a part of social praxis if it was to contribute to a cultural revolution of mentality. Marcuse’s power of the imagination would have to be one of art’s weapons. If imagination could not attain to political power, as the graffiti of May ’68 would have it, then the establishment would be destroyed by the powers of imagination. No more would there be tolerance for Odes to Joy or Guernicas of the past, offerings burnt at the altar of human suffering.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
One of the most rewarding exercises in “cross-pollination” you can accomplish throughout numerous... more One of the most rewarding exercises in “cross-pollination” you can accomplish throughout numerous spatiotemporal coordinates, traversing multiple synchronic and diachronic paths, is that of undertaking an analysis of the formal processes and resources that creators in different cultures and civilizations have used over the course of human history. This analysis gains in acumen and breadth when we look for
THE RIGHT GAZE UPON ART AND DESIGN, RIGHT NOW.
There is no doubt that the way you imagine and map out the future today will shape not only the future but the present itself.
So it is that in an approach to the History of Contemporary and Current Art and Design every one is, so to speak, on probation when the school year starts. It is a time of trial and error in which the class (comprised of students and teacher) not only reflect on, and critically analyze the present, as well as immediate underlying causes in the past, but also project themselves onto the future by weaving it mentally and render it into verbal equation, submitting to close and sometimes pitiless scrutiny on the part of all. Pitiless analyses which are hard on students of the pictorial arts especially—they anticipate a future in the arts demanding of them not only the know-how they have already mastered but also the deployment of a vast body of theoretical, artistic and technical knowledge that broaches all aspects of the human. Such knowledge will be at the heart of future creative developments, so far unpredictable, yet it’s been foreshadowed that such developments will be especially exacting.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Now possessed of greater knowledge about himself and the world, having traversed the epoch of pos... more Now possessed of greater knowledge about himself and the world, having traversed the epoch of post-Renaissance Humanism, consolidating his learning, Man will now question his essence, in a spiral of loneliness that leads him to his core.
The substitution of profane value (Modernity) for sacred value (Ancien Regime) is proof of such a quest. By casting a pall of doubt over several established powers (gods, inherited hierarchy, tradition—according to Lipovetsky), the creators at the outset of Modernity will call for liberation and independence from all norm, canon and obligation, whatever its nature—social, political, ethical, religious, intellectual, aesthetic. Their choices will certainly afford independence but surely send them on a perilous path to the ivory tower. Many will be painfully silenced by reigning mediocrity. Some will have to ponder how to earn a living. To make their own voices heard, to be able to hear them, would be an act in service to a cause no other than the human-poietic, the understanding of the human-poietic. The path is one of passion, a calvary intended to redeem creation itself and, of course, culture and art. Let us consider the damned in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in all fields of human knowledge, who, much as Nietzsche’s traveler, having crossed the desert, beheld the descent of “(…) a desert upon the desert (…)” and “(…) over the faces [of the city dwellers], a desert unto themselves, dirt, treachery, diffidence, before the closed doors—and day (…)[was] (…) almost worse than the night.” Creators from all fields, at the outset of Modernity, clamored for the observance of human rights, of the social values brought to bear by the French Revolution, without which one cannot fully appraise, understand and assess Modernity. Not only did people try to provide for basic needs in new, more effective ways, by applying what were scientific breakthroughs, but they also tried to extend better, more egalitarian standards of living to the general population. In theory we should all have access to such standards.
Two distinct methods will be employed in reaching this common goal. One will foreground the collective, the other the individual.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
There is a crucial moment when primal essentialism is brushed aside (or is invested with a new na... more There is a crucial moment when primal essentialism is brushed aside (or is invested with a new nature) when we seek out ultimate truths, giving way to solidary neopragmatism, even the "Divine Architect", in Koyré's parlance, loses his omniscience. "(…) Newton's mighty, acting God, who in effect ruled over the universe according to His free will and His decisions, has over a short period of evolution become a conservative force, an intelligentia extra-mundana, a lazy God." 8 The gods have really remained "in character". What really changed was the way Man looked at the world and, above all, the changes in his self-image had wrought effects on his profound nature. The demands placed by approaches that have always been contextualized, accounted for and validated will be defended in manners various and sundry by the likes of Kuhn, Popper, Ricoeur. The structural genetic method becomes the norm in Human Sciences. The Visual Arts follow suit in adopting these demands. Manifestation of the principles in question can be observed in Conceptualism, Informalism and the Action Arts. A book, a sociological survey, an everyday chore, can become works of art if the artist so desires-provided an adequate aesthetic/artistic context is created. Art then becomes the locus of knowledge. We had learned from Leonardo that art is after all a cosa mentale, art in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth seeks to deepen and broaden the study of matter, nature, and Man, almost scientifically. There is plentiful evidence of groundbreaking knowledge converted into art. Take for instance the use of quantum physics in futurism or, say, information gleaned from physics and vision psychology by impressionists and neo-impressionists. Over the second half of the twentieth century, art will be concerned with the human, the disclosure of the human in its manifold aspects. There is, then, a deliberate movement towards the sciences and philosophy (mostly the philosophy of language), as well as the achievements of technology-art sees fit to exploit some of its most advanced resources-cybernetics, video, information technologies, holography, and so on. This is a time when art is essencially concerned with showing Man his own image, taking social and cultural data into the representation.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Art over the last decades is a practical example of the materialization of all the realties we ha... more Art over the last decades is a practical example of the materialization of all the realties we have been referring to. Often, and on a single plane, the frameworks for the materialization of memory will arise and, in more or less organized fashion (be it by juxtaposition, dispersion, or composition—more or less thorough, more or less classical—or even simple superimposition) will make us see, as cubism once did with its multiple viewpoints, or futurism as it represented the successive stages of movement and energy quanta, what we have always thought could not be figured on a plastic screen: the succession of mental imagery, past and future recollection, continually coursing through the mind.
We no longer seek to attain to “pure psychic automatism”, as Surrealism did, nor do we attempt to “introspectively materialize pre-reflective states”, as Pollock would have it with his Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting. The same goes for G. Mathieu and Lyrical Abstraction: the “transfer of psychic action into plastic forms bearing the nature of a manuscript”. We are faced with an openly avowed experiential stock of reminiscence. The artist is pleased to make it known—especially to him or herself. Reminiscence is decked out in an enticing game of intimacy-seeking rhetoric which, infusing creation with hermetic qualities, may either impoverish it or add new layers of meaning. This is particularly striking in the works of the Italian Trans-avantgarde, in Mimmo Paladino’s offerings, or Clemente’s, or the exertions of the New Image Painting in America, with de Salle or even Schnabel. But though they enjoy far more classic, thorough compositions, the result of major aesthetic and formal concern, they can likewise be found in the Pittura Colta, as in Carlo Maria Mariani, McKenna, or the far more expressionistic, meaning-laden offerings of Immendorf. This is where Douwe W. Fokkema’s palimpsest metaphor (undated:71) gains in accuracy and scope. At times, the apparent superimposition of layers, the fact of successive returns, demand abilities like those of web surfers, as we shall soon see. It must be reckoned however that in these works’ layers are fixed—only our ability to move between the creator’s understanding and memory and ultimately appropriate them can lead us to a multiple reading—sharing and re-creating of the most immediate and deepest reading. To be able to make memory operate on the surface and in depth demands that we outstrip our scientific or academic background. Therefore, creation and analysis abilities now demand both intellectual and emotional commitment. They are now the unavoidable condition for deep, dense reading, drawing on the flexibility of experiential stock—where you will find the expected (and the predictable) as soon as the truly unknown, arrived at by means of interrelationships with other platforms of understanding. Only intrinsical motivation and emotion will allow us to delve deep into the immediacy of discovery. At this stage, investigators do not yet realize the full weight of the understanding they have begun to collate and probe into. This somewhat intuitive and emotional knowledge tears down the autistic wall that surrounds creation, making way for true communication, true fruition.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
René Thom (of Catastrophe Theory fame), on the Topoi of Utopia (Cascais, 1995), analyses the “l... more René Thom (of Catastrophe Theory fame), on the Topoi of Utopia (Cascais, 1995), analyses the “logical structure of utopias” as an oxymoron (a figure in rhetoric that operates by offering an “antithesis of separate words, producing a paradox between the antithetical members.” ). It seems to me that paradox can simultaneously nullify the primal realities that the antithetical members allude to and gives rise of a new reality, one of a rather diverse nature than the two at its source… or, maybe not. Escher—who was not directly concerned with this issue—did, I think, represented these two realities to the point of overkill. Diverse in their conditions, the realities mingle and bring about a mongrelized reality, enhanced and enriched by the two preceding ones. Will not a reconciled reality attain to the paradoxical nature of utopias and come to ail with (as per Thom’s view) a logical, ontological lack of viability, now that classical antinomian positionings are gone? Are we not before the chosen birthplace of other utopias and, as such, a territory and/or a continent that has been truly deterritorialized? Here is the bridge—though there are quite a few that won’t own up to that—between an outdated present and a future we are already experiencing, at least in the imagination. Is that not how we so often renew our utopias in life?
We have all more or less explicitly felt the impact of globalization on our lives, of trans-disciplinarity and the trans-textuality it implies, both in the accrual of knowledge and the output of creation or, if you’d like to keep it simple, everyday life. Isn’t there, at this writing, an effort to establish a silent discourse and dialog, fruitful to the nth power, among disciplines of a like nature? Or even those which are apparently diverse? And, are not unexpected connections, transgression of all sorts, occurring right now? It happens obliquely, between surface and deep structure, generating deconstruction, and the most important thing will be alertness. There will be moments where the investigative eye will meet new and surprising outlooks on things. Dialog and discourse will, through their new trans-disciplinary condition, foster a healthy conviviality (as discussed in previous chapters) between the real and the virtual, accounting for and/or transmuting the presentification of absence as a presence that is constantly absent, or latent, as happens with the ellipse: a figure typical of the discontinuity encountered over the last decades on any given field of expertise. When we run into one of these situations, are we possibly before the dark matter of knowledge, a sort of black hole, containing a wealth of information? In a way we can see all these new situations triggering (on the level of mind and discourse) understanding and practice so widely differing that I am tempted to state they are as unpredictable as fractal objects.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
When it comes to computing systems, the nineties are what we might call the fourth wave. If I ha... more When it comes to computing systems, the nineties are what we might call the fourth wave. If I have noted some perverse aftereffects of globalization, right now I would prefer to examine a world—once a world apart—cyberspace, which displays a natural aptitude to colonize the so-called real world, whose nature it has changed; to a point that the real is starting to seem less real than the virtual.
In a way, the nature of the real has been altered. This is the case with the conditions that underlie artistic creation. If until the eighties there was a clear-cut distinction between material, ideological and theoretical conditions, nowadays such a distinction has become unfeasible when economic globalization takes on the shadings of an ideology. The economy itself, always bustling, vying to encompass everyone and everything, creates communities of knowledge and ability. Thus, it tries to establish communication, connections and cooperation among people, institutions and corporations. Success is impossible at the outset of the third millennium for those who overlook that fact.
To those that freely navigate nets and intranets, the world has gained new dimensions. To move across physical space is harder and takes longer. Information is downloaded at who knows how many Kbps. Hence the naturalness and immediacy now attached to the crossing and juxtaposing of vision and perspective. This reality can however be illusory at times. It is only there for believers, not those of little faith.
The Internet has made it possible for an individual with low expertise to search, access and download tons of information (…) In 2010, everyone will have a satellite phone and everyone will have access to a universal phone. And not just a telephone but a complete set of gear for communication.
We can’t help but smile at the magic trick. Even if we were all given access to such communication tools, would we automatically be equipped so we would want to access, interpret and digest such voluminous information? Don’t we already have a wealth of information pouring in from libraries, television, and whatnot? Will a change in the means of communication make us automatically think better, communicate better? Are we better communicators now that our nineteenth century ancestors? Wouldn’t it be wiser to assume we just communicate more often?
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Evidently, we are again faced with symbolic violence, albeit with the best of intentions. Neverth... more Evidently, we are again faced with symbolic violence, albeit with the best of
intentions. Nevertheless, the problems we have been discussing—the forceful transfer of cultural patterns from one culture to another—is conspicuous even here. The curators of Magiciens de la Terre might be charged with the violent transfer of creations that, divested from their original context, are likewise divested of their original aura and primal meaning, symbolic weight and raison d’être. The catalog does not give in to the perceived weakness of including contextual information on the works in question, although it does allude to many contemporary authors that deal with problems relating
to culture in our time, including Derrida:
“Derrida remarque en passant que l’histoire du sujet décentré et la ‘destruction’ de la métaphysique européenne coïncide avec
l’apparition de la problématique de la différence culturelle dans
l’ethnologie. Il reconnaît la nature politique de ce moment, mais nous
laisse le soin de le cerner dans le texte post colonial:
“Wiped out”, they say.
Turn left or right,
There’s millions like you up here,
Picking their way through refuse,
Looking for words they lost.
You’re your country’s lost property
With no office to claim you back.
You’re polluting our sounds. You’re so rude.
“Get back to your language”, they say.
On discerne là une politique culturelle de la diaspora et la paranoïa,
de l’émigration et la discrimination, de l’angoisse et l’appropriation,
qui ne peut être appréhendée indépendamment de ces fais
métonymiques ou subalternes qui structurent le sujet écrivant et
signifiant. Sans le dédoublement que reflète le jeu sur le “a” et le 3T,
il serait difficile de comprendre l’angoisse suscitée par l’hybridation
de la langue, et associée aux frontières vacillantes (psychiques,
culturelles, territoriales) dont nous parle le poème. Où passe la ligne
de partage entre les langues? Entre les cultures? Entre les disciplines?
Entre les peuples?”
With Derrida—a later Derrida—we pose questions:
“(…) don’t we want any more today, neither eurocentrism nor antieurocentrism?
Other than these all-too-well known programs, what
‘cultural identity’ must we answer to? To answer to whom? To what
memory? What promise? And is ‘cultural identity’ a good name for
‘today’?”
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
We have noted the importance of the exhibition Les Immatériaux-Modernes, et après? (at the George... more We have noted the importance of the exhibition Les Immatériaux-Modernes, et après? (at the Georges Pompidou Center) which would ultimately prove a watershed, stating clear intentions as to the change of values-the key ingredient in the genesis of Postmodernity. In the words of its main curator, Jean-François Lyotard, the exhibition did not intend to be more than "(…) une expo pédagogique-expliquer par exemple les nouvelles technologies (...), mais une expo qui soit une oeuvre d'art. De viser donc non pas la capacité d'acquisition d'un public mais plutôt sa sensibilité, c'est-à-dire un sentiment esthétique." Les Immatériaux took on the role of artistic form based on science, presenting itself for enjoyment. Not just the creator's enjoyment, at least not first and foremost; instead, it offered itself to a wide audience. Thus began a praxis that would send ripples across the history of art over the following decade: the curator as artist, as creator.
At the core, Les Immatériaux had global claims on the avowal of complexity, and even though mass computerization was not yet a reality, it was intended that the mass audience should get to grips with a host of "…dispositifs technologiques en passe de constituer notre environnement et une nouvelle écologie de l'esprit". The exhibition is underpinned by philosophy , concept, science and aesthetic, committed to the "recherche de la recherche", accepting the uncertainty of concepts. It is the acme of all exhibitions of super-modernity, to some, or a second stage in postmodernity to others: a place of passage, a wandering through realities and eras, where borders, not tightly upheld, come to fade naturally-bereft of the support of ideology, theory and even matter. The airtight compartments that seal off fields of research make no sense on the virtual plane. In Les Immatériaux, different sites embody different contexts. The same now happens when we browse the internet, looking at site after site. Favoring what can be sensed rather than what can merely be seen (this is a fundamental operation), the goal is to achieve total involvement, engagement with the multiple senses of the human. Les Immatériaux is above all a course in reflection in perception. As Martine Moinot would have it: "(...) la mise en espace, repose sur l'idée de 'parcours' réflexifs / perceptifs, qui se déplacent de questions en questions, et non pas d'objets en objets proposés comme des références. La perception dans le parcours de l'expo ne doit pas fonctionner uniquement sur le visible, mais plus largement sur le sensible."
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
All the teachers I have come in contact with seem to have no doubt as to the importance of fruiti... more All the teachers I have come in contact with seem to have no doubt as to the
importance of fruition. Some seem to feel no need to account for it when they hear the question, I put them in a neutral, deadpan sort of tone:
“As a teacher of theoretical subjects in college-level artistic teaching, do you
think it is possible to know or teach and study art without enjoying it?”
or
“As a teacher of the History of Visual Arts or Art History in secondary
school, do you think it is possible to know or teach and study art without enjoying it?”
As I have taken into consideration the methodology of Focus Groups150 (I met with the people I talked to so we could analyse the issues and problems we were dealing with), I have experienced no desire to condition or narrow the scope or contextualization of the problem at hand.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
As an individual, subjective phenomenon, fruition occurs in the pedagogical space, where other fo... more As an individual, subjective phenomenon, fruition occurs in the pedagogical space, where other forms of fruition interrelated to more purely aesthetic fruition fortunately occur—the passion of ideas given substance by present artistic form, without which they do not exist. There is no doubt about one thing, however. It is difficult to get a large group of students to enjoy the same work of art simultaneously, as some of them are at different way points along the path, different times and spaces of fruition. That which moves some will leave others cold, because all fruition is an act of knowledge. Firstly knowledge of oneself, and then of the other, the creator, who by virtue of creating allows us to ascend to a more wholesome and fruitful knowledge of ourselves. That maybe why this space where we are attuned, and sharing does not admit of third parties. Widespread, simultaneous sharing is not possible. At a second stage, we can reflect in conjunction with others, to analyse and confront what has been a unique, private space of fruition but, at the moment of fruition, our primary bent is towards silence, because the space of fruition is a space of secret and passion. As Derrida said, there is no passion without secrets, no secrets without passion.
31 Desafios para o Ensino Superior - Ensaios, 2019
De uma Universidade encarada como projeto civilizacional a uma Universidade virada para projetos ... more De uma Universidade encarada como projeto civilizacional a uma Universidade virada para projetos civilizacionais ancorados nas comunidades que lhe são mais próximas O lugar das Universidades numa sociedade de soberania mitigada.
Nos últimos anos, todos o podemos reconhecer com facilidade, encontramo-nos face a um País/ Países com uma soberania mitigada e a uma universidade com autonomia limitada. Controlados de perto por instâncias europeias e transnacionais que, mesmo quando não eleitas pelos cidadãos, se arrogam ao direito de opinar sobre tudo e todos, com o caos instalado nas diferentes áreas do serviço público, devido a uma economia de "ajustamento" que fomos obrigados a adotar, enquanto que, silenciosos ou silenciados, continuamos a ver enormes somas do produto interno bruto dos diversos Países ser desviadas para "resgates" bancários que parecem não ter mais fim em consequência das atuações organizadas de grupos de interesse, até ao momento, nunca inteiramente clarificadas. Como explica Slavoj Žižek, a nossa cúpula está "… distorcida não só por tolerar a violação das leis, mas ainda mais abertamente pelas tentativas sistemáticas que visam adaptar essas mesmas leis aos interesses daqueles que a cúpula protege." (Žižek 2017: 43, 44). É frequente que todos nós nos insurjamos contra a desonestidade e a ganância que impera um pouco por todo o lado e nos interroguemos com Žižek acerca do que é feito dos valores fundamentais das nossas sociedades. Mas, como este refere de forma desabrida e certeira: "… os políticos, os banqueiros e os gestores foram sempre gananciosos, a questão está naquilo que, no nosso sistema económico e jurídico, lhes permitiu satisfazerem tão espetacularmente a sua ganância." (Žižek 2017: 42). Por outro lado, como aconteceu em todas as outras áreas em que a intervenção estatal se definia pela regulação e regulamentação, passou-se a uma supervisão definida e fundamentada por e numa quantofrenia que correspondeu apenas, na maior parte dos casos, ao aumento de uma burocracia infinita que se estende a todas as atividades das universidades e não só, materializada num infindável e repetitivo preenchimento de formulários e avaliações (autoavaliações, avaliações internas e avaliações externas), sustentadas pelas próprias instituições. Na verdade, as nossas sociedades, incluindo as universidades, ainda não descobriram muito bem o que fazer com o crescimento exponencial dos dados que apuram nos inúmeros formulários on line, cujo preenchimento repetitivo (surgem sempre pequenas alterações para impedir o copy/ paste) custam muitas horas de trabalho aos, neste caso, docentes, funcionários e também aos estudantes que procedem, por exemplo, à avaliação dos seus professores, serviços e universidades. Revisitámos os estudos que realizámos há mais de dez anos atrás acerca do ensino em geral e do ensino superior artístico universitário em particular (Sardinha 2007). O balanço deixa-nos entristecidos. Sonhámos então, com outros pedagogos (estávamos, então, a iniciar a implementação do Processo de Bolonha), um outro futuro e um outro modelo educativo para o nosso ensino superior. Em 1993, por exemplo, Fraústo da Silva e Tavares Emídio tinham escrito: "O 'produto' que corresponde a uma 'ideia' de Universidade é uma atitude perante o saber, a conviviabilidade, a vida; o produto que decorre das 'funções' sociais que outros lhe solicitam mede-se qualitativamente e quantitativamente pela eficácia em termos de números de profissionais 'formados', artigos de investigação 'publicados', serviços prestados ao 'exterior', leia-se ao sector produtivo" (Silva e Tavares 1993: 7). Como, pois, conciliar estes dois entendimentos de produto, sem dúvida contraditórios, com o resultado de análises que têm sobretudo em conta atitudes não quantificáveis, com outros critérios bem mais atuais de aquisição de competências?
Teaching Documents by Idalina Sardinha
Da compreensão da arte
Os caminhos que nos conduziram da pósmodernidade a uma ultra-modernidade e/ ou, no dizer de A. Gi... more Os caminhos que nos conduziram da pósmodernidade a uma ultra-modernidade e/ ou, no dizer de A. Giddens (1992), a uma
modernidade radicalizada, foram (...) caminhos que pretendendo forçar-nos a sair, catapultando-nos para fora da modernidade, conseguiram, antes, remeter-nos a uma perspectiva mais aprofundada e cabal da própria modernidade.
Da compreensão da arte.
No renascimento ou no início da idade moderna, passos importantes, resultantes da aplicação de no... more No renascimento ou no início da idade moderna, passos importantes,
resultantes da aplicação de novas técnicas e procedimentos, foram
utilizados na procura do adestramento, da educação do olhar. Fruto de
novos conhecimentos, a perspectiva, por exemplo, imporá formas mais fáceis e científicas de organizar o nosso olhar e o urbanizado meio envolvente.
CHARTER OF TRANSDISCIPLINARITY, 1994
"Article final : The present Charter of Transdisciplinarity was adopted by the participants of th... more "Article final :
The present Charter of Transdisciplinarity was adopted by the participants of the first World Congress of Transdisciplinarity, with no claim to any authority other than that of their own work and activity.
In accordance with procedures to be agreed upon by transdisciplinary-minded persons of all countries, this Charter is open to the signature of anyone who is interested in promoting progressive national, international and transnational measures to ensure the application of these Articles in everyday life."
Convento da Arrábida, 6th November 1994
Editorial Committee
Lima de Freitas, Edgar Morin and Basarab Nicolescu
Translated from the French by
Karen-Claire Voss
(adopted at the First World Congress of Trandisciplinarity, Convento da Arrábida, Portugal,
November 2-6, 1994)
Da compreennsão da Arte
“A arquitectura e o design dos anos 80, por exemplo, constituindo-se como duas das faces de maior... more “A arquitectura e o design dos anos 80, por exemplo, constituindo-se como duas das faces de maior relevo nas artes deste período, sobretudo da primeira metade da década, recusam a ideia de A. Moles, de que a função do
designer (e também do arquitecto) seja a de aumentar a “legibilidade do mundo”. Complexificando-a, antes, e recusando a imemorialidade e a ficção funcionalista modernas. Ao “less is more”, o criador contrapõe agora, pois, como Robert Venturi, um “less is a bore”.
SARDINHA, Idalina - A fruição da arte.Oeiras, Celta,2007, p.53
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Though we may think of History as taking note of change and documenting it, and sociology more as... more Though we may think of History as taking note of change and documenting it, and sociology more as revealing change, as far as I am concerned, history is simply about why, about questions, whereas sociology is much more about functions that actual artistic facts and phenomena as historic-social facts play out in the human-social process of becoming. One and the other must provide, in turn, a causal explanation and/or a functional one, respectively, to use Durkheim’s terminology.
In fact, these distinctions are important from an operative viewpoint only. The
human does not yet find it easy to assume multiple standpoints, the circularity of the gaze. Yet bit by bit under the more or less intuitive or enlightening effect of theories we haveb been looking at, such as deconstruction and neoperspectivism, cross-disciplinarity gains
momentum: analysis in the history of art become the fruit of multiple perspective and unitary perspective, combining multiple durations, synchrony and diachrony, and gleaning knowledge—inevitably—from aesthetics, a discipline without which art cannot be studied, no matter what the perspective. The History of Art is therefore, in Fernández Arenas’s opinion, “…history, technique, philology, sociology, psychology [and more]. It is an eminently humanistic discipline, that demands plurality in the choice of method.”
Simultaneously riding the crest of the wave and surfing the tunnel, to pick up on Braudel’s metaphor, “there is not one history, the trade of an historian, but trades, histories, a sum of curiosities, points of view, possibilities…”3 either in general history or in the history of art.
So, you will find a few things attached to the structural form of the history of art: analyses that would fit micro-history, events disseminated across historic structures and conjunctures, piecing together fine, fine strands that should be drawn together, tighter and tighter, to capture the human in their net. Not an easy task, to be sure, seeing as it is “…the ability to imagine that makes the past concrete…scientific imagination…manifesting through the power of abstraction”4. As historical narration, it “…dies, because the sign of history is [as Le Goff reminds us, quoting Roland Barthes] …not so much the real as the
intelligible…” (see note 3 on Braudel below) and thus changes with the growth of the human itself.
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
If students of the arts have become familiar with the Neo-Conceptual (the popularity of which has... more If students of the arts have become familiar with the Neo-Conceptual (the popularity of which has spread everywhere over the last decade, especially to milestone events such as the Kassel Documentas, and to specialty magazines detailing current research of relevance), a careful foray into Conceptual Art (late 60s to early 70s) will allow them, with recourse to
interrelationships with Dadaism, to discriminate among different modes of being in art as found in Conceptualism, and to reflect on the many similarities the movements bear.
This foray, however, must be framed by historical analyses at once far-reaching and focused (zooming in and out of the subject), so as to interrelate the connecting nodes of a network that interweaves and articulates synchrony and diachrony. If we do so, we will find that 1960s Conceptual is a complex reality, diverse from current Neo-Conceptual operations,
possibly subsuming a slew of other movements under different nomenclatures, and, naturally, allowing elbow room to different trends and schools within the movement. The point is we would then have a systemic development (necessarily abridged, though), one that to the teacher would correspond with an initial stage in the organization of his or her own scientific knowledge, giving him or her a foundation from which to differentiate 1960s Conceptual from contemporary Neo-Conceptual.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
We certainly want the best we can get. However it would be erroneous to believe the new school we... more We certainly want the best we can get. However it would be erroneous to believe the new school we are fighting for will only come about through the aid of the latest technology, including complex computing solutions. As I have often stated, new technological means must also be transformed into truly new, innovative, life-giving tools.
Nothing could be worse, in my opinion, than the turning of pedagogical and didactic means and instruments into educational ends in themselves. Educational progress can not be gauged by ascertaining the number of schools connected to computer networks (I have however amply discussed this elsewhere.).
The emerging pedagogical paradigm is, as I have said, a paradigm of change, one of harmony and autonomy, respect for one’s own as well as other cultures, growing almost organically (according to the principles of an educational ethnography), by making the most of, exploring and transforming (according to one’s own models) constantly shifting perspectives, motivations, strengths and means. This project will subsist only in accordance with the principles set forth by the Principle of Subsidiarity determined by the EU. Growing as determined by their needs, the different parties involved in the educational whole may gain in efficacy. That precludes the archaic authoritarianism of anachronistic state bureaucracies. There is a need for adaptation to the principles of EU Law, and articulation with rules such as the Principle of Proportionality, Primacy, Cohesion, Community Loyalty and/or Cooperation, etc., established by the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam.
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
There is a certain difficulty in establishing platforms of understanding when it comes to certain... more There is a certain difficulty in establishing platforms of understanding when it comes to certain artistic realities. These platforms must be valid for the whole of the class-group (teacher and students). I am specifically discussing those realities bound with aesthetic categories which in turn rely on abstract entities and categories that are apprehended subjectively. When in sharp focus they gain a quasi-metaphysical character. This is the case with the concepts of naturalism/realism/idealism as applied to the arts. Evidently these concepts have been defined, studied, done to death. Is it easy, however, to
Da compreeensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
Especially where the 19c and 20c are concerned, these issues would merit discussion in greater d... more Especially where the 19c and 20c are concerned, these issues would merit
discussion in greater depth. To understand not only art but its relationship to science and knowledge in general may yet prove fundamental to an understanding of the world and of life. This subject is something we can go back to very often in the classroom. You simply can’t say enough. At any rate, we have to point out to our students why it is thatthe whole project fell through. Analyses differ according to one’s ideology, and this too must be discussed with our students: for some, and I believe they are the majority, there had been attempts at revolution without taking care to renew mentality. This renewal would necessarily arise from radical awareness—not in sudden, abrupt fashion, but over a period of cultural maturing. Others feel that the lesson taught by May ’68 was bitter yet effective. “Bourgeois vous n’avez pas rien compris” was a dour indictment, born of humiliation, yet at the same time it was a veiled threat. Little by little almost everyone realized that art would have to become a part of social praxis if it was to contribute to a cultural revolution of mentality. Marcuse’s power of the imagination would have to be one of art’s weapons. If imagination could not attain to political power, as the graffiti of May ’68 would have it, then the establishment would be destroyed by the powers of imagination. No more would there be tolerance for Odes to Joy or Guernicas of the past, offerings burnt at the altar of human suffering.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
One of the most rewarding exercises in “cross-pollination” you can accomplish throughout numerous... more One of the most rewarding exercises in “cross-pollination” you can accomplish throughout numerous spatiotemporal coordinates, traversing multiple synchronic and diachronic paths, is that of undertaking an analysis of the formal processes and resources that creators in different cultures and civilizations have used over the course of human history. This analysis gains in acumen and breadth when we look for
THE RIGHT GAZE UPON ART AND DESIGN, RIGHT NOW.
There is no doubt that the way you imagine and map out the future today will shape not only the future but the present itself.
So it is that in an approach to the History of Contemporary and Current Art and Design every one is, so to speak, on probation when the school year starts. It is a time of trial and error in which the class (comprised of students and teacher) not only reflect on, and critically analyze the present, as well as immediate underlying causes in the past, but also project themselves onto the future by weaving it mentally and render it into verbal equation, submitting to close and sometimes pitiless scrutiny on the part of all. Pitiless analyses which are hard on students of the pictorial arts especially—they anticipate a future in the arts demanding of them not only the know-how they have already mastered but also the deployment of a vast body of theoretical, artistic and technical knowledge that broaches all aspects of the human. Such knowledge will be at the heart of future creative developments, so far unpredictable, yet it’s been foreshadowed that such developments will be especially exacting.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Now possessed of greater knowledge about himself and the world, having traversed the epoch of pos... more Now possessed of greater knowledge about himself and the world, having traversed the epoch of post-Renaissance Humanism, consolidating his learning, Man will now question his essence, in a spiral of loneliness that leads him to his core.
The substitution of profane value (Modernity) for sacred value (Ancien Regime) is proof of such a quest. By casting a pall of doubt over several established powers (gods, inherited hierarchy, tradition—according to Lipovetsky), the creators at the outset of Modernity will call for liberation and independence from all norm, canon and obligation, whatever its nature—social, political, ethical, religious, intellectual, aesthetic. Their choices will certainly afford independence but surely send them on a perilous path to the ivory tower. Many will be painfully silenced by reigning mediocrity. Some will have to ponder how to earn a living. To make their own voices heard, to be able to hear them, would be an act in service to a cause no other than the human-poietic, the understanding of the human-poietic. The path is one of passion, a calvary intended to redeem creation itself and, of course, culture and art. Let us consider the damned in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in all fields of human knowledge, who, much as Nietzsche’s traveler, having crossed the desert, beheld the descent of “(…) a desert upon the desert (…)” and “(…) over the faces [of the city dwellers], a desert unto themselves, dirt, treachery, diffidence, before the closed doors—and day (…)[was] (…) almost worse than the night.” Creators from all fields, at the outset of Modernity, clamored for the observance of human rights, of the social values brought to bear by the French Revolution, without which one cannot fully appraise, understand and assess Modernity. Not only did people try to provide for basic needs in new, more effective ways, by applying what were scientific breakthroughs, but they also tried to extend better, more egalitarian standards of living to the general population. In theory we should all have access to such standards.
Two distinct methods will be employed in reaching this common goal. One will foreground the collective, the other the individual.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
There is a crucial moment when primal essentialism is brushed aside (or is invested with a new na... more There is a crucial moment when primal essentialism is brushed aside (or is invested with a new nature) when we seek out ultimate truths, giving way to solidary neopragmatism, even the "Divine Architect", in Koyré's parlance, loses his omniscience. "(…) Newton's mighty, acting God, who in effect ruled over the universe according to His free will and His decisions, has over a short period of evolution become a conservative force, an intelligentia extra-mundana, a lazy God." 8 The gods have really remained "in character". What really changed was the way Man looked at the world and, above all, the changes in his self-image had wrought effects on his profound nature. The demands placed by approaches that have always been contextualized, accounted for and validated will be defended in manners various and sundry by the likes of Kuhn, Popper, Ricoeur. The structural genetic method becomes the norm in Human Sciences. The Visual Arts follow suit in adopting these demands. Manifestation of the principles in question can be observed in Conceptualism, Informalism and the Action Arts. A book, a sociological survey, an everyday chore, can become works of art if the artist so desires-provided an adequate aesthetic/artistic context is created. Art then becomes the locus of knowledge. We had learned from Leonardo that art is after all a cosa mentale, art in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth seeks to deepen and broaden the study of matter, nature, and Man, almost scientifically. There is plentiful evidence of groundbreaking knowledge converted into art. Take for instance the use of quantum physics in futurism or, say, information gleaned from physics and vision psychology by impressionists and neo-impressionists. Over the second half of the twentieth century, art will be concerned with the human, the disclosure of the human in its manifold aspects. There is, then, a deliberate movement towards the sciences and philosophy (mostly the philosophy of language), as well as the achievements of technology-art sees fit to exploit some of its most advanced resources-cybernetics, video, information technologies, holography, and so on. This is a time when art is essencially concerned with showing Man his own image, taking social and cultural data into the representation.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Art over the last decades is a practical example of the materialization of all the realties we ha... more Art over the last decades is a practical example of the materialization of all the realties we have been referring to. Often, and on a single plane, the frameworks for the materialization of memory will arise and, in more or less organized fashion (be it by juxtaposition, dispersion, or composition—more or less thorough, more or less classical—or even simple superimposition) will make us see, as cubism once did with its multiple viewpoints, or futurism as it represented the successive stages of movement and energy quanta, what we have always thought could not be figured on a plastic screen: the succession of mental imagery, past and future recollection, continually coursing through the mind.
We no longer seek to attain to “pure psychic automatism”, as Surrealism did, nor do we attempt to “introspectively materialize pre-reflective states”, as Pollock would have it with his Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting. The same goes for G. Mathieu and Lyrical Abstraction: the “transfer of psychic action into plastic forms bearing the nature of a manuscript”. We are faced with an openly avowed experiential stock of reminiscence. The artist is pleased to make it known—especially to him or herself. Reminiscence is decked out in an enticing game of intimacy-seeking rhetoric which, infusing creation with hermetic qualities, may either impoverish it or add new layers of meaning. This is particularly striking in the works of the Italian Trans-avantgarde, in Mimmo Paladino’s offerings, or Clemente’s, or the exertions of the New Image Painting in America, with de Salle or even Schnabel. But though they enjoy far more classic, thorough compositions, the result of major aesthetic and formal concern, they can likewise be found in the Pittura Colta, as in Carlo Maria Mariani, McKenna, or the far more expressionistic, meaning-laden offerings of Immendorf. This is where Douwe W. Fokkema’s palimpsest metaphor (undated:71) gains in accuracy and scope. At times, the apparent superimposition of layers, the fact of successive returns, demand abilities like those of web surfers, as we shall soon see. It must be reckoned however that in these works’ layers are fixed—only our ability to move between the creator’s understanding and memory and ultimately appropriate them can lead us to a multiple reading—sharing and re-creating of the most immediate and deepest reading. To be able to make memory operate on the surface and in depth demands that we outstrip our scientific or academic background. Therefore, creation and analysis abilities now demand both intellectual and emotional commitment. They are now the unavoidable condition for deep, dense reading, drawing on the flexibility of experiential stock—where you will find the expected (and the predictable) as soon as the truly unknown, arrived at by means of interrelationships with other platforms of understanding. Only intrinsical motivation and emotion will allow us to delve deep into the immediacy of discovery. At this stage, investigators do not yet realize the full weight of the understanding they have begun to collate and probe into. This somewhat intuitive and emotional knowledge tears down the autistic wall that surrounds creation, making way for true communication, true fruition.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
René Thom (of Catastrophe Theory fame), on the Topoi of Utopia (Cascais, 1995), analyses the “l... more René Thom (of Catastrophe Theory fame), on the Topoi of Utopia (Cascais, 1995), analyses the “logical structure of utopias” as an oxymoron (a figure in rhetoric that operates by offering an “antithesis of separate words, producing a paradox between the antithetical members.” ). It seems to me that paradox can simultaneously nullify the primal realities that the antithetical members allude to and gives rise of a new reality, one of a rather diverse nature than the two at its source… or, maybe not. Escher—who was not directly concerned with this issue—did, I think, represented these two realities to the point of overkill. Diverse in their conditions, the realities mingle and bring about a mongrelized reality, enhanced and enriched by the two preceding ones. Will not a reconciled reality attain to the paradoxical nature of utopias and come to ail with (as per Thom’s view) a logical, ontological lack of viability, now that classical antinomian positionings are gone? Are we not before the chosen birthplace of other utopias and, as such, a territory and/or a continent that has been truly deterritorialized? Here is the bridge—though there are quite a few that won’t own up to that—between an outdated present and a future we are already experiencing, at least in the imagination. Is that not how we so often renew our utopias in life?
We have all more or less explicitly felt the impact of globalization on our lives, of trans-disciplinarity and the trans-textuality it implies, both in the accrual of knowledge and the output of creation or, if you’d like to keep it simple, everyday life. Isn’t there, at this writing, an effort to establish a silent discourse and dialog, fruitful to the nth power, among disciplines of a like nature? Or even those which are apparently diverse? And, are not unexpected connections, transgression of all sorts, occurring right now? It happens obliquely, between surface and deep structure, generating deconstruction, and the most important thing will be alertness. There will be moments where the investigative eye will meet new and surprising outlooks on things. Dialog and discourse will, through their new trans-disciplinary condition, foster a healthy conviviality (as discussed in previous chapters) between the real and the virtual, accounting for and/or transmuting the presentification of absence as a presence that is constantly absent, or latent, as happens with the ellipse: a figure typical of the discontinuity encountered over the last decades on any given field of expertise. When we run into one of these situations, are we possibly before the dark matter of knowledge, a sort of black hole, containing a wealth of information? In a way we can see all these new situations triggering (on the level of mind and discourse) understanding and practice so widely differing that I am tempted to state they are as unpredictable as fractal objects.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
When it comes to computing systems, the nineties are what we might call the fourth wave. If I ha... more When it comes to computing systems, the nineties are what we might call the fourth wave. If I have noted some perverse aftereffects of globalization, right now I would prefer to examine a world—once a world apart—cyberspace, which displays a natural aptitude to colonize the so-called real world, whose nature it has changed; to a point that the real is starting to seem less real than the virtual.
In a way, the nature of the real has been altered. This is the case with the conditions that underlie artistic creation. If until the eighties there was a clear-cut distinction between material, ideological and theoretical conditions, nowadays such a distinction has become unfeasible when economic globalization takes on the shadings of an ideology. The economy itself, always bustling, vying to encompass everyone and everything, creates communities of knowledge and ability. Thus, it tries to establish communication, connections and cooperation among people, institutions and corporations. Success is impossible at the outset of the third millennium for those who overlook that fact.
To those that freely navigate nets and intranets, the world has gained new dimensions. To move across physical space is harder and takes longer. Information is downloaded at who knows how many Kbps. Hence the naturalness and immediacy now attached to the crossing and juxtaposing of vision and perspective. This reality can however be illusory at times. It is only there for believers, not those of little faith.
The Internet has made it possible for an individual with low expertise to search, access and download tons of information (…) In 2010, everyone will have a satellite phone and everyone will have access to a universal phone. And not just a telephone but a complete set of gear for communication.
We can’t help but smile at the magic trick. Even if we were all given access to such communication tools, would we automatically be equipped so we would want to access, interpret and digest such voluminous information? Don’t we already have a wealth of information pouring in from libraries, television, and whatnot? Will a change in the means of communication make us automatically think better, communicate better? Are we better communicators now that our nineteenth century ancestors? Wouldn’t it be wiser to assume we just communicate more often?
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Evidently, we are again faced with symbolic violence, albeit with the best of intentions. Neverth... more Evidently, we are again faced with symbolic violence, albeit with the best of
intentions. Nevertheless, the problems we have been discussing—the forceful transfer of cultural patterns from one culture to another—is conspicuous even here. The curators of Magiciens de la Terre might be charged with the violent transfer of creations that, divested from their original context, are likewise divested of their original aura and primal meaning, symbolic weight and raison d’être. The catalog does not give in to the perceived weakness of including contextual information on the works in question, although it does allude to many contemporary authors that deal with problems relating
to culture in our time, including Derrida:
“Derrida remarque en passant que l’histoire du sujet décentré et la ‘destruction’ de la métaphysique européenne coïncide avec
l’apparition de la problématique de la différence culturelle dans
l’ethnologie. Il reconnaît la nature politique de ce moment, mais nous
laisse le soin de le cerner dans le texte post colonial:
“Wiped out”, they say.
Turn left or right,
There’s millions like you up here,
Picking their way through refuse,
Looking for words they lost.
You’re your country’s lost property
With no office to claim you back.
You’re polluting our sounds. You’re so rude.
“Get back to your language”, they say.
On discerne là une politique culturelle de la diaspora et la paranoïa,
de l’émigration et la discrimination, de l’angoisse et l’appropriation,
qui ne peut être appréhendée indépendamment de ces fais
métonymiques ou subalternes qui structurent le sujet écrivant et
signifiant. Sans le dédoublement que reflète le jeu sur le “a” et le 3T,
il serait difficile de comprendre l’angoisse suscitée par l’hybridation
de la langue, et associée aux frontières vacillantes (psychiques,
culturelles, territoriales) dont nous parle le poème. Où passe la ligne
de partage entre les langues? Entre les cultures? Entre les disciplines?
Entre les peuples?”
With Derrida—a later Derrida—we pose questions:
“(…) don’t we want any more today, neither eurocentrism nor antieurocentrism?
Other than these all-too-well known programs, what
‘cultural identity’ must we answer to? To answer to whom? To what
memory? What promise? And is ‘cultural identity’ a good name for
‘today’?”
Da compreensão da arte ao estudo da história da arte, hoje.
We have noted the importance of the exhibition Les Immatériaux-Modernes, et après? (at the George... more We have noted the importance of the exhibition Les Immatériaux-Modernes, et après? (at the Georges Pompidou Center) which would ultimately prove a watershed, stating clear intentions as to the change of values-the key ingredient in the genesis of Postmodernity. In the words of its main curator, Jean-François Lyotard, the exhibition did not intend to be more than "(…) une expo pédagogique-expliquer par exemple les nouvelles technologies (...), mais une expo qui soit une oeuvre d'art. De viser donc non pas la capacité d'acquisition d'un public mais plutôt sa sensibilité, c'est-à-dire un sentiment esthétique." Les Immatériaux took on the role of artistic form based on science, presenting itself for enjoyment. Not just the creator's enjoyment, at least not first and foremost; instead, it offered itself to a wide audience. Thus began a praxis that would send ripples across the history of art over the following decade: the curator as artist, as creator.
At the core, Les Immatériaux had global claims on the avowal of complexity, and even though mass computerization was not yet a reality, it was intended that the mass audience should get to grips with a host of "…dispositifs technologiques en passe de constituer notre environnement et une nouvelle écologie de l'esprit". The exhibition is underpinned by philosophy , concept, science and aesthetic, committed to the "recherche de la recherche", accepting the uncertainty of concepts. It is the acme of all exhibitions of super-modernity, to some, or a second stage in postmodernity to others: a place of passage, a wandering through realities and eras, where borders, not tightly upheld, come to fade naturally-bereft of the support of ideology, theory and even matter. The airtight compartments that seal off fields of research make no sense on the virtual plane. In Les Immatériaux, different sites embody different contexts. The same now happens when we browse the internet, looking at site after site. Favoring what can be sensed rather than what can merely be seen (this is a fundamental operation), the goal is to achieve total involvement, engagement with the multiple senses of the human. Les Immatériaux is above all a course in reflection in perception. As Martine Moinot would have it: "(...) la mise en espace, repose sur l'idée de 'parcours' réflexifs / perceptifs, qui se déplacent de questions en questions, et non pas d'objets en objets proposés comme des références. La perception dans le parcours de l'expo ne doit pas fonctionner uniquement sur le visible, mais plus largement sur le sensible."
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
All the teachers I have come in contact with seem to have no doubt as to the importance of fruiti... more All the teachers I have come in contact with seem to have no doubt as to the
importance of fruition. Some seem to feel no need to account for it when they hear the question, I put them in a neutral, deadpan sort of tone:
“As a teacher of theoretical subjects in college-level artistic teaching, do you
think it is possible to know or teach and study art without enjoying it?”
or
“As a teacher of the History of Visual Arts or Art History in secondary
school, do you think it is possible to know or teach and study art without enjoying it?”
As I have taken into consideration the methodology of Focus Groups150 (I met with the people I talked to so we could analyse the issues and problems we were dealing with), I have experienced no desire to condition or narrow the scope or contextualization of the problem at hand.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
As an individual, subjective phenomenon, fruition occurs in the pedagogical space, where other fo... more As an individual, subjective phenomenon, fruition occurs in the pedagogical space, where other forms of fruition interrelated to more purely aesthetic fruition fortunately occur—the passion of ideas given substance by present artistic form, without which they do not exist. There is no doubt about one thing, however. It is difficult to get a large group of students to enjoy the same work of art simultaneously, as some of them are at different way points along the path, different times and spaces of fruition. That which moves some will leave others cold, because all fruition is an act of knowledge. Firstly knowledge of oneself, and then of the other, the creator, who by virtue of creating allows us to ascend to a more wholesome and fruitful knowledge of ourselves. That maybe why this space where we are attuned, and sharing does not admit of third parties. Widespread, simultaneous sharing is not possible. At a second stage, we can reflect in conjunction with others, to analyse and confront what has been a unique, private space of fruition but, at the moment of fruition, our primary bent is towards silence, because the space of fruition is a space of secret and passion. As Derrida said, there is no passion without secrets, no secrets without passion.
31 Desafios para o Ensino Superior - Ensaios, 2019
De uma Universidade encarada como projeto civilizacional a uma Universidade virada para projetos ... more De uma Universidade encarada como projeto civilizacional a uma Universidade virada para projetos civilizacionais ancorados nas comunidades que lhe são mais próximas O lugar das Universidades numa sociedade de soberania mitigada.
Nos últimos anos, todos o podemos reconhecer com facilidade, encontramo-nos face a um País/ Países com uma soberania mitigada e a uma universidade com autonomia limitada. Controlados de perto por instâncias europeias e transnacionais que, mesmo quando não eleitas pelos cidadãos, se arrogam ao direito de opinar sobre tudo e todos, com o caos instalado nas diferentes áreas do serviço público, devido a uma economia de "ajustamento" que fomos obrigados a adotar, enquanto que, silenciosos ou silenciados, continuamos a ver enormes somas do produto interno bruto dos diversos Países ser desviadas para "resgates" bancários que parecem não ter mais fim em consequência das atuações organizadas de grupos de interesse, até ao momento, nunca inteiramente clarificadas. Como explica Slavoj Žižek, a nossa cúpula está "… distorcida não só por tolerar a violação das leis, mas ainda mais abertamente pelas tentativas sistemáticas que visam adaptar essas mesmas leis aos interesses daqueles que a cúpula protege." (Žižek 2017: 43, 44). É frequente que todos nós nos insurjamos contra a desonestidade e a ganância que impera um pouco por todo o lado e nos interroguemos com Žižek acerca do que é feito dos valores fundamentais das nossas sociedades. Mas, como este refere de forma desabrida e certeira: "… os políticos, os banqueiros e os gestores foram sempre gananciosos, a questão está naquilo que, no nosso sistema económico e jurídico, lhes permitiu satisfazerem tão espetacularmente a sua ganância." (Žižek 2017: 42). Por outro lado, como aconteceu em todas as outras áreas em que a intervenção estatal se definia pela regulação e regulamentação, passou-se a uma supervisão definida e fundamentada por e numa quantofrenia que correspondeu apenas, na maior parte dos casos, ao aumento de uma burocracia infinita que se estende a todas as atividades das universidades e não só, materializada num infindável e repetitivo preenchimento de formulários e avaliações (autoavaliações, avaliações internas e avaliações externas), sustentadas pelas próprias instituições. Na verdade, as nossas sociedades, incluindo as universidades, ainda não descobriram muito bem o que fazer com o crescimento exponencial dos dados que apuram nos inúmeros formulários on line, cujo preenchimento repetitivo (surgem sempre pequenas alterações para impedir o copy/ paste) custam muitas horas de trabalho aos, neste caso, docentes, funcionários e também aos estudantes que procedem, por exemplo, à avaliação dos seus professores, serviços e universidades. Revisitámos os estudos que realizámos há mais de dez anos atrás acerca do ensino em geral e do ensino superior artístico universitário em particular (Sardinha 2007). O balanço deixa-nos entristecidos. Sonhámos então, com outros pedagogos (estávamos, então, a iniciar a implementação do Processo de Bolonha), um outro futuro e um outro modelo educativo para o nosso ensino superior. Em 1993, por exemplo, Fraústo da Silva e Tavares Emídio tinham escrito: "O 'produto' que corresponde a uma 'ideia' de Universidade é uma atitude perante o saber, a conviviabilidade, a vida; o produto que decorre das 'funções' sociais que outros lhe solicitam mede-se qualitativamente e quantitativamente pela eficácia em termos de números de profissionais 'formados', artigos de investigação 'publicados', serviços prestados ao 'exterior', leia-se ao sector produtivo" (Silva e Tavares 1993: 7). Como, pois, conciliar estes dois entendimentos de produto, sem dúvida contraditórios, com o resultado de análises que têm sobretudo em conta atitudes não quantificáveis, com outros critérios bem mais atuais de aquisição de competências?
Da compreensão da arte
Os caminhos que nos conduziram da pósmodernidade a uma ultra-modernidade e/ ou, no dizer de A. Gi... more Os caminhos que nos conduziram da pósmodernidade a uma ultra-modernidade e/ ou, no dizer de A. Giddens (1992), a uma
modernidade radicalizada, foram (...) caminhos que pretendendo forçar-nos a sair, catapultando-nos para fora da modernidade, conseguiram, antes, remeter-nos a uma perspectiva mais aprofundada e cabal da própria modernidade.
Da compreensão da arte.
No renascimento ou no início da idade moderna, passos importantes, resultantes da aplicação de no... more No renascimento ou no início da idade moderna, passos importantes,
resultantes da aplicação de novas técnicas e procedimentos, foram
utilizados na procura do adestramento, da educação do olhar. Fruto de
novos conhecimentos, a perspectiva, por exemplo, imporá formas mais fáceis e científicas de organizar o nosso olhar e o urbanizado meio envolvente.
CHARTER OF TRANSDISCIPLINARITY, 1994
"Article final : The present Charter of Transdisciplinarity was adopted by the participants of th... more "Article final :
The present Charter of Transdisciplinarity was adopted by the participants of the first World Congress of Transdisciplinarity, with no claim to any authority other than that of their own work and activity.
In accordance with procedures to be agreed upon by transdisciplinary-minded persons of all countries, this Charter is open to the signature of anyone who is interested in promoting progressive national, international and transnational measures to ensure the application of these Articles in everyday life."
Convento da Arrábida, 6th November 1994
Editorial Committee
Lima de Freitas, Edgar Morin and Basarab Nicolescu
Translated from the French by
Karen-Claire Voss
(adopted at the First World Congress of Trandisciplinarity, Convento da Arrábida, Portugal,
November 2-6, 1994)
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
To stimulate a climate of intrinsic motivation by placing emphasis on joint discoveries of innova... more To stimulate a climate of intrinsic motivation by placing emphasis on joint discoveries of innovations and performances great and small. There is no doubt that the comparative method is one of the most effective and successful within the scope of the History of Contemporary and Current Art. There is no doubt that a picture is eloquent in more ways than words can express. The coming forth of understanding, when we ourselves have aided the coming, makes a mark. A lecture on art history, as should happen in all active teaching, must be the locus of many such births, where one should, more than giving birth, secure the circumstances where all may come out into the light.
We are all familiar with the unique enjoyment of wrapping up a lecture being certain that we have been part and parcel of a collective creative act and leaving the room in a new spirit. We all commune in a kind of understanding that flourishes in its own way, conceived in sharing, when everyone gave of him or herself, effortlessly. Teachers must secure the
preconditions for the success of pedagogical action and ensure that multiple, innovative understanding arises. This task demands great commitment, availability, pedagogical/scientific preparation, and, last but not least, the teacher’s efforts must not deprive students of the pleasure of exerting their own conceptual creativity. Nothing could be worse that a teacher who draws a student’s drawing or imposes a stereotyped model, whether his/hers or not. The same happens with conceptual creativity and knowledge.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
An in-depth look into any of these art forms reveals ambiguity at the core of each and everyone. ... more An in-depth look into any of these art forms reveals ambiguity at the core of each and everyone. The concept of Ambiguity was developed by Umberto Eco in his book, OBRA ABERTA. Ambiguity arises as a direct consequence of a “chaogenous state” where its constitutive elements lay in the first place, and therein resides its great informative capacity and its “equiprobability”. The interpreter, faced with the availability that the aesthetic operator offers him, can freely own his identity as a subject and for the first time discard his
status as a passive agent face to face with an aesthetic object. Later on, certain forms of Art Process will cause the interpreter to become an active participant in the unfolding of the aesthetic process.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
To speak of post-modernity, after so much work has been published to shed light on the several qu... more To speak of post-modernity, after so much work has been published to shed light on the several questions around it, and so many conferences and lectures have taken place over the world, is as hard a task as ever, begetting dissent left and right. This is markedly evident with Habermas, Lyotard, Vattimo, who all argued, in general terms, that Modernity has been depleted; or, the main thing to do is destroy the rational structures of modernity—structures whereby we are given to understand that the postmodern, if ever there was such a thing, departs from, or opposes, modernity, or otherwise is its quite alien offspring.
One of the best takes on this issue, at least where art is concerned, is Gilles
Lipovetsky’s with his book L’ERE DU VIDE, a reference we cannot now do without, simple and clear as it is about post-modernity13. Of especial interest is chapter four, on modernism and postmodernism, where we are often advised to study Daniel Bell.
Of all that he tells us, critically perceptive sociologist that he is, ready to read the times impromptu, one of the main ideas is, what differentiates the two historical moments (Modernism and Postmodernism) is the fact that we can believe that from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties something happens in the arts that effects changes in world vision. There is a clear shift in the matrix of value that had informed modernity since its inception at the birth of romanticism. So, from a strongly individualistic context, where feeling and subjectivity are exacerbated, albeit with no damage to their placement in a system of social values and a strongly structured collective, to another where apparently modern individualism, subjectivity, sentiment and even hedonism remain unchanged—if anything, they gain greater scope—a change occurred. A meaningful change: the de-structuring of frames of reference in social values. This destructuring will nourish many theories on the loss of value and grand narrative, that supposedly underlie the human spheres we are mainly concerned with. However, I believe that all of this stems from the loss of contextualization and historicity, determined as they are by the loss of memory, Foucault’s “consoling game of recognition”. This becomes visible as discontinuance gains in preponderance— discontinuance fostered by non-genetic structuralism, even if unsystematically, and made current by it. Postmodernity will seek to reintroduce and somehow clarify this
practice by directing memory to that which is proximate, by the opening of historic windows, according to Nietzsche’s morning philosophy, as particularly emphasized by
Gianni Vattimo (1987:135).
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte.
Like a great many others at the turn of the millennium, questioning the essence of perception, kn... more Like a great many others at the turn of the millennium, questioning the essence of perception, knowledge and our very outlook on the world, we stumble upon so many theories that we can but humbly restate them: everything has been said, thought out and committed to writing. But if Everything is false and everything is permitted and if, above anything else, we “(…) must prize strength over truth, creative, simplifying, ordaining, generative truth”, isn’t this the proper goad to begin with Nietzsche’s theorization and probe deeper into our concerns, that we may test our own creative and interpretive skills?
Edgar Morin, his stance somewhat similar to Nietzsche’s, maintains that knowledge is always translation and construction. António Marques, drawing on Nietzsche, infers that “perspectivism” stands on a set of theses, or claims. The third claim is of particular relevance to us: all perspective is interpretation and a regulatory fiction. This informs the questions before us when, in the scope of artistic creation and analysis, of knowledge and education in general, we are faced with differing ways of representing, creating, perceiving and conceiving what human beings have made use of over the centuries. We question the way Man gazes upon, creates, simplifies and ordains the world, as well as a knowledge which is systematically translation and construction. We probe into the vision of the creator and the understanding of they who enjoy. Which is to say, we investigate the gaze that develops forms through which representation, expression and communication are made possible, as well as the gaze of those who decode and interpret such communication. We investigate the mind that builds conceits and theories and the mind that decyphers, systematizes and internalizes such conceits. Likewise, the words that are given in explanation as well as the understanding that captures and apprehends such words. Throughout is a unique process, the same lonely trail, one despairing to convey or capture a single dimension, one’s own perspective. Perhaps this occurs because even at the instinctual level we are bound to recognize that all simplification mutilates, and all value judgments, as Finkielkraut pointed out (1988: 70) carry the seed of violence.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Education, much as the arts and all the fields of fundamental expertise, is made up of problems —... more Education, much as the arts and all the fields of fundamental expertise, is made up of problems — “Living is solving problems”, as Karl Popper said to Franz Kreuzer (POPPER, 1987, p.67). It comes as no surprise that the pedagogical process arouses questions on the foundations of the social—be they ethical, political, philosophical or aesthetic—associated with scientific and technical development in several fields.
Deconstruction, therefore, can be perceived as a new outlook on life in all its facets: education, cultural, artistic and scientific practice. A new educational philosophy emerges, and foundational thought, the arguments of authority, sink. There is an attempt to recover and make visible that thought which seems never to develop a finished, final form, a parole donnée. In other words, to recover an idea that will never own up to being a philosophical, artistic, poetic, theoretical work/understanding. This idea seems to elude visibility by means of self-encryption. Yet one needs to nurture it, to stimulate it, however latent, as a virus of creative innovation, in all current education and experience. A virus deeply ingrained now, surfacing as a “trail”, the yeast that renews and informs all collective and individual existence, now and henceforward, leading to the reconstruction and renewal of existence itself, knowledge, language and, consequently, teaching itself. There will never be a final shape—the house is perpetually under construction—a Bauhaus in constant becoming. Contemporary education would instill the virus, not only in students and teachers, but also in the social body, thereby altering or actively contributing towards the renewal of behaviors and attitudes. How can we, however, speak of this “nothing which is everything”, that informs everything, where everything is present? How can we speak of an absence that is constantly present? How can we flesh out a word (undecidability) that, curiously, (pre-)announces absence more easily than others? How can we expose the absence of an apparent non-existence?
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
This is especially relevant if you take into account that either with modernity or postmodernity ... more This is especially relevant if you take into account that either with modernity or postmodernity aesthetic-artistic creations, as they reach a high degree of opening and/or undecidability, go the way of delectare. More than teaching and informing, more than moving, more than effectively and affectively communicating and achieving empathy, delectare, as a means to enchantment and seduction, demands a “commitment to appropriation” that can only come about when the text—the aesthetic creation—comes about and can be enjoyed fully, imaginatively, by the interpreter. Isn’t that what enchantment and seduction are all about? Ways to let in the charm, in almost narcissistic fashion, let ourselves pervade it as we give ourselves up to something that either seizes us or lets itself be seized, in an almost entirely free manner, accomplished without effort, almost happily?
That is why I believe that deconstructive thinking is a form of creative hermeneutics, as it paves the ground for creation/fruition, reading/interpretation, accomplished in transit, open to all expectation. The territory knows no bounds; creation and fruition are ever in the process of becoming. The search for an orient is born of Nietzche’s philosophy before noon (1973:397). There is the art, then, of remembrance, appropriation, sharing and interrelationship of ruins and the rendering subjective of a creator’s memories, as well as those of interpreters/co-creators. These memories are as open as the future. As in myth and legend, memory with us is but a promise, a promise of memory lost or postponed; especially when remembrance of a first perception is attempted, or the first feeling, or the first memory of a past or a future that have not taken shape. I fully agree with Fernanda Bernardo’s take on L’autre Cap when she says:
"…believing that you can answer the other…and before the other, to respond to their discourse by circumscribing it once and for all is…arrogant, disrespectful and unfair.
This arrogance presupposes in the first place the possibility one has of answering for oneself, from oneself, from the entirety or ideality of one’s own identity.
To answer for oneself would be to assume a knowledge of oneself, assuming that one ‘I think’, always identical to itself, would accompany all of one’s representations, and these would weave a systematic fabric, at one time homogeneous and potentially rendered subjective, of theses, critiques and themes, of which the subject would possess a total, intact, un-shrouded memory."
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
Elsewhere in this work, I argued that the Emerging Pedagogical Paradigm as I see it must be a par... more Elsewhere in this work, I argued that the Emerging Pedagogical Paradigm as I see it must be a paradigm of truth, as it is also a paradigm of the complex. This complexity is of an experiential nature. By this I mean the paradigm must take into account the universe of knowledge—knowledge that is specific yet does not overlook the global, that reconciles, that bridges the gap between global and local, general and specific, social and individual. So all studies, even specific ones, must consider the reality of the student by contextualizing him or her, establishing frequent relationships with the coordinates in the “world of life”, creating constant analogies with current problems and the reflection that they generate. At the outset you take the student from the world of life, and in the end, you send him or her back, no matter how complex or virtual or specific the subject matter you’ve been dealing with. This seems the way to provide them with the basic means to go solo, even if they just wander, i.e., their movements have no apparent end in sight, and occur by means of intuitive, latent, inchoate knowledge built on the path itself, sometimes groping in the dark. The connecting nodes that teachers and students establish will enable each and every one to create a bigger, tighter mesh, with more landmarks, be they scientific or spatio-temporal. The mesh will be a fabric of interdependent connections that will allow students, according to their own paths and spatio-temporal location, both in knowledge and in life, to undertake all dislocation and connection among several levels of reality, inter-areas, inter-knowledge, inter-problems—unlike what happens with exclusively unidisciplinary knowledge. It creates intellectual and emotional upheavals and insecurity, as they will be capable of no more than go where others have gone before and be unable to apprehend the gulfs among uncharted disciplines, which are, by virtue of their novelty, the most promising.
Da compreensão da Arte ao Ensino da História da Arte, hoje
Isn’t it time to pose serious questions about the inevitable cyberpolice in the immediate future?... more Isn’t it time to pose serious questions about the inevitable cyberpolice in the immediate future? At no other time will it be so easy to throw out the baby with the bath water. If so far societies, schools and families have had no great trouble controlling the space where citizens, students, sons and daughters moved, now their physical presence at a given point no longer corresponds with real presence. Their actions at home can impact the outside world, for good or ill. To impose limits on movement across the wild chaosmic space is like killing the hen that laid the golden egg. Let’s not kid ourselves. What draws the young to the internet is the knowledge that this space is almost exclusively their own, it is their longing for adventure and the unexpected, the non-organized, the non-regulated by adults (at least not by adults they know). As soon as this space is weighed down by rules, it will be rejected, especially if the young are barred from freely associating, creating their own mannerisms, their private circuits, their gangs. Maybe they themselves can subvert and change the rules of the game.
To believe this medium will bridge the generation gap is somewhat wistful, for, other than mutual aid between parents and children, there is little common ground on the internet, so far apart are the interests of the two age groups. On the other hand, the superficiality of knowledge, or even the denial of more profound knowledge that can be observed on most websites, including those of museums, relegate the pursuit of specialized knowledge to books and, in the future, CD-Roms and Net, after a first stage where knowledge about masterworks is divulged, something to which the public seems to be amenable.
As long as they remain de-territorialized, information networks will be fascinating to the young. They will be the tree-houses, the uncontrolled space of privacy allowing for emotional decentralization which may be beneficial—as quick, healthful incursions into the world of dream—or may cause permanent emotional dispersion, triggered by the assuming of ubiquitous personalities that exist in many spaces and places (“not-places”, as Marc Augé would term them). This assuming of oneself as an other scattered over many places will make time and space continuums seem not linear but circular, global. There is also the apparent downfall of middlemen, heralded by other media that could resort to live broadcasts, simulating the experiential; although if carefully examined it is no more than prosthetic.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
There is now somewhat insistent talk of emotional intelligence, and it is apparent in charismatic... more There is now somewhat insistent talk of emotional intelligence, and it is apparent in charismatic public figures appreciated by the majorities. To speak from the heart is no longer to wear your heart on your sleeve, but to use reason as filtered by emotion. So from politics to education, if we are to trigger the process that leads to intrinsical motivation we must know how to exploit both reason and the heart, connecting them subterraneously, if we are to conquer social and pedagogical autism, if we are to communicate effectively. This new mode of seeing and acting comprises nuances that change our understanding and performance when faced with realities that could be classified as true or false—but now, as we strive to dissolve classical antinomies, on the territory of reconciliation, they are false and true, as they work within the demesne of reason and heart, and bear a mind and a shape to seduce. This is only natural. Consider that nowadays we intend to reconcile everyone and everything as if we were all together already. We are not, but this should not keep us from seeking to constantly subvert difference, conquer asymmetry, nullify indifference. For that to come about we need to muster up our strength, thoroughly exert our partnerships, through reason and heart, and through seduction wherever necessary. Besides, this is an important manifestation of creativity, especially in education. I agree with Jacinto Prado Coelho’s statement that “there is no true education that is not poetic” or, there is no true education that is not
poietic, aesthetic, creative, in its multiple senses.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje.
The traditional deficit of isolation dies in this new environment, if one can explore local asset... more The traditional deficit of isolation dies in this new environment, if one can explore local assets intelligently." 101 Cyberspace will doubtless permit the emergence of new and unexpected perspectives on, and modes of being in, the world. These will relegate the issues I discussed in my last chapter to a new, different plane. No doubt issues related to classical anthropocentric and universalist perspective will no longer have a raison d'être, as the virtuality of the cultural and the educational will determine. To think and act locally and globally will become fully meaningful realities, totally amalgamated, and erudite culture will, little by little, mesh within general, ethno-anthropological culture. On the other hand, a cultural-educational minimum will naturally encompass all developed societies within the patterns of western civilization, where the forms of "autonomy and subjectivity" will gain greater and greater depth. The results will facilitate the consecration of democratic culture which, as we have seen, allows us to simultaneously be "…as universal and as specific as possible." 102 Autonomous educational, microcultural and artistic systems will nurture the promulgation of differences that consolidate unity-as happens in large families where there is a great deal of freedom triggering a strong sense of responsibility and the selfesteem of the members, heightening their singularity and creativity as a consequence. As an immense mosaic, human societies will verify that their quality increases in proportion to the cell's singularity, whether in content or outline. So the very nearly individualized subtlety of nuance will create awe before the rich global configuration, provided it is harmonious and admits of dynamic interaction of parts and whole, which should occur freely, without any obligation to submit to previous configurations decreed from above, setting as boundaries only a happy, homeostatic functioning of the whole. This is the most seductive aspect in information societies: the belief in a positive globalization, one that will allow us to conquer, as equals, geographic divides, educational and cultural asymmetries, ideological differences, social and economic ostracism. Being connected over a network, a complete information system, in Lyotard's words, where you can access all the knowledge available from computer terminals, will thus allow us to conquer all distances, all differences. Nowadays we can perceive this new space as a territory that can shut us out, ignore us, creating a population of invisibles, the homeless of cyberspace, the info-poor, the disconnected. This will inevitably drive a great many people to an inner Third World. Masses that are schooled and enter the labor market but are informationilliterate. Even those in the coming decades who are fortunate enough to have been exposed to information technologies at school but afterwards lack the means to be a part of an information-based culture, or just aren't motivated (let us assume that their professional, domestic, everyday lives steer them away from it), will soon feel outstripped by the constant surges of new informational performances.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje., 2006
The importance of educational and cultural decentralization and regionalization seems to spring f... more The importance of educational and cultural decentralization and regionalization seems to spring from our daily practice and theory. Indeed, in times of crisis, the other’s face does not seem to complete our image of ourselves, but to nullify itself, to fade into our own image. As a consequence, we hope globalization will not make us choose perverse forms, the darker side of the transnational, fed by ultraliberal, no-holds-barred capitalism, now that its human dimension seems irretrievably lost. How can we believe a hidden power, or have faith in the humanity of the faceless powers behind major world financial groups that have long given up on telling part from whole?
Alienation in the 80’s gave way to highly individualized modes of being in life and in the world in the 1990’s. That awe experienced before seductive materialistic sophistication fed by one economic boom after another seems to be gone. We now enter a period when individualism, in the guise of relatively enraptured “autonomy and subjectivity” , seeks to define new forms of re-foundation. Acting individually, acting collectively, yet without giving in to the ideological ecstasies of the 1960’s, seems to be the common denominator with the many generations that make up the general population. Despite acute social inequality resulting from the collapse of the welfare state, citizens all over the world seem keen on organizing themselves into interest groups. Upholding a common cause and common rights is therefore the basis of a regionalism that has less and less to do with restricted local interests. If one is striving for quality of life, or upholding ecological causes, one must remain aware that such strife leads to a certain vision, understanding and practice which overflow into the transregional and the transnational. That is the cement that often binds regions, social groups or even countries that have in common their exclusion from preponderant ruling bodies, economic lobbies, political or social forces.
Da compreensão da Arte ao Ensino da História da Arte, hoje., 2006
If we are ready to accept that the university, teaching in general, are part of a paradigm of cha... more If we are ready to accept that the university, teaching in general, are part of a
paradigm of change, where they are fundamental stepping stones in developing an economy of knowledge that will only grow if properly nourished and consolidated by a discourse and a practice of excellence; if we admit that in the recent past knowledge in the university was founded on traditional knowledge, which clings steadfast to the matrix of ancestral universal knowledge, totally dissociated from the specificities that
made up the societies and cultures they were growing in, we verify in the present that opening up to extreme innovation and flexibility is an essential precondition to survival.
To be on the watchout for change is key. How can we, then, avoid, on a postmodern university, a break with feudalism, nepotism, and traditional collegiate prejudice? Only a few decades ago the purpose of teaching was to form social, cultural, political and economic elites. Mass teaching has angled for the lowest common denominator. It may be time now to clearly single out those who, within the framework of institutions and systems of teaching, can re-construct and reinvent themselves permanently, and those (a growing number, they are) that appear to uphold humanity as a mere spectator of the inward and the outward, that wants nothing, yearns for nothing,
not even a chill down the spine…
I
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje., 2006
As far as I am concerned, this educational model would be flexible enough to dynamize and foster ... more As far as I am concerned, this educational model would be flexible enough to dynamize and foster educational synergies and partnerships that may be vulnerable and uncertain as is all that depends exclusively on human will and motivation, but would snowball in the context of a successful model, fitting in groups of all dimensions, categories and affiliations and even individual adhesion. In the end, we are talking about “interest groups” that have been motivated by concrete projects, although they may be variable in nature. Their phantasmal boundaries, and their flexibility, would allow them to adequately adjust to new situations and realities, even reactive ones that would imperil the model. It may be the model that best fits this day and age, as it allows and sanctions simultaneously individual and collective positions. That is probably the most important thing. It would definitely expose old, atavistic feudalisms.
Da compreensão da arte ao ensino da história da arte, hoje., 2006
It is not by chance that strong individualism sets in at times when doubt and uncertainty seem to... more It is not by chance that strong individualism sets in at times when doubt and
uncertainty seem to be more pervasive—the Reformation (sixteenth century) and post-Modernity (especially the 1980’s). It can become a seductive narcissism, either secretive or ostentatious, but as deeply disturbing as Mannerism and postmodernism in the arts. Yet modernity, all of it, as an epoch permeated by self-criticism, pushes human beings from one innovation to another, to such an extent that, as Vattimo discussed,
progress becomes routine and loses its élan, its justification. This epoch, let us not forget, is one of great doubt and uncertainty—whence Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, or the acceptance of indeterminacy in human/social sciences, associated with the perception that essentialism, through the understanding of the central place they assign the subjectivity and/or singularity of the historical subject and, as a consequence, assuring that the rise to awareness of historicity depends on them; and this historical period (from Romanticism to the 1990’s), a time when perpetually repressed
individualism is shadowed by the ubiquitous decisions of the collective, will blame itself for feeling overly responsible for the destiny of the latent social sphere.
Da Compreensão da Arte ao Ensino da História da Arte, Hoje., 2006
How can we teach, how educate, when knowledge is scattered and dissolved, conveyed to students a... more How can we teach, how educate, when knowledge is scattered and dissolved,
conveyed to students as fragment? Is it not possible that a knowledge dissociated
from life has lost the contextualization that lent it meaning and is now deprived of
intrinsical motivation?
What can we say of what we have done to ourselves by separating the
individual, the self, from the social framework, without which, as we have seen, we
have—because we thought ourselves saviors—imposed access to pseudo-free will, a
thing that is really not there, and have begun a life and a language of mourning and deprivation, because we have lost access to the other, and likewise to ourselves and our
own subjectivity.
This would be, then, a paradigm of complexity underlying complex,
transdisciplinary thought. It will lead teaching back to life, saving schools and teacher
and students from indifference, allowing education to finally avow itself as poietic,
aesthetic, i.e., with a calling to creation, to all forms of creation, with and of the senses,
with a sense.
I believe this to be the only way we can reconcile the economy of analytic paths
with the paths and lives of creation and fruition, as it amplifies the capability of
extensionality, of opening up to the other, to ourselves and all possibilities. Of course
this is not easy. It is not easy to accept that a good teacher is not the one who undertakes
reductive explanations and simplifications but that who creates (Lyotard’s42) opacities,
because he/she attempts broad contextualizations, by multiplying or showing how
fundamental it is to multiply meaning, even if it provokes temporary imbalance in the
class, suddenly faced with theorizations or problems that deeply question their
conception of knowledge, the knowledge they have painstakingly acquired and
consolidated.
Da Compreensão da Arte ao Ensino da História da Arte, Hoje, 2006
Fruition and intrinsical motivation- Interrelationships. The fruition of art. Intrinsical motiva... more Fruition and intrinsical motivation- Interrelationships. The fruition of art.
Intrinsical motivation as a success factor in teaching art history.
On the other hand, it is a plus that the social body recognizes his work, and that
may amplify intrinsical motivation. Although it is outside the individual, social
recognition informs thought, the gaze and the very discourse of the creator or any other
active subject’s, for that matter, and they will operate under such motivation. It does not
strike me as particularly surprising that, as Ivo Nunes would have it, intrinsically
motivated teachers feel a need for “…correct information of the effectiveness of the
efforts spent on the activity in terms of the students’ growth and progress" In my
opinion, social recognition for services rendered should not be seen as an extrinsic
reward even when, according to historical period and/or the cultural framework you are
operating in, there is an actual reward which is apparently extrinsic, under any form
imaginable (a salary raise, a promotion, etc.), and that reinforces the teachers social
status, allowing him or her to carry on their work under better conditions. As Vigotski
says, we need to find a specific construction of meanings to express thought. Such a
metacategory or model would be configured according to axiological coordinates that
the social body weaves according to the historical moment and its particular traits.
Poema Circular, 1998
Escrito a quatro mãos, um longo poema em que o amor, na sua natureza dúplice, é o tema. Pautados ... more Escrito a quatro mãos, um longo poema em que o amor, na sua natureza dúplice, é o tema.
Pautados por códigos de partilha e cumplicidade, regidos por uma retórica do segredo, no jogo duplo de ocultação/ desocultação, imagem e texto, esquecidos, em parte, da sua natureza primeira, assumem-se também como imagens gráficas, ícones, que veiculam ideias e realidades, em tudo, idênticas à sua. Visam, como em todos nós, o conhecimento, o reconhecimento, de si, do outro: de si no outro.
Texto e imagem, na superfície branca do livro ou luminosa do ecrã do computador, procuram-se, entrecruzam-se, surpreendem-se, amalgamam-se; anulam-se, encriptando-se, ou renascem, recriando-se, preservando ou revelando o segredo, a paixão; tentando, em simultâneo, dar origem a novas realidades plásticas, recuperando novos sentidos e conteúdos; esconjurando a morte pela assunção da sua própria indecidibilidade e descentramento. Não estivesse a paixão, como disse Rousseau, na origem das línguas.
A morte, essa presença constante no corpo do poema e no errático percurso da vida que, como cegos que somos, empenhadamente descrevemos, assume aqui, como o tempo, muitas formas. Realidades únicas que se podem viver de muitas maneiras, mas, curiosamente, uma única vez na vida. Ambos tutelados de perto pelo infinito e pelo eterno, com os quais se mantêm em luta.
Pretendeu-se, pois, que este fosse um poema aberto em múltiplos sentidos. Como “lugar” de natureza difusa, de diluição de fronteiras (ecrã plástico/ ecrã do computador), esta é uma realidade que se deixa atravessar, assumindo-se quase como espaço desterritorializado, de uma transtextualidade proporcionadora de múltiplos sentidos, percursos e vivências, próprios da errância, por vezes lúdica, que sempre se pode descrever na realidade inesgotável do hipertexto. Como “poema-puzzle”, cujo suporte “dinâmico” permitirá, sobretudo no computador, pela introdução sucessiva de layers, um constante recrear das pequenas porções caóides cuja ilusão permite, apenas por alguns momentos, aprisionar, o que, em qualquer dos suportes, deixa ao fruidor, tanto quanto possível, um percurso inteiramente livre (daí a ausência de numeração nas páginas do livro).
Em viagem, em trânsito, pelo corpo do poema, as descontinuidades, resultantes da fragmentação, as realidades encriptadas, as opacidades criadas, envolvem-nos numa irritação surda (sobretudo àqueles que não estão habituados à opção sempre frustrante, sempre violenta, de uma entre uma multiplicidade de escolhas, em que as deslocações na rede são férteis). Esta é a circularidade resultante da rememoração e da disseminação, do estilhaçar das nossas e outras memórias e vivências, pois, mesmo com a ajuda desse inesgotável e surpreendente palimpsesto que é o ecrã do computador, o “falar” “mais de uma língua” (1), como referiu Derrida, é para todos nós, ainda, sobretudo se em simultâneo, uma capacidade só sonhada.
Esta é, pois, a tentativa de estabelecer um percurso, sempre ensombrado pela ansiedade e a melancolia, em que se procura desconstruir e reencenar uma realidade, cujo recurso constante à censura e rasura são testemunhos do “luto das linguagens”, da incapacidade de se atingir ou revelar algo que, ou nos escapa, ou consciente e inconscientemente se silencia, e a que nostálgica e dolorosamente nunca ascendemos… É que a luz sucumbe à força de a tentarmos libertar das sombras e penumbras que, afinal, lhes modelam e consubstanciam o próprio corpo.
Idalina Sardinha
(1) (1) Derrida, Jacques – O outro cabo. Reitoria da Universidade de Coimbra (A Mar Arte), Coimbra, 1995, p. 21. Referência desenvolvida por Fernanda Bernardo no prefácio da obra.
A two-way street, a long poem where love and its dual nature provides the subject.
Bound by codes of sharing, governed by a rhetoric of secrecy, playing a two-faced game of hide-and-unveil, image and text let go their primal nature and become ideograms, icons, vehicles for ideas and reality. Knowledge is the aim; and recognition of oneself and the Other: Of you within the Other.
Word and Picture on the white plains of a book page, or in the glare of a computer screen, they seek each other out, intertwine, surprise each other, amalgamate the stuff they are made of; cancel each other out, encrypt themselves, or find themselves reborn, created anew, preserving or revealing secret and passion; trying at once to make way for a newness in plastic reality, to draw out new meaning and substance; warding off death through indeterminacy and decentralization. Not for nothing did Rousseau declare that passion lay at the root of all language.
Death, that constant presence in the body of a poem and the happenstance of life, which we describe with all the commitment of the blind, death appears in many guises, as time does. Such guises can be witnessed in so many different ways – but only once in a lifetime. Both of us watched closely by the infinite and the eternal, both of us struggling with them.
We wanted this to become an open poem in more ways than one. As a “place” with loosely-defined, dissolving boundaries (the canvas/ the computer screen), the deterritorialized poem steeps in the kind of transtextuality that yields multiple meanings, paths and experiences typical of an often playful wanderlust which can always be described through the inexhaustible reality of hypertext. As a puzzle-poem whose dynamic medium will permit, especially on a computer, through the accrual of layers, the constant recreation of small, chaoid portions the illusion of which lets you, if only for a few moments, to capture what allows the reader to follow her own, free path (and for that very reason book pages are left unnumbered).
On a journey, in transit across the poem's body, the discontinuity of fragmentation, the encrypted realities and the opacity thereof enshroud us in quiet aggravation (especially those of us not used to the ever frustrating, ever violent choice of one thing above all others in the multiplicity of choices that the web has to offer). This circularity stems from remembrance and dissemination, from the fracturing of memory, both our memory and that of others. Even with the help of that inexhaustible, surprising palimpsest, the computer screen, speaking more than one language (1), as Derrida would remind us, is for all of us – and doing it simultaneously, too, and still, a skill we can only dream of.
This is, therefore, an attempt at laying down path markers in the shadow of anxiety and melancholy. We seek the deconstruction and re-presentation of reality, whose constant resort to censorship and redaction signify the mourning of languages, the inability to attain, or reveal, something that eludes us, or otherwise, both consciously and unconsciously, becomes quiescent, which we, through pain and nostalgia, never ascend to… Light succumbs even as we seek to release it from shadows which, in the end, give it body and substance.
Idalina Sardinha
(1) Derrida, Jacques – O outro cabo. Reitoria da Universidade de Coimbra (A Mar Arte), Coimbra, 1995, p. 21.
Arte e Pedagogia , no contemporâneo e actual., 2006
Neste volume, procurámos estabelecer novos cenários pedagógicos e artísti- cos relativos ao est... more Neste volume, procurámos estabelecer novos cenários pedagógicos e artísti-
cos relativos ao estudo das artes surgidas ao longo das modernidade e
pós-modernidade artísticas, abordando problemáticas relativas ao ensino, às
artes actuais, sobretudo no âmbito da história da arte, enquanto realidades
inter-relacionadas, contextualizando-as de forma abrangente, isto é, inserin-
do-as em contextos estético-artísticos e pedagógicos alargados, fortemente
exemplificados com esquemas e sistematizações relativos aos diferentes con-
textos da história da arte, que, na maior parte dos casos, ainda não foram ob-
jecto de análise.
Na primeira parte deste estudo, “Cenários”, inteiramente votado, pois,
às questões pedagógicas e estético-artísticas mais actuais e prementes, verificá-
mos que, ao longo da segunda metade do século XX, as artes ditas visuais
transformaram-se gradual mas seguramente, face a cenários civilizacionais e
humanos (políticos, económicos, sociais, científicos e culturais) totalmente
inesperados e, por vezes, desconcertantes, que, reconhecemos agora, começa-
ram então a emergir, fazendo com que estas artes, desde essa altura, emitam si-
nais mais ou menos claros de profundas alterações e mudanças. Ainda que fos-
sem difíceis de detectar, de forma clara, nas primeiras décadas da segunda me-
tade do século XX, estas alterações, neste início do século XXI, levam-nos a in-
terrogar-nos seriamente acerca do que consideramos, hoje, como sendo as ati-
tudes pedagógicas mais adequadas à leccionação das disciplinas, que fazem
parte dos “curricula” do ensino artístico universitário e mesmo do ensino se-
cundário, que dá acesso aos diversos cursos da área das artes visuais, e que
abrangem quer as artes mais tradicionais, quer aquelas que têm já uma base
electrónica e informática, independentemente de características mais particu-
lares, que, enquanto denominação alargada, intimamente as relacionam com o
design e mesmo a arquitectura, sobretudo dos últimos 20 anos.
É tendo em conta estes cenários que surge clara a necessidade de estabe-
lecer um novo paradigma pedagógico e didáctico, que corresponda a novas
formas de estar no estudo do estético-artístico, necessariamente muito
1
particulares e específicas. E isto, não apenas tendo em conta as novas tecnolo-
gias, agora postas ao serviço da comunicação, do conhecimento e da criação,
mas também o facto de estarmos, já, desfrutando de formas artísticas que,
sendo verdadeiramente deslocalizadas, pura energia, remetem para “novas
formas de fruir” e criar, e que se caracterizam essencialmente por formas sub-
jectivas, indeterminadas, de estar na vida e no mundo. Deste novo paradigma
pedagógico emergente, no ensino e na aprendizagem da história da arte, des-
tacamos os princípios exemplificativos que melhor o caracterizam:
— Desenvolvimento, em consequência da globalização, de conhecimentos
articulados, estruturados em rede (o que nas áreas empresarial e infor-
mática é referido, de forma metafórica, como polinização cruzada), de
modo a obterem-se novos nós de conexão interáreas, interconhecimen-
tos e interproblemáticas (com ligações entre as análises relacionadas
com formas artísticas provenientes de culturas e civilizações referentes
a espaços geográficos e períodos históricos diversos — sincronia e
diacronia).
— Utilização do método regressivo. Isto é, ter sempre presentes, ao nível
de qualquer desenvolvimento, as coordenadas do mundo da vida, esta-
belecendo frequentes paralelos com problemáticas actuais, ligadas, de
preferência, às práticas vivenciais dos alunos.
— Ter sempre em conta que os desenvolvimentos didáctico-pedagógicos
não só se devem reportar frequentemente ao mundo da vida, como de-
vem tomar e devolver o aluno no e a esse mesmo mundo da vida, no iní-
cio e termo dos mesmos desenvolvimentos.
— Manter, ao nível das deslocações da errância, desenvolvidas pelas dife-
rentes coordenadas espaciais e temporais, o elo de ligação com o viven-
cial. Essa é a única referência que os alunos conhecem bem e a que se po-
dem ancorar.
— Estimulação do clima de motivação intrínseca, pela ênfase colocada
em relação à descoberta conjunta das pequenas/grandes inovações e
desempenhos.
— Valorização da criatividade surgida, desencadeada pelas e nas activida-
des de grupo. Criar frequentes espaços de “buzz group”, que permitam
rápidos exercícios de “brainstorming” e consequentes exercícios de sis-
tematização, análise crítica e exposição oral e mesmo escrita, para além
de privilegiarem, também, exercícios de “non sense”, isto é, de criativi-
dade e plasticidade conceptual.
Na Parte II deste volume, “A arte desde os anos 80", procurou-se introduzir,
igualmente, os docentes e os futuros docentes, quer das disciplinas de histó-
ria das artes, quer das disciplinas que se inter-relacionam, grosso modo, com
estas disciplinas, a um desenvolvimento, análise e caracterização detalhada e
2 ARTE E PEDAGOGIA
organizada das situações que melhor identificam as artes das últimas três dé-
cadas. Pareceu-nos ser esta a melhor forma de facilitarmos o acesso à apreen-
são destes conteúdos artísticos, pois, é evidente, nada poderá ser implemen-
tado neste domínio enquanto os docentes, e/ou os futuros docentes, não en-
contrarem o seu caminho e a sua visão sistematizada e aprofundada das artes
e das formas estético-artísticas das últimas décadas, sobretudo no que se refe-
re aos últimos 20 anos.
A fruição da arte, hoje., 2007
Ao longo de mais de 30 anos de docência, 25 dos quais a leccionar história da arte, foram-se-no... more Ao longo de mais de 30 anos de docência, 25 dos quais a leccionar história da
arte, foram-se-nos colocando, cada vez com maior acuidade, as seguintes
questões: será possível conhecer e ensinar a arte sem frui-la? Não será a fruição factor sine qua non de conhecimento do artístico? Por fruição entende-se, à partida, de uma forma muito simplificada, a partilha, pelo fruidor, das mesmas visões do mundo do criador. O fruidor poderá ou não aderir à obra ou projecto estético-artístico criado pelo artista ou operador estético; poderá gostar ou não da obra criada, reconhecer-lhe ou
não qualidade, mas para que, por sua vez, lhe seja reconhecida competência
enquanto fruidor, deverá ser capaz de proceder a uma leitura ao nível das estruturas profundas da obra, da pesquisa estética do artista, movimento ou escola artísticos e situá-los nos respectivos contextos, em sentido muito amplo, onde, naturalmente, essas criações e pesquisas tiveram a sua origem e desenvolvimento. Se o não conseguir e à obra e/ou ao projecto estético permanecer estranho enquadrar-se-á nesse grupo bem mais vasto que se limita a olhar as obras e intervenções estético-artísticas e apenas a apreciá-las — o público. Assim sendo, será possível a um aluno estudar e entender a arte ou a um professor ensinar história da arte ainda enquanto elementos integrados no
público? Não será que os fenómenos, os factos estético-artísticos possuem uma natureza tão própria que, ainda que olhados como e enquanto factos históricos, exigem estudos, formas e estratégias de contextualização (estético- -artísticas) muito próprias, específicas?
Que problemas, problematizações e problemáticas esta questão suscita no que se refere ao ensino da história da arte em particular? Estas questões colocavam-se já em relação ao conhecimento da arte tradicional ou surgiram apenas quando se pretendeu dar a conhecer, ensinar, a história das artes moderna e actual?