The End of Modernism and the Reflection of Human Condition in Figurative Sculpture (original) (raw)

From the artistic symbol to the symptom of art.

2006

The aim of the abstract is to debate whether the categories of symbol and symptom imply different determinations when it comes to art. We shall also look into clarifying the difference between the perception of the artistic symbol (through artistic images) and the work of art that manifests itself visually through the symptom and try to reach a conclusion, based on these two perspectives, about the characteristics of the art terrain, within the triangular framework author-work of art-spectator Viewing the symbol from its Greek derivation (symbolon) and the renascence, as a means of interpretation associated to the artistic (as one of the parts of the division, the symbol maintains the receptor out of the work of art) and the symptom as a reference to the work of art – art as a manifestation of the symptom emphasises the process bringing the receptor into the work of art. Can we consider the artistic as a domain of the images (symbolic) and the art as a domain of the objects (symptom)? The symbol as a’ divine’ entity that implies the pure form, the symbol interpreted in light of its linguistic Greek origin as one of the parts of the split object, stimulating interpretation, the symbol as an autonomy identity whose result is simulacrum [Volli in Melotti, p.73-87], or the symbol as an operative moment [Boidi in Melotti, p.102], it will always implicate an entity in the artistic image, whereas in the work of art remains the implication of the symptom that manifests the action that gives rise to art itself? At its limit the images of art become hyperbolic « symbolising» the symptom. Renouncing to the possibility of being simulacrum or phantasmagoria, they symbolise each thing and their contrary, introducing the “presence in the representation” [Didi-Huberman, 1990, p195]. Within this limit the images do not satisfy or symbolise , as objects of desire, but as a need to liberate which edges the non-representation of the manifestation of the symptom of art, and in this aspect the symbol is integrated by the symptom. Let us taking into consideration the triad figure IRS, real-imaginary-symbolic [Žižek, 2004, p98]. Symbolic real imaginary Imaginary Real symbolic Nucleus of the non-representation From the vertices of the triangle, real-imaginary-symbolic we can establish an infinite network as the constellation space of movement of the individual, thus forming successive triangles (infinitively) that personify in themselves the different territories of what is real, symbolic or imaginary. Each of these territories is subject to the domain of the different images. These domains, however, are not fixed; on the contrary they exist as if limited by porous membrane. The nucleus of this corresponds to the non-representation, banning the image. In this nucleus the existence of images would prove to be self-destructive. The images of art manifest themselves as symptoms of the work of art itself, as loose ends of the system of art; the are presented by the gaps- in the aesthetic domain, where the symbolic manifests itself as being insufficient. In this abstract we intended to demonstrate that the objects of art distance themselves from the artistic images via the symptom as an inclusive possibility of a demonstration of art. The objects of art renouncing the external symbolic interpretation include the viewer as a constituent of the work of art, placing emphasis the procedural unity. As a limit the symbol becomes part of the symptom in art, becoming the referent that recuperates the gaps of the artistic past2. By emphasising the process, the object of art (the symptom) reveals itself as the designator of the unity and thus contradicting the artistic images that represent symbolically what is still disassociated. Nevertheless, the objects of art which are still subject to the domain of representation3 can only gain a unity that is revealed in its disconnection from desire, thus allowing the artistic image to be interpreted in the object of art. In the full text version there will examples taken from the history of art to illustrate these arguments.

"Female, grief and Romanticism: a reflexive art history approach to a widow sculpture", Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 31(2), 2019, p. 277-291. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/ARIS.59105

Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 2019

This paper aims to reflexively tackle a specific artwork: The Widow, the most renowned, yet under-studied, sculpture of António Teixeira Lopes, a prominent artist of the Portuguese nineteenth century. Therefore, the analysis of this piece, based on several inquiring procedures believed useful to all art historians, is converted into an epistemological exercise. Firstly, the Romantic sensibility is characterised, alongside the ponderment of the widow's representational allure. Women and death's perception in the nineteenth century is thus brought into question. Moreover, the social condition of widows and their identity codification is considered so that the relationship between reality and representation is critically appraised. Secondly, the focus shifts to the sculptor himself and his creative process. At the time living in Paris, his potential connections with death experiences, his professional goals and the pressure of the artistic environment contribute to explain Teixeira Lopes' selection of this subject. Finally, the sculpture itself is thoroughly examined, questioning every formal choice and its meaning, searching for secular and contemporary visual stimuli which could have deliberately or unconsciously interacted within the creative process. To conclude, the need to approach an artwork simultaneously as unique and as a historical object in its turn chronologically transversal is stressed. [es] Este artículo analiza pormenorizadamente la pieza escultórica La Viuda de António Teixeira Lopes, que, aunque es una de las más famosas de este autor ha sido, a su vez y de manera sorprendente, una de las menos estudiadas hasta la fecha. Así, hay que señalar que en este texto no sólo se ofrece un estudio analítico de la citada pieza, sino que se presenta también con una visión epistemológica de la historia del arte. La Viuda se caracteriza por su sensibilidad romántica por la elección del tema, del que destaca la consideración de la condición social de las viudas y la codificación de su identidad, pero, al mismo tiempo y de manera crítica, se evalúa la relación entre arte y realidad. Así, se justifica que esta obra, que fue concebida en París, tenga un significado especial en relación a los episodios biográficos del autor y su relación con la muerte, así como sus inquietudes profesionales y circunstanciales del entorno artístico que explican la selección del tema. Para completar este análisis, en este artículo la escultura es examinada a fondo, cuestionándose las autoras el significado de cada opción formal, buscando estímulos visuales que pueden haber actuado deliberada o inconscientemente en el proceso creativo. Para concluir, se enfatiza la necesidad de abordar una obra de arte como única y, simultáneamente, como un objeto histórico cronológicamente transversal.

Estetización de la muerte en las prácticas artísticas contemporáneas

Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 2016

Starting from the famous and enigmatic quotation of the Aristotle's Poetics, who argues that the human has a natural desire and pleasure to see corpses if mediated by art, is intended to show the relationship between the attraction for the horror and some contemporary art practices surrounding the depiction of death, particularly with regard to the ultimate use of the human corpse as an artistic resource. Avoiding any kind of ethical approach or questioning of the limits of the artistic production, is meant to highlight the phenomenon through the examples brought out by the work of some contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Eric Fischl, Damien Hirst, Von Hagens, Andres Serrano, Joel-Peter Witkin and Teresa Margolles: From those who use the corpse in and turn it in something aesthetically pleasant, to others who turn human corpses in sculptures of scientific value, and further other kind of artists who assume the morbid and dramatic life of the corpse in their art production as something structural.

CONTEMPORARY ART AND REALITY OF SUBJECTS: TURNING FROM SIMULACRA TO ACTUAL BEINGS

Contemporary art is aesthetically very attentive to subjects of different nature. We can watch this aesthetic attention both in following the ways of traditional genres and in discovering some new ways to express human meanings of things. Since times when ready-made objects were fully institutionalized as creations of art traditional and newly discovered modes of creativity in relation to things were set as equal within the artworld. Painting and graphics are dealing with different surfaces creating their new visual qualities with lines and colours, sculpture is doing the same with volume, ready-mades and installations are doing the same changing regimes of human contacts with classes of artifacts. When mixed and combined in the whole of contemporary art as aesthetic experience this relation to subjects turns reflection on subiectum esse, the only reality of actual existence possible to be ruled by a human subject. Subjective reality of artifacts turns the analogue of subjective reality of a human being that contemplates subjective mode of existence in its ontological qualities compared with mentally revealed concepts and signs dealing with being itself, esse tantum. This presentation is dedicated to limits ad unlimitedness of possible meanings of subjects in contemporary art.

On the crisis of modernity. A reading from the perspective of art

Pensamiento, 2017

In this article I propose a reflection on art as an expression of the redefinition of modern culture. Art, in effect, expresses the lines that define the world, but at the same time produces a dif- ferent form of truth. That is why a discourse on art cannot ignore an analysis of the world in which it originates and that somehow it tries to express. In this direction, three readings of the question of mo- dernity are considered: the Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, Barbarism by Henry, and The End of Modernity by Vattimo. In the second part, the discourse focuses on the manifestation of the crisis in art, trying to offer other meanings, from different philosophical approaches, to the transition from modernity to postmodernity.

ICONIC_CATHEGORISATION_IN_ART_SEMIOTICS_TLGOBBETT_2016-17[tlg].docx

The idea of memory from the XV Flaming history of music deals with the overlapping continua, denigrated note to become a full experiment of spiritual listening in practice: what a truth action is. The conversion point of Moebius. From the text ‘Human’ of Cartesio published posthumously, to the environment for a philosophical thought of Croce in some aesthetic crisis (Anceschi) the idea of ‘tempo’ has taken in advance question of field, plan, homological issues to establish a scientific cognition of facts, deeds, thoughts. The discovery that the drawing master of Cézanne thought his elementary method of analysis (Cavina), brought in light the opportunity of disguise on mannerism more freely in the research of a fourth syllogistic call for arts, than before to let be possible the learning from the early masterpiece the Euclidian illusions of the touching corners of a triangle in Lisippo, its closure in a cube of the self of a surrender pugilist as well as the circular overspreading motion of desperation of the Lacoonte. Therefore, to reconstruct and develop some observation of the method of relief of the perspective of Poncelet, left overtly a possible explanation of the right of the fugue: the real setting. A purpose with a pragmatic issue, to seizure and code, which recalls Renaissance: the rediscovery of the Plato’s cave, as a good since Piero della Francesca. In a few years, some cases showed their contradiction and misfortune: the ‘difformity’ of Rothko, of David, and the ‘paganism’ of classics as Michelangelo. The disappearance of Raffaello, Leone X and Leonardo and the visual rhetoric of Tiziano as anticipation, or late, post figurative issue? The state of art semiotics though shaped in the continuous of the Academy of Arts, may need to inform cases of a natural light of recognition of the Second Wars, drag into revenge, solitude, the artists gathered in ruptures with the process for its ideological foundations seemed clear to all, from Pablo Picasso to Pierre Soulages, Emilio Vedova. Keywords Cartesian structures - Croce builds - Barilli’s generations Husserl’s scheme - The point of view deal as in Fontanille; Clock – unlock theory: Poncelet summary of perspective and fugue; Mark Rothko abstractions - Studies: Thurlemann - DaSilva reactions/abstraction as relief in composition – disposition – proportion, the reasons and the energy of the masterpiece (William Blake)

Une Exploration de l'essence de l'art à la lumière de la situation contemporaine de l'art

2019

This thesis seeks to answer a basic question of the philosophy of art: What is art? After examining the answers provided to this question by several art theories, it proposes that the definition of art offered by Arthur Danto is the one that most conforms to the reality of art, although it suffers from certain imperfections and insufficiencies. On the basis of this critical conclusion and through a careful analysis of what is categorized as art in the present time, it attempts to modify Danto’s definition and to transfigure it into a new one, capable of better conforming to the reality of art. It firstly introduces the contemporary situation of art and the existing art theories which didn’t successfully do sufficient justice to the totality of what is considered as artistic. Through a critical examination of these theories, it tries to show that the sufficient and necessary conditions for being art that they propose are either not sufficient or not necessary. It then tries to clear ...