The Image of Soares Dos Reis’ Sculpture in Art History, Art Criticism and Literature: Epochs, Models and Representations (original) (raw)
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A hundred thirty years after his dramatic death, António Soares dos Reis (ASR) remains a huge challenge for art history understanding and art criticism interpretation, since he has been seen simultaneously as “a Greek, […] a realist, […] a classical, […] and a naturalist” (Arroyo, 1899: 78). His major sculpture – O Desterrado – being “an existential work” (França, 1966: 454) escapes from the classic orthodox aesthetic analysis, standing apart from the typical sculptural work of late 19th century. Our hypothesis is that ASR art works like a Rorschach test, for the narratives referred to it, instead of unveiling its character, reveal the concepts and beliefs upon which successive art studies have been produced. No visual images are displayed in this text, since the aim of our study is to detect the mental images associated to the insights and models that art historians and other authors traditionally used to assess ASR’s artistic work.
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.
The aim of this paper is to examine and define a new aesthetical paradigm, claimed by the speculative painting, following two different but connected artistic discourses: Las Meninas by Velazquez, and its 58 replicas of Pablo Picasso, the self-portrait being possible only as representation of the fictional author and its authorial Ego. The working hypothesis is that, by resort to this premise, the authorial representation of the painter performed through a self-portrait or the perennial relation between interior and exterior dimensions were created each time differently, using the insertion of a mirror representing a particular manner to give form to auto-reflexivity. Taking into account the elements and the conclusions of the current analysis, the present contribution aims to synthesize general characteristics of the mirror motive and the negative painting as meta-referential discourse. Las Meninas, both in Picasso’s and Velázquez’s representations, include exophoric and endophoric elements. I shall argue that this two types of elements generate two registers of visibilities, remarked as “visible” and “invisible” levels, in Foucault’s terms, the problem of Self’s representation being, in fact, originally constructed as the genuine difference between seen and unseen forms of pure representation. Inspired by Velázquez, Las Meninas, performed by Piccasso, created a new artistic discourse, in which the problem of the pure representation is abolished, the construct being replaced by the couple “self-reflective”-“self-reflexive” representations. “Portraying the Unrepresentable” is nothing else than creating an aesthetical dimension where visible and invisible contents can coexist and generate a fluent and consistent materiality for the pure representation’s Subject, testing on what conditions the terms of the critique change if “visible” is understood as “presence”, while any “invisible” – or at least speculated element as “invisible”- is recognized as “absence”.
This paper aims to rethink 19th century Portuguese sculpture’s stylistic categories from the analysis of the work of António Teixeira Lopes, who is considered the major representative of naturalism in this country. First, the concept of naturalism in Portuguese art history is examined, with a critical characterization of its separation from romanticism (contrasting with mainstream literature) and demonstrating that its emergence from painting research and its adoption in sculpture is inoperative when observing a concrete art work. Secondly, with the Portuguese art reality as a backdrop, Teixeira Lopes’ academic and professional life is contextualised. Finally, based on the analysis of the sculptor’s work and the knowledge of his methods and views on art, the labelling of Lopes as a naturalist is questioned and the necessity for a less compartmentalized understanding of 19th century art is stressed.
This paper aims to explore the ways in which standard art history terminology shapes the practice of art history by conditioning the interpretation of specific works of art and, in certain cases, the definition of a research subject (especially where questions of genre and periodization are concerned). Taking as a case study a painting by Georges de La Tour, the Peasant Couple Eating, I will argue that terms such as realism, realistic, naturalistic etc. used for its description and/or interpretation, far from constituting objective stylistic characterizations, shape our perception of the work in question. Bringing the question of social class to the center of the discourse on realism, I propose to show how the social divide between the painter and his subject matter (in this case, the peasants) is internalized in the painting’s style and meaning, and how it is fundamental for the understanding of its intentionality and function.
Ars Longa. Cuadernos de arte, 2018
This paper aims to rethink 19th century Portuguese sculpture’s stylistic categories from the analysis of the work of António Teixeira Lopes, who is considered the major representative of naturalism in this country. First, the concept of naturalism in Portuguese art history is examined, with a critical characterization of its separation from romanticism (contrasting with mainstream literature) and demonstrating that its emergence from painting research and its adoption in sculpture is inoperative when observing a concrete art work. Secondly, with the Portuguese art reality as a backdrop, Teixeira Lopes’ academic and professional life is contextualised. Finally, based on the analysis of the sculptor’s work and the knowledge of his methods and views on art, the labelling of Lopes as a naturalist is questioned and the necessity for a less compartmentalized understanding of 19th century art is stressed.
Anamorphosis-A Principle of Axiology? Reflections on the Interpretation of the Artwork
2017
The paper provides an analysis of ways to measure and value the contemporary artworks. In this regard, the paper proposes a dual perspective approach, namely: reporting of some criteria against which may be assessed a work of art, on the one hand and, on the other side, recognizing the importance of a complex hermeneutical approach that has in the valorization. The context is of the evolution forms of expression, techniques, and artistic means, determined mostly by the evolving technology, which led to breaking the traditional specific boundaries of art and to the development of an artistic syncretism. Thus, the artistic object becomes as difficult to define as it is difficult to assess and artwork can be seen as a symbol or a system of signs that serves an aesthetic purpose. The interpretation involves the establishment of a syncretic stylistics and the evaluation becomes a semiosis.
DE LA SOTA. THINKING ARCHITECTURE, DRAWING THE THOUGHTS
EGA - REVISTA DE EXPRESIÓN GRÁFICA ARQUITECTÓNICA, 2019
ENGLISH Alejandro de la Sota (1913-1996) was one of the most outstanding architects in the xx century Spanish architecture. With the years, he became an iconic architect, with a constant experimentation and independence, without following fashions and new tendences. A series of general considerations are proposed hereby, supported by representative drawings, analysing how his personal approaches on architecture, drawings and life were coherent with the graphic evolution of his drawings. In spite of the fact that his drawings represent only a functional means to develop his projects, to be able to communicate his thoughts without any ´artistic´ pretension. His drawings, in its progressive and attractive simplification, as in architecture, ended up transmitting unmistakable features of his personality, from an initial prose to graphic poetry. ESPAÑOL El arquitecto gallego Alejandro de la Sota (1913-1996) fue uno de los más significativos de la arquitectura española del siglo xx. Con el paso del tiempo se convirtió en un arquitecto “de culto”, entendiendo esto como el reconocimiento unánime a su independencia y experimentación constantes, sin seguir modas ni corrientes mayoritarias. Se proponen aquí una serie de consideraciones generales sobre su obra, apoyadas en dibujos representativos, analizando cómo sus planteamientos personales sobre arquitectura, dibujo y vida fueron coherentes con la evolución gráfica de sus dibujos. A pesar de que para Sota, éstos no son mucho más que una herramienta para desarrollar el proyecto, para comunicar su pensamiento sin pretensiones “artísticas”, sus dibujos, en su progresiva y atractiva simplificación, terminaron por transmitir, como su arquitectura, rasgos inconfundibles de su identidad, derivando desde una prosa inicial a la poesía gráfica.