Notas sobre Simulacro

O canal de televisão franceÌ‚s FR3 lançou em 1993 um programa criado e realizado por AgneÌ€s Varda intitulado Une minute pour image (Um minuto por imagem). Como anunciava o tiÌtulo, tratava-se de um minuto de transmissão de uma imagem com um comentaÌrio em off. Os autores dos comentaÌrios provinham dos mais diversos horizontes, desde fotoÌgrafos ateÌ escritores como EugeÌ€ne Ionesco ou Marguerite Duras, passando por personalidades poliÌticas como Daniel Cohn-Bendit ou criÌticos de arte como Pierre Schneider, e tambeÌm de pessoas que poderiÌamos chamar de “gente do povo”, padeiros, motoristas de taÌxi, empregados de pizzaria, homens de negoÌcios

A escultura no campo ampliado

Originalmente publicado no número 8 de October, na primavera de 1979 (31-44), o texto, cujo título original é Sculpture in the Expanded Field, também apareceu em The AntiAesthetic: Essays on PostModern Culture, Washington: Bay Press, 1984. Por ser artigo de referência, mas de difícil acesso aos novos pesquisadores no Brasil, reeditamos aqui a tradução publicada no número 1 de Gávea, revista do Curso de Especialização em História da Arte e Arquitetura no Brasil, da PUC-Rio, em 1984 (87-93)

La lógica cultural del museo tardo-capitalista

In the light of the socio-political changes that occurred in the 1980s, especially the increasing of financial processes, this text discusses the participation of museums and cultural complexes – their intimate relationship with the then recent status of postmodern architecture, their opening to worldwide markets and the increasing specialization of its functions – in a renewed dynamic of commercialization processes, reception of art works and, above all, in the reconfiguration of the reach of aesthetic experience. Focusing on European and North American examples, the author argues about the then imminent link between the institutional appropriation of Minimalism's operations and the revisions of the disciplinary field of Art History to support the new "logic" verified in art's remarkable spaces.A la luz de los cambios sociopolíticos de los años 1980, en particular la escalada de los procesos de financiarización, este texto discute la participación de museos y complejos culturales – su íntima relación con el entonces reciente estatuto de la arquitectura postmoderna, su apertura a mercados mundiales y la creciente especialización de sus funciones – en la renovada dinámica de procesos de comercialización y recepción del arte y, principalmente, en la reconfiguración del alcance de la experiencia estética. Con ejemplos europeos y estadounidenses, la autora analiza el nexo entonces inminente entre la apropiación institucional de las operaciones del minimalismo y las revisiones de la historia del arte para fundamentar la nueva “lógica” verificada en los espacios consagrados del arte.À luz das modificações sociopolíticas ocorridas na década de 1980, mormente a escalada dos processos de financeirização, este texto discute a participação dos museus e complexos culturais – sua íntima relação com o então recente estatuto da arquitetura pós-moderna, sua abertura aos mercados mundiais e a crescente especialização de suas funções – em uma renovada dinâmica dos processos de comercialização e recepção dos trabalhos de arte e, sobretudo, na reconfiguração do alcance da experiência estética. Detendo-se em exemplos europeus e norte-americanos, a autora analisa o nexo iminente, àquela altura, entre a apropriação institucional das operações do minimalismo e as revisões do campo disciplinar da história da arte para fundamentar a nova "lógica" verificada em consagrados espaços dedicados à arte

Tra il foglio vuoto e lo schermo. Type e token alla prova dell’arte post-mediale

What kind of entities are works of art from an ontological point of view? This question has become canonical in the framework of analytic philosophy. One way of answering the puzzle seemed to be conclusive. It is the hypothesis that all, or the majority of artworks can be identified with types embedded into tokens. To begin with, I will survey how the type-token distinction transitioned from semiotics to ontology. Secondly, I will consider how some contemporary art forms contributed to questioning this approach to the ontology of artworks. Lastly, I will suggest how the nature of types and tokens should be reassessed in order to properly describe artworks in their historical and socially construed nature

'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009)

The Monument as Ruin: Natality, Spectrality, and the History of the Image in the Tirana Independence Monument

This article examines the Tirana Independence Monument, first inaugurated in November of 2012 on the hundredth anniversary of Albanian independence from the Ottoman Empire. The monument, designed by Visar Obrija and Kai Roman Kiklas, swiftly fell into disrepair until it was recently renovated in November of 2015. The article analyzes the monument’s function in terms of its doubled existence as a sign of perpetual natality (the possibility of the rebirth of national consciousness) and as a ruin with a spectral pseudo-presence (as an object that continually reminds us of the disjunctures that divorce the present from its historicity). It considers the way the monument’s inauguration relates to the politics of monumentality in contemporary Albania, and argues that the monument’s gradual ruination between 2012 and 2015 can be read as a particular manifestation of the history of the image in late capitalist society.Keywords: spectrality, natality, monumentality, Albania, Tirana, independence, national identity, grid, public sculptur

The flesh of painting: Caillebotte’s Modern Olympia

The language of putrefaction, often applied through a culinary analogy, appeared consistently in the critical reception of modern-life and Impressionist painting. For example, two critics used the term faisandé, referring to well-hung meat, to describe Manet’s nude figure of Olympia in 1865. The analogies that they posed between morgue bodies, female figures, meat, and fleshy paint material became central modes of denigrating Impressionist paintings of women in the ensuing decades. Gustave Caillebotte’s Veal in a Butcher’s Shop (c. 1882), depicting anthropomorphized, gendered, and sexualized animal flesh, can be considered in this context. In my reading, the painting enacts the critical responses to his colleagues’ figures, foregrounding the violent operations through which bodies might be reduced to meat, whether literal or metaphorical. In their comparisons to rotting flesh, nineteenth-century critics expressed a visceral reaction to works of art that Veal in a Butcher’s Shop demands