A atividade do crítico de arte Mário Pedrosa (1900, 1981), talvez o maior responsável pela renovação da arte Brasileira no século XX, fez da arte autônoma a divisa de artistas, críticos e instituições no Brasil, superando o localismo ressentido e sua narração figurativa das misérias nacionais, numa síntese crítica entre o influxo externo e a experiência local. Na década de 1950, dedicou-se à crítica de arquitetura e compreendeu a arquitetura moderna brasileira, de Lúcio Costa e Niemeyer, como imbuída de espírito utópico, séria e bem preparada para uma modernização do país com integração social. Contudo, a dependência dessa arquitetura para com um Estado modernizador autoritário teria resultado num desenvolvimento desproporcional da dimensão estética voltada a propósitos de exibição de poder dos ditadores. Sua teoria da arte, teoria da \"forma primeira fisionômica\", baseava-se na psicologia da forma e na psicologia genética. A forma primeira fisionômica seria o fundo universal de todas as formas de conhecimento, espontânea e já afetivamente orientada, bem como estrutura comum à arte ocidental e às artes primitivas. A arte moderna abstrata teria como papel tornar reconhecida essa matriz universal e abrir o passo ao retorno à espontaneidade criativa e à sociabilidade da proximidade e do afeto, algo que a dominação técnica da natureza tornara possível, bastando que se abandonassem preconceitos. Esta concepção procedia também da utopia estética da síntese das artes, criada pelo compositor Richard Wagner no séc. XIX, a qual considerava artificial a separação entre a necessidade material e a necessidade do espírito. A necessidade seria mesmo o motor de toda a atividade criativa e produtiva humana, que recaíra no egoísmo e no conflito por insuficiente dominação da natureza. Caberia ao mundo moderno, da indústria e da técnica, realizar o retorno à comunidade e à unidade originárias, para o que a arquitetura seria a arte a harmonizar todas as outras artes numa formalização total do ambiente. Contudo, em meados dos anos de 1950 o projeto pedrosiano fraquejava sob o impacto das correntes artísticas informalistas e expressionistas abstratas, as quais demonstravam ou pessimismo ou interesse filisteu em vez de fé na emancipação universal franqueada pela dominação técnica da natureza. O crítico promoveu, então, a arquitetura moderna brasileira por sua fé nas \"virtualidades democráticas da produção em massa\" e a construção de Brasília como a finalidade coletiva que canalizaria a estética à construção redentora da autonomia nacional e exemplo para o mundo. Seu ideal de síntese levou-o a uma paradoxal formulação da arquitetura - arte abstrata autônoma, cuja apreciação, porém, condicionava à consecução de finalidades sociais. Sua crítica de arte da arquitetura foi tímida e terminou abandonada quando a Brasília dos políticos e das empreiteiras derrotou a utopia. Concluímos, então, que a autonomia das finalidades humanas significa que estas não se reduzem a uma origem comum, a necessidade. A arte autônoma como meio para a utopia significa que esta se volta contra a arte e a arquitetura autônomas, e encobre seu impasse final trocando a felicidade para todos pela menor dor para o maior número. / The art critic Mário Pedrosa (1900, 1981), perhaps the most important activist for the renewal of Brazilian art in the 20th century, accomplished to make autonomous art the goal for artists, critics and institutions alike. In so doing provincianistic resentment that prescribed figural narrative of national plight was overturned by a critical symbiosis between international influx and local experience. In the 1950s Pedrosa devoted also to architectural criticism and acknowledged modern Brazilian architecture as essentially utopian and committed to modernizing the country on an egalitarian bases. However its dependence upon a modernizing yet authoritarian State would have resulted in an overblown aesthetic dimension geared up to purposes of power exhibition on the part of dictators. Pedrosa\'s art theory, that of physiognomic primal form, which he grounded on gestalt and genetic psychology, maintained that it was of itself spontaneous and affectively oriented, and being the universal ground of all forms of knowledge it purported to be also the common structure underlying both western and primitive art. Modern abstract art\'s role was to reveal to the world this universal ground and pave the way to the return to spontaneous creativity and to forms of sociability grounded on affection and proximity, all granted by the technical mastery of nature if mankind only were to shed its prejudices. This conception stems also from the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk idealized by composer Richard Wagner by mid 19th century. According to the latter the splitting apart of material and spiritual necessity was artificial. Necessity was thought to be the pushing force behind all creative and productive human activity, but which had ever since relapsed on egotism and strife due to insufficient mastery of nature. The task of modern industrial world should be to deliver the world back to communitarian structure and to the primal unity, to the fulfillment of which architecture should be the art form to strike harmony out of all others put together into the design of an environmental totality. However, by mid 1950s Pedrosa\'s project was pretty shaken up by the rise of both informal and abstract expressionist tendencies which displayed either pessimism or philistine concerns instead of unrelenting faith in universal emancipation granted by technical mastery of nature. The critic them moved on to support modern Brazilian architecture on grounds of its unshakable \"faith in the democratic virtues of mass production \"and also the construction of Brasília as the ultimate collective finality able to tap the aesthetic to the redemptive construction of national autonomy. His ideal of synthesis however led him to a paradoxical understanding of architecture as autonomous art whose appreciation requires the previous fulfillment of social goals. His architectural criticism was too niggard and quitted architecture altogether as soon as Brasilia led by politicians and contractors defeated that of utopia. Our final conclusion is to the effect that the autonomy of human ends preclude their stemming from a common source, that is to say necessity. Autonomous art and architecture as a means to the fulfillment of utopia means that the latter turns against autonomy itself to cover up for its ultimate standoff by exchanging the happiness of all for the mildest pain for most.

Afirmamos na presente tese a coerência e relevância de se utilizar a estética kantiana na crítica da dita arte moderna e contemporânea. Nos capítulos seguintes, mediante as críticas de Greenberg, De Duve, Lyotard e Mario Costa, evidenciamos a utilidade dos juízos de gosto e do sublime de Kant para se pensar a fruição de certas obras. Alteram-se alguns aspectos dos conceitos kantianos para uma melhor adaptação dos mesmos às obras e à cultura do século XX. De todo modo, nos exemplos observados na tese fica evidente a contribuição de Kant para se pensar a fruição da arte moderna e contemporânea, na medida em que o juízo de reflexão mobiliza as nossas faculdades cognitivas na determinação do comprazimento e do conhecimento geral a partir das obras de arte observadas. / We affirm in this thesis the coherence and relevance of using Kantian aesthetics in the critique of said modern and contemporary art. In the following chapters, we have evidenced the utility of the Kant´s judgments of taste and the sublime through the criticisms of Greenberg, De Duve, Lyotard and Mario Costa, to consider the fruition of certain works. It has been verified during the research, that changes in some aspects of Kantian concepts have been made in order to better adapt them to the works and twentieth century culture. In any case, by the examples observed in the thesis, Kants contribution is evident in considering the fruition of modern and contemporary art that the judgment of reflection mobilizes our cognitive faculties both when determining enjoyment as well as general knowledge from works of art.

Comoumsótrabalho - sobre os projetos de escala geográfica de Nelson Felix investiga um conjunto específico de obras do artista, precisamente aquelas cuja construção envolve deslocamentos geográficos extremos, uma experiência dilatada de temporalidade e a premissa do entrelaçamento contínuo entre os trabalhos. Marcada pelo rigor construtivo e por uma série de determinações simbólicas, a produção de Felix recorre a formas orgânicas, a ciclos planetários, à música, à poesia escrita, em um jogo de equivalências e rebatimentos que se manifesta em uma forma constelar, simultaneamente atenta e insubordinada aos paradigmas estéticos contemporâneos. Assim, partindo de reflexões que problematizam a relação ambivalente da obra de Nelson Felix com a tradição da escultura a pesquisa encontra, nos processos de construção dos projetos do artista, os conceitos que irão nortear a discussão em pauta. Essas reflexões se atêm, basicamente, à contiguidade entre os trabalhos, à temporalidade supra-humana a que são submetidos e à monumental invisibilidade da obra. / Comoumsótrabalho (Asasinglejob) - about the geographic scale works of Nelson Felix - investigates a specific set of works by the artist, precisely those whose construction involves extreme geographic dislocation, a dilated temporal experience and the premise of continuous interconnection between all of the artist\'s works. Marked by the constructive rigor and by a series of symbolic determinations, Felix\'s production turns to organic forms, planetary cycles, music and written poetry, in a game of equivalences and reverberation that presents itself in a stellar way, simultaneously aware of and unsubordinated to the contemporary aesthetic paradigms. Thus, starting from reflections that problematize the ambivalent relations between the work of Nelson Felix and the tradition of sculpture, the research finds, in the processes of construction of projects by the artist, the concepts that will guide this discussion. These reflexes basically rely on continuation of works, on the super-human temporality to which they are submitted and on the monumental invisibility of the work.

O presente trabalho visa estabelecer um exercício de perspectiva entre arte e loucura. Atentando para aquilo que é outro, heterogêneo, estrangeiro, constrói- se o terreno para perguntar o que pode a loucura dizer e revelar sobre a arte e a história da arte, e o que pode a arte dizer sobre a loucura. Paralelamente, pergunta-se pelo potencial da antropologia em relação a ambas: como a etnografia e a atitude antropológica podem se construir como paradigma para a teoria e a crítica de arte? A partir da imersão etnográfica em um contexto de reclusão onde arte e loucura se encontram - a oficina de criatividade de um hospital psiquiátrico -, pergunta-se o que podem a antropologia e a etnografia diante da loucura, suas obras e processos. Discute-se, então, uma “virada etnográfica” na arte contemporânea e uma “virada antropológica” ou “etnográfica”, ainda por realizar, na crítica de arte, situando-a enquanto experiência vivida, imersão e criação. Como transformar essas experiências em paradigma para pensar não só as artes dos outros, mas outras artes, outras possibilidades e modos de ser da arte? A partir de visões de diferentes formas pelas quais a busca e o contato com a alteridade se fizeram nas artes visuais, chega-se a indagar pela arte dos loucos. Nesse percurso são mobilizados diferentes referenciais como o Surrealismo, Jean Dubuffet, Arnulf Rainer, Bispo do Rosário, Michel Foucault, entre outros. Nesse exercício, não se perdeu de vista a dimensão política da exclusão dos atores sociais tidos como loucos. A escrita foi vista enquanto tarefa ética frente à memória do sofrimento dos excluídos. A todo o instante, é retomado o questionamento sobre como seguir a linha que liga arte e loucura, sem confirmar compromissos policiais e asilares com as instituições intoleráveis e repressivas de nossa cultura. / This thesis intends to undertake an exercise of perspective between the fields of art and madness. Focusing on what is heterogeneous, stranger, other respect to ourselves and our culture, it puts forward the question about what can madness reveal about art and the history of art, and what can art tell us about madness. This thesis also asks about the potential of anthropology on relating to both art and madness: how can ethnography and an anthropological attitude constitute themselves as a paradigm to art criticism and to the theory of art? Departing from the ethnographic immersion into a universe of reclusion where art and madness meet – the creativity workshop of a psychiatric hospital -, this dissertation investigates the potentialities of anthropology and ethnography in face of madness, its works and processes. An “ethnographic turn” in contemporary art is, then, discussed, as well as an “ethnographic turn”, yet to accomplish, in art criticism, figuring it as intensive experience, immersion and process of creation. How to transform these experiences into a paradigm not just to think the arts of the others (“outsider arts”), but also to think other kinds of art, different possibilities and alternative concepts of art? Departing from several different ways by which the quest and the contact with alterity and otherness were made in the visual arts, the thesis approaches the art of the insane. Along this path, different artistic and philosophical references are mobilized such as Surrealism, Jean Dubuffet, Arnulf Rainer, Bispo do Rosário, Michel Foucault, among others. In this exercise, the political aspects regarding the process of exclusion of social actors categorized as mad are never out of sight. The act of writing was assumed as an ethical task before the necessity of remembering the suffering inflicted to the mad by society. The text constantly reiterates the questioning about how to follow the path that connects art and madness without confirming compromises with intolerable and repressive institutions of our culture.

Master of Philosophy / This thesis investigates the work of Morris Louis (1912-1962) in relation to ‘opticality’, a theory developed by the prominent American art critic Clement Greenberg. Between the late 1930s and 1950s, Greenberg developed a comprehensive argument concerning the opticality, or the optical illusion, of abstract painting. This theory influenced common approaches towards Abstract Expressionist painting during the 1940s and 1950s, culminating in Greenberg’s writing on ‘Colourfield’ painting in major texts of the 1960s such as ‘Louis and Noland’ (1960). Through research into the development of Morris Louis’ technique, including several of his major series as well as lesser known works, this thesis argues that our understanding of Louis’ work has been constricted by a narrow perception of the opticality of his 'stain' paintings, and explores Louis' technique in light of alternative interpretations of his work.

<p>This study critically reviews four works of the artist Joanna Rytel with the intention to find out if and how she is provocative. In order to do that I have studied the reactions on these works, mainly through press material, which differs from letters to the editors and comments posted on discussion forums that's also been used. My conclusion is that Rytel provokes not just because of her choice of subject, but because of her concept of 'art' doesn't agree with the general public's, i.e. 'art' is supposed to be something merely beautiful. The journalists sometimes seems provoked by Rytel's ability to draw attention and have claimed that to be her main aim.</p>

<p><bold>This dissertation deals with Cuban art criticism and other written texts related to Abstract Art. From a critical perspective that relates art to society and political and institutional practices, all of the above texts are interpreted as bearers of aesthetic ideologies, which are expressed in the paradigms from which Art Criticism attempted to validate Abstraction. This study further demonstrates that the dominant discourses in the realm of Art Criticism are strongly related to Ideological State Apparatuses. Art Criticism not only mediates between the artwork and the spectator, but also between artistic acts of provocation and the establishment.</p><p> Abstraction in Cuba constituted an important axis in the polemic between autonomous art and socially committed art, but the debates themselves were subsumed in ideological and even political battlefields. Art Criticism oriented these debates, by emphasizing certain problems, and diminishing the importance of other ones. </p><p>This dissertation is organized in function of the dominant questions that Cuban Art Criticism addressed. The first chapter accordingly deals with definitions of abstract art that were prevalent in art writing and publications from 1948 to 1957, a period in which Art Criticism is mostly concerned with the autonomy of art. The second chapter follows the debates about the social commitment of abstract art, which became predominant during the first years of a Marxist-oriented Revolution. This polemic is implicit in the emergence of an Anti-Academic movement in the visual arts, and it began to lose its strength once the Cuban Avant-Garde started to gain institutional recognition. After being relegated to a peripheral position, the question concerning the social commitment of Abstract Art became crucial after the triumph of the Revolution. The final chapter deals with the relations between Abstract Art and the diverse documents that embodied and defined the Cultural Policy during the Cuban Revolution. </p><p>Throughout, this study strives to establish the place of Abstract Art in the Institutional, and discursive practices from 1959 onwards. This place is defined by its instability, as it is constituted through intermittencies and steps backwards on the path towards the institutional consecration of non-figurative tendencies. </bold></p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 323-346).

Pour Boltanski et Chiapello (1999), la critique artiste a été récupérée par le capitalisme. La motivation repose aujourd’hui grandement sur certains principes au nom desquels il était critiqué dans les années 60. Pourtant n’existe-t-il pas dans certaines organisations artistiques des grandeurs, valeurs ou pratiques, des modes d’organisation et de vie commune, constituant un ferment critique qui n’a pas été récupéré par le capitalisme contemporain ? Une exploration de type ethnographique a été menée au sein d’Odin Teatret, au Danemark, une organisation où la critique artiste s’élabore et se vit. Nous avons observé et participé au total pendant six mois aux créations et activités de ce groupe hors norme. Dans un premier temps, en nous inspirant de la description dense de Geertz, nous avons constaté que, bien que parfois avec des formes et une acuité particulière, bien des ressorts décrits par Boltanski et Chiapello étaient à l’oeuvre mais que cependant certaines énigmes demeuraient. Abandonnant l’approche cognitive de Geertz pour celle plus réflexive et tournée vers les affects de Stewart, nous avons ensuite entrepris de poursuivre et re-décrire notre expérience en insistant sur le désir, la transformation, la présence, pour chercher une autre manière de faire sens, riche et affective, de l’activité à Odin. Dans un troisième temps, cette expérience à Odin est réfléchie grâce aux concepts de Stiegler. Nous comprenons alors que ce lieu est le théâtre de certains processus différents de l’entreprise capitaliste, fut-elle organisée en réseau. L’individuation psychique, collective et technique, le rôle du désir et d’une certaine économie libidinale, le rôle du non calculable, l’insistance de la recherche non de motivations mais de ce qui fait que la vie mérite d’être vécue… sont autant de facettes qui ne peuvent être que partiellement récupérées par l’économie capitaliste. Par ailleurs la présence, l’ouverture au possible, la créativité, peut-être même l’authenticité, demandent un entraînement long, répété et épuisant (exigeant). A la différence de la standardisation et de la pulsion dans la consommation, il s’agit de mettre son être en mouvement – non pour devenir une forme précise, mais cherchant le mouvement pour lui-même qui ouvre à la présence et à une intensité de vie. Une critique artiste, réinterrogeant ces éléments, peut toujours être présente, même virulente contre un capitalisme qui fait de nous des endormis et des corps stupides / [non communiqué]

As an interdisciplinary project that integrates African and African American Studies, critical race theory, and Art History, this dissertation attempts to enrich our understanding of the politics of difference in contemporary art by interrogating the formal practices of artists and the social significance of their work. The artwork discussed reflects a pattern of creative engagement with archival institutions and documents that is characteristic of contemporary artists who are concerned with questions of consumption and the body; representation and erasure; the social construction of race and space; and the relationship between history, memory, and identity. Taken together, these themes constitute a discursive landscape within contemporary art that is central to the principle question raised here—namely, how do social genres of difference and relations of power influence artistic practices of representation, curatorial display, and reception? In an attempt to both answer and reverse the direction of this question, this text presents insightful perspectives from different artists on the complex relationship between art and society. Using the politics of difference as a lens through which to examine the aforementioned themes in contemporary art, I argue that the artists under consideration are transforming the meaning of race in post-slavery societies throughout the black diaspora. Through various creative practices, these artists are shifting the terms, coordinates, and representations of difference seen in the archive in order to reimagine the language of identity in the twenty-first century. Fundamentally, their work challenges the way certain bodies are recognized—compelling us, as viewers, to reinterpret the past from alternative and critical perspectives. Moreover, by focusing on the disclosure of a black presence in western cultures through the comparative formal and historical analysis of contemporary works of art that call our attention to misrepresentation, commodification, invisibility, and displacement, this dissertation contributes to developing conversations about how contemporary artists challenge dominant narratives and representational aesthetics. Through their work, these artists expand our conception of the archive—disclosing the overlapping ways in which objects, images, words, signs, ideas, ads, bodies, and spaces register social and historical meaning through the demarcation of racialized difference. Ultimately, this project demonstrates how art can transform the way we see and represent ideas of difference, and therein, the way we see and represent ourselves. / African and African American Studies