Hal Foster

Flash Art no. 334, Luglio-Agosto-Settembre 2017



Recensioni dei libri:
"Museologia Radicale" - Claire Bishop (Johan & Levi, 2017)
"Pop Art" - Hal Foster (postmedia, 2016)
"Exforma" - Nicolas Bourriaud (postmedia books, 2017)
"Curatori d'assalto" - David Balzer ( Johan & Levi, 2016)
"Il progetto dell'autonomia" - Pier Vittorio Aureli (Quodlibet, 2016)
"Il pragmatismo nella Storia dell'Arte" - Molly Nesbit (postmedia books, 2017)

Este artículo, en el que se aborda el trabajo de algunos de los pioneros del cómic, tiene una doble intención. En primer lugar, definir la representación secuencial del movimiento como característica básica del cómic y que lo distingue de las narraciones gráficas que le precedieron. En segundo lugar, analizar los parecidos formales entre los cómics de principios de siglo y las primeras películas, con el fin proponer un modelo explicativo diferente al de la influencia mutua; si ambos exhiben recursos narrativos similares es más bien porque se derivan del mismo medio de representación del movimiento: la cronofotografía.

The following essay sketches varieties of imagination operative in the best architectural work. It was published in Warehouse Journal, a student-edited journal produced annually by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Student editors for Warehouse 25 were, Alena Rieger and Ally Pereira-Edwards.

This is my review of <Tactics>(Nam June Paik Art Center, Feb 25- Jun 3, 2021), an exhibition curated by Lee Chaeyoung, along with Kim Sun Young where a group of artists such as Gu Minja, Song Min Jung, Jun Sojung, Johanna Billing, Bad New Days, Park Sunmin, Park Seungwon, Jonas Staal & Laure Prouvost have participated.

According to the leaflet, this exhibition "contemplates the art and life tactics to respect and consider diversity, by which nature, things, and humankind can coexist.

The term ‘tactics’ used in the exhibition is borrowed from the French scholar Michel de Certeau’s concept. He utilizes it to discuss the ‘performativity of the subject,’ a method of practice by which the excluded others resisted concentrated power in everyday life in modern society.

The participating artists are making a gap by small physical performances in this wartime-like period. This exhibition tries to observe a movement by which others refuse to be a target of suppression and surveillance and create a crack in the system continuously using little stories.

It cherishes the slight hope that it might poke a hole in the solid world with these small artistic practices and look inside of it."

An extended, revised version of this review will appear in the catalogue as an essay sometime during this summer.

이 글은  1980년대 이른바 '포스트모더니즘'은 물론 '문화연구(Cultural Studies)'의 부상과 함께 영미권에서 큰 반향을 얻었던 드 세르토의 '전략 없는 전술' 개념을, '함께 살기' 혹은 '공동체'의 문제가 그 어느 때보다 첨예해진 2021년 코로나 위기 속의 세상에 소환해 풀어낸 전시 <전술 Tactics>(백남준 아트센터, 2021.2.25-6.3)에 대한 리뷰이다.

이 전시를 최근 몇 년간 집중적으로 곱씹고 있는 ‘수행성(performativity)’과 ‘픽션’ 및 '게임'이란 키워드를 중심으로 살펴보면서, 나는 할 포스터가 '퍼포먼스의 제도화'라 비판적으로 규정한 아트씬의 어떤 경향을 '게임과 구분(불)가능한 것으로서의 파업'이라는 측면에서 보다 당대적으로 제기하려 했다. 

이는 트럼프 이후에도 다양한 방식으로 토양화된 '전지구적 트럼프주의'를, 벤야민이 '비관주의를 조직하기'라는 이름으로 정식화했던 간전기의 문제의식과 중첩시킨다는 것이기도 한데, 이에 대한 보다 확장된 논의는 여름에 출간될 전시도록에서 전개할 예정이다.

In 2017 the Barbican Curve Gallery opened its doors to a new work by the Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse. Created in 2016 and titled Incoming, the exhibition included a series of still prints, a large video installation projected across three 8-metre-wide screens with an accompanying soundtrack, and several smaller assemblages of black and white television screens with audio-visual content. The subject of Mosse’s work was the contemporary refugee crisis. Using a powerful heat-sensitive military camera, able to detect human bodies from over 30km and identity specific individuals from 6.3km, Mosse filmed as refugees journeyed from the East, hiking through the Persian Gulf and across the Turkish border, and from the West, trekking through the Saharan Desert to the Libyan coastline—each fleeing from war, persecution and fear with the hope of finding refuge in Western Europe. Analogous to the work’s visceral impact and affectivity, Incoming explores important questions of contemporary biopolitics, surveillance and citizenship—issues I shall explore in the work of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben—at its core, questioning the very foundations that our current political modernity rests upon. Furthermore, Mosse’s position as a European artist provokes questions raised in Hal Foster’s seminal essay of 1996, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’—a polemic against the projection of ideological patronage in post-colonial struggles—a text best unpacked with reference to the earlier work of Indian literary theorist Gayatri Spivak and her famous work ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988). Through these two conversations I will present a critical analysis of Incoming, exploring the complex political landscape it seeks to address whilst highlighting the potential difficulties of this as an aesthetic project.

Ten years ago, I was more interested in giving a response inside "return of the real" (Hal Foster) through the ordinary much more than an alternative to it. It is a theoretical sythnesis that sums up what I have published then more than an analythical piece. Hope it may be useful yet. I am just not so interested in what I was trying to do then

Hal Foster, Postmedia Books 2019

isbn 9788874902453

Uno dei più importanti critici d'arte al mondo analizza un quarto di secolo di pratica artistica. Bad New Days percorre gli ultimi venticinque anni di evoluzione dell'arte e della critica d'arte in Europa e Nord America esplorandone la loro relazione dinamica con le condizioni generali di emergenza inculcate dal neoliberismo e dalla guerra al terrorismo.

This dissertation studies the notion of critique in the context of art, understood through the Kantian paradigm as the enactment of political subjectivity through artistic practice. Firstly, I examine the 20th-century theorisation of critique, closely interlinked with the canon of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde (including conceptual art and 70s institutional critique), in order to highlight the essentially antagonistic and transgressive characteristic of modernist criticality – a critique that, despite its self-imagined ‘outside’ position, is deeply embedded in modernity’s commodifying institutionality. Secondly, I discuss some practices and theories emerging in the 90s in Western Europe and the Americas that began to deal with critique non-antagonistically, instead looking to find relational political subjectivity within institutional and corporate structures. Lastly, I discuss David Joselit’s After Art as a paradigm to think critical expression in the contemporary, in which the critical emphasis changes from art’s production to its circulation and movement as an image in the network. Discussing Hal Foster, I establish ‘post-critique’ as a category that embraces a range of critical cultural practices beyond the critical hierachies of modernity, and conclude that critique must operate omnipresently inside institutional structures to match the increasingly complex institutionality of neoliberal capitalism of today.

La discusión en torno a la modernidad y la posmodernidad estética se dio especialmente en los años 70 y 80 del siglo XX. Aquel fue lo que se conoció como el fin de la modernidad y el inicio de la posmodernidad. Sin embargo, en los primeros años del siglo XXI se ha dado un renovado interés en la modernidad y el modernismo estético. En esta tesis se analiza en profundidad la dialéctica entre la modernidad y la posmodernidad estética desde la teoría estética de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta las últimas teorías estéticas, y se defiende que actualmente se vive en un nuevo modernismo, un segundo modernismo, que critica a la vez que continúa el legado modernista clásico de principios del siglo XX. La tesis está dividida en tres partes. La primera caracteriza la modernidad estética, basada en la Escuela de Frankfurt y su mayor contribución a la cuestión, la Teoría Estética de Adorno. Además de Adorno, también se examinan las teorías de Marcuse y Benjamin. La modernidad estética aquí elaborada contempla un arte que sea capaz de socavar lo que Adorno llama "mundo administrado" y la lógica instrumental. El arte, desde su autonomía, debe poner en evidencia la miseria de la sociedad capitalista y ser resistente frente a su capacidad de asimilar toda fuerza opositora. En esta parte se analizan también tres debates fundamentales que se desarrollaron en el contexto moderno pero que ofrecen claves importantes para entender la relación con la posmodernidad: el debate sobre el expresionismo, el kitsch, y la vanguardia. En la segunda parte se estudian las estéticas de la cooptación. Dichas estéticas se originaron en la misma modernidad y la crítica de Adorno a la industria cultural, pero fueron desarrolladas a lo largo de la teoría situacionista -especialmente Debord- hasta las estéticas posmodernas, las cuales son la culminación de la teoría de la cooptación. Esta teoría argumenta que en las sociedades postindustriales, con el triunfo del capitalismo y la industria cultural, ninguna forma artística puede ser realmente crítica y resistente ya. El arte se convierte así, a lo sumo, en un pasatiempo, y es incapaz de incidir de manera alguna en la sociedad. Dentro de esta problemática general se estudia asimismo el problema del fin del arte, problema muy presente en las estéticas posmodernas y esencial para entender el desafío que suponen estas estéticas a la modernidad. La tercera parte examina las aportaciones más recientes al tema, las teorías de principios del siglo XXI; en particular, las ideas de Hal Foster, Andreas Huyssen y Nicolas Bourriaud. Todos ellos matizan tanto la idea tradicional de principios del siglo XX de modernidad estética como las derivas más afirmativas de la posmodernidad, y proclaman, cada uno a su manera, un cierto retorno al modernismo. La concepción del arte defendida en la tesis, la idea de un segundo modernismo, está fundamentada, por tanto, en una idea de arte crítico, en un arte resistente. Sin embargo, critica la idea euro y anglo-centrista de arte moderno, investigando y persiguiendo la modernidad en espacios poscoloniales y en las periferias. Así, esta nueva forma de modernidad estética solicita nuevas narrativas que den cuenta tanto del arte contemporáneo como su relación con el mundo actual. Más que elaborar estas narrativas, que sería un trabajo de los historiadores y críticos del arte y la literatura, la presente tesis articula el humus teórico-crítico que puede ser el sostén de estas nuevas narrativas, ofreciendo unas herramientas teóricas y un espacio crítico a todas ellas.

The 'Art-Architecture Complex' by the art historian Hal Foster argues that the global styles of contemporary high architecture offer inauthentic
spectacle in place of visceral experience. Thomas Wensing meets him to ask what went wrong, and what architecture can learn from art.

A partir de finales de los años noventa  se puede detectar un verdadero giro, impulso o constante entre artistas, teóricos y comisarios de exposiciones, una constante o un giro hacia la consideración de la obra de arte “ en tanto que archivo” o “como archivo” que convive con otras tendencias o giros que centran su atención en lo etnográfico y en lo micropolítico.
Esta voluntad de liberar al archivo de su visión estandarizada que evoca  un inerte repositorio  de artefactos históricos y de convertirlo en un activo y discursivo sistema  se expresa en la voluntad de transformar el material histórico oculto, fragmentario o marginal en un hecho físico y espacial caracterizado por su interactividad: “los artistas del archivo convierten en físicamente presente una información histórica en ocasiones perdida, otras desplazada” sostiene Hal Foster. En este sentido, tanto si se hace referencia a la arquitectura del archivo ( o complejo físico de información) como a la lógica del archivo como matriz conceptual de citas y yuxtaposiciones , los materiales de la obra de arte “en tanto que archivo” pueden ser o bien encontrados (imágenes, objetos y textos) o bien construidos, públicos y a la vez privados, reales y también ficticios o virtuales.
En este último caso, el medio propio del arte del archivo sería la  cultura digital o la  red de Internet que confunde y replantea los límites entre lo privado y lo público y que obliga a un desplazamiento  del “espacio archivo”, unido a la arquitectura, al “tiempo archivo” , vinculado a la virtualidad de la red. Es entonces cuando los datos del archivo pierden su inmovilidad espacial en aras de adoptar una operatividad dinámica y convertirse en un índice temporal (Wolfgang Ernst, “The Archive as Metaphor. From Archival Space to Archival Time”, en Open. Cahier on Art and the Public Domain. Número Especial (No) Memory. Storing and recalling in contemporary art and culture, nº 7, 2004, pp. 46-53).  Más allá del archivo en su antigua cualidad “arcóntica”, la cultura digital genera, en este sentido, una nueva “cultura de la memoria”.

Głównym celem artykułu jest zbadanie źródeł zjawiska skandalu w sztuce współczesnej oraz zaprezentowanie w tym kontekście artystycznych działań Abnormals Gallery. Wychodząc od założeń psychoanalizy lacanowskiej przyglądam się dwóm strategiom posługiwania się perwersją w sztuce, mającym na celu wyrażenie sprzeciwu wobec Prawa Ojca. Męska twórczość (père-version) polega na tworzeniu alternatywnej wizji świata, będącej infantylną karykaturą ojcowskiego porządku. Natomiast kobieca działalność artystyczna (père-aversion) ujawnia się w radykalnym, gwałtownym zerwaniu z opresyjnym porządkiem patriarchalnym za pomocą cielesności. Następnie przedstawiam zjawisko Abnormals Gallery, której funkcjonowanie w specyficzny sposób żywi się skandalem. Opisuję zatem cielesne performance’y Lukasa Zpiry, spreparowane zwłoki zwierząt Iris Schieferstein, kontrowersyjne, zanurzone w popkulturze prace Maxa Papeschiego oraz fotografie Michela Valentino.

Abstract
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Internationally regarded for his provocative writings on 20th-century art practice, and as an Editor of the journal October, Professor Foster is the author of Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) (2002), The Return of the Real (1996), Compulsive Beauty (1993), Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (1985) and Prosthetic Gods (on the relation between modernism and psychoanalysis, 2004), and editor of the defining The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (1983), among other books. Forth- coming books include Art Since 1900, a co-authored textbook on 20th-century art, as well as a survey of Pop Art. Here he speaks with Marquard Smith, Editor-in-Chief of journal of visual culture, about these and other things, including polemical thought, cultural criticism, immersion, Visual Culture Studies, and design, architecture and urbanism.
Keywords
Art History ● art writing ● critical theory ● distraction ● immersion ● October ● Visual Culture

Marc James Léger’s 2012 book, Brave New Avant Garde, is a timely attempt to rethink avant-gardism within the context of today’s resurgence of ‘socially engaged’, ‘activist’ and ‘interventionist’ art. Léger criticises these currents of practice as little more than a ‘capitalist demand’ and a betrayal of class struggle, arguing instead for ‘sinthomeopathic’ practices that over-identify with neoliberal ideology, as a means to foster the alienation of art’s audiences as a spur to ‘critical activity’. Situating Léger’s work in relation to the established discourse on avant-gardism as well as significant recent entries in the debate on artistic activism, this review essay identifies the contradictions of Léger’s critique and argues against his dismissal of socially engaged art. The review proposes instead that forms of participatory, collaborative and collectivist practice will, in some form, continue to perform a critical function within capitalist society, as a vital channel for the rethinking of art’s cultural form.

Some time ago, while discussing a more squarely academic paper I had written on Cindy Sherman while a PhD student at the Graduate Center, CUNY, the art historian David Joselit said to me, “Cindy isn’t afraid of being ugly.” My memory is rather scattershot, but when it comes to my time in New York, I remember hookups (the bad ones, the should-have-been-good ones), movies, every square inch of the walk from Washington Square Park to SoHo, and this comment. Feminist misgivings about the male gaze aside, what struck me was the certainty with which the comment was made, indeed a variety of certainties: that we can discern the artist’s intention, that being ugly must inspire fear (in fairy tales and melodramas, sometimes the most beautiful souls are ugly indeed or end up victorious), that queer art history is just a series of iterations of Winckelmann’s horny aesthetics, that the implication might be that I myself am ugly too, that being ugly is undesirable but intellectually interesting.

Le Néo-baroque est devenu un canon de la littérature hispano-américaine. Comme Omar Calabrese (1988), entre autres, a si bien montré, le Néo-Baroque se déploie petit à petit à différentes expressions artistiques et pratiques discursives. Dans ce cadre de stabilité et de légitimation, que peut-il y avoir d’autre que la multiplication d’analyses ponctuelles? Dans l’effort d’apporter une contribution conceptuelle pour approfondir le débat, et d’élaborer une esthétique contemporaine à l’écoute des défis de notre époque, je propose d’établir un rapprochement entre le Néo-baroque et le camp à travers la catégorie de l’artifice. Pour entamer le débat, je dirais que l’actualité du Baroque, dans le cadre d’une société médiatique, et en tant qu’esthétique de l’artifice, se situe au-delà du Néo-baroque, dans le camp.

En 1852 Marx corrigió a Hegel diciendo que si los grandes hechos históricos suceden dos veces, la primera vez sería en forma de tragedia y la segunda como una farsa. En abril de 2020, cuando la era Trump parecía todavía lejos de terminar, y los tiempos pandémicos comenzaban a correr, el crítico de arte Hal Foster lanzaba una pregunta desconcertante pero oportuna: si la farsa viene después de la tragedia ¿qué sigue después de la farsa? Esta es una reseña del libro de Foster What comes after farse? Art and criticism at a time of debacle, publicado por la editorial inglesa Verso el año pasado. A través de esta reseña se revisan las ideas del crítico estadounidense sobre el papel del arte y la crítica en el marco de la debacle política, económica y medioambiental que atravesamos actualmente. En este recorrido se evalúa la relevancia de las ideas que Foster desarrolla y su alcance para los próximos años. A pesar de que el libro reseñado se escribió pensando en el trumpismo como la era de la farsa, aquí se señala que esa era no acabó con el fin del mandato presidencial, sino que marcó apenas su inicio. Esta idea se desprende de los temas ensayados en el libro que tienen que ver con el crecimiento de la influencia de la plutocracia en las políticas culturales, con el imparable desarrollo de las tecnologías de vigilancia y con el nacimiento de nuevas subjetividades desde el arte. ¿Hay algún refugio en el arte o en la crítica en el tiempo de la debacle?

Face aux apories du dédoublement de « l’artiste chercheur », ouvrant un espace du savoir tout en étant dépendant de savoirs tiers, questionnant le statut du sujet connaissant mais lui-même aussitôt précairement suspendu entre les figures du double du chercheur et du double de l’artiste, cet article prend appui sur le portrait que Hal Foster consacre à « l’artiste en ethnographe » (1996). L’auteur y voit une introduction, toujours pertinente, à l’épistémologie de l’enquête artistique.
———
Abstract

Considering the paradigm of the inquiry as a specific framework in contemporary art, this paper builds on Hal Foster’s portrait of “the artist as ethnographer” (1996). The author sees it as an introduction, always relevant, to the epistemology of the artistic inquiry.

The author considers the relation between bodies and prostheses and outlines the theoretical perspectives which take into account the problems of a prosthetic body. It also shows few strategies that are employed to deal with the monstrosity of the body which internalised technology. Among
some integrating strategies the author discusses the tactics of portraying a prosthetic body as a body-armour. Such activities include communist and fascist technological projects which had a similar purpose: to erase the image of the monstrous, crippled body. The monstrosity of war disability is subjugated through images of prosthetic functionality. Another integrating strategy discussed in the article is the creation of a body-product. Advertising images of the body with integrated prostheses make prostheses invisible. Commercial images of prosthetic bodies also develop fantasies about sexy cyborgs, perfect examples of post-human progress. Contrary to the previous tactics, there is an approach resisting the need to consolidate the body. Among the activities rejecting the integrating strategies the author discusses the group “Amputets” (six American war veterans who underwent amputations), Hans Bellmer’s artworks, a phenomenon of apotemnophilia and Mathew Barney’s film “Cremaster 3”. These are examples of cultural activities that challenge the monstrous prosthetic recognition of our bodies, whose cohesion is only a fantasy.

La obra poética de Manuel Vilas (Barbastro, Huesca, 1962) confronta un problema que ha ocupado durante años a algunos sectores de la teoría y de la crítica de arte, así como a gran parte de los estudios culturales: la dificultad de descubrir —y de producir— dentro del terreno de la cultura masiva la posibilidad de un arte cargado de alguna potencialidad política emancipadora. Pero, ¿cómo debemos entender al poeta cuando dice que McDonald’s “es un restaurante comunista” o que “ha hecho más por la erradicación del hambre en el mundo / que toda Europa junta”? ¿Qué puede haber detrás de enunciados como: “Todo cuanto viene de los hombres, la guerra, la enfermedad, la ciencia, el amor, la historia, los cosméticos, los bañadores, yo lo amo”? En el fondo, todas nuestras dudas y desaciertos al momento de leer a Vilas se relacionan con una misma interrogante: ¿cómo leer la poesía?, ¿cómo tomárnosla absolutamente en serio?

Prólogo a la Antología poética de Manuel Vilas publicada por Barco de Piedra, Caracas, 2015

Robert Rauschenberg is a well-known case of critique of
Abstract Expressionism. The targeted main tenet is that the
unique gestural trace of the Abstract Expressionist cannot be
repeated. Rauschenberg performs experiments to test the tenet,
experiments he would name <Erased de Kooning Drawing>
and <Factum I, II>, where his repetitions work to split the
absolute singularity of the expressed. What is revealed to be
singular is the fact of having repeated and that the third party
must capture a difference out of this repetition. The ‘first
difference’ born out of ‘my own’ repetition becomes expanded
through crudely mixed media installations among which figures
his signature <Combines> series as well as in Pop, Minimalism
and more largely Conceptualism. Meanwhile, his <White
Paintings>, considered to be of seminal importance have long
been interpreted as a neo-avant-garde critique of modernism and
formalism by the likes of Hal Foster and Branden W. Joseph,
and explained through the Deleuzian philosophy of difference.
This article offers an alternative viewpoint by arguing that his
repetitions originate from his “theological” works intended to
break from the (Deleuzian) theater of difference and intensity
and also by focusing on his transcendentalism in works such as <First-time Painting>.

로버트 라우셴버그는 추상표현주의를 비판한 작가로 잘 알려
져 있다. 그가 비판한 추상표현주의의 주장은 작가에게만 고유한 행위의
흔적은 절대 사후 반복될 수 없다는 것이다. 라우셴버그는 이 주장을 실
험에 부쳐 <지워진 드 쿠닝의 그림>과 <사실 I, II>을 통해 추상표현
주의, 더 크게는 추상예술이 그토록 옹호하는 주체 행위의 절대성을 반
복 실험으로 분화시킨다. 여기서 절대적인 것은 반복 이후 남는 흔적의
고유성이 아닌 나의 의도가 반복되었다는 사실 그 자체이며, 제삼자는
반복된 흔적에서 차이를 찾을 수밖에 없다는 사실도 함께 드러난다. 이
실험들에서 발견되는 ‘나만의’ 반복으로서의 작품 제시, 그리고 거기에서
발생하는 ‘최초의 차이’는 라우셴버그를 널리 알린 <콤바인>과 같은 매
체 혼합 작업을 통해 확산되며, 이 레디메이드적 혼합은 이후 미니멀리
즘과 팝은 물론 개념예술에 지대한 영향을 끼친다. 이러한 일련의 과정
들의 근원이라 평가되어온 <백색 회화> 등은 할 포스터와 브랜든 조셉
과 같은 학자들에 의해 모더니즘과 형식주의에 대한 네오아방가르드적 비판으로 읽혀왔으며, 들뢰즈의 차이의 철학을 통해 해석되어 왔다. 그
의 반복 실험에서 발견되는 차이는 혼합과 확산 작용으로 예술과 산업
사회 간의 무한한 전유 가능성을 열어젖히는 중요한 근거다. 그러나 본
논문은 이 반복 실험의 근원을 차이짓기를 벗어나려는 “신학적” 작품들
에서 찾고, 그의 <처음 하는 회화> 등에서 엿볼 수 있는 초월성을 근거
로 그의 예술에 대한 새로운 해석을 제시하려 한다.

Fondata da Rosalind Krauss e Annette Michelson nel 1976, la rivista «October» si pone immediatamente sulla scena internazionale come singolare spazio di discussione sul presente dell’arte e della critica, oggetto di analisi e di dense riflessioni che muovono dall’esigenza di ripensare in maniera radicale il sistema dell’arte e le sue egemonie. Fin dal titolo, un’esplicita citazione del film dedicato da Eisenstein alla rivoluzione sovietica, la rivista statunitense afferma infatti la propria natura militante, rivendicando la possibilità per la critica, e per l’arte insieme, di essere vettore di trasformazione delle strutture sociali e di pensiero attraverso l’azione politica della produzione culturale. Un processo di cui il volume, grazie ad un continuo confronto con le diverse voci che animano il dibattito sulle due sponde dell’oceano, ricostruisce i luoghi privilegiati – l’analisi mediale, la centralità della fotografia, la rilettura dell’avanguardia europea in termini antiformalistici –  dando conto degli esiti eterogenei e plurimi della condotta critica della rivista, dal periodo eroico della fondazione agli anni più recenti, in cui si nota un’istituzionalizzazione delle proposte che culmina nella pubblicazione di Art since 1900, il monumentale manuale di storia dell’arte firmato da alcuni tra i teorici più attivi sulle pagine di «October». Ad emergere con chiarezza da questo ampio lavoro di ricostruzione e di interpretazione è un quadro teorico denso ed estremamente articolato che conferma il ruolo cruciale delle riviste nell'elaborazione del contemporaneo discorso sull'arte e sulla critica.

Postmodernism challenged the institutionalized modernism of the mid-20th century, offering more radical forms of social discontents and cultural practice. It meant unmasking the values of progress as involving ideologies of the political status quo, the problems of which were manifest to a new generation in the 1960s. But, more recently, postmodernism itself has begun to age, and reveal its own concerns as those of the post-1960s situation of global capitalism rather than an emancipated End of History.

A first attempt at a rational linguistic distinction of the real that separates the determination of characteristics from the absence of this determination—this being an attempt to assign the real to another space other than the reality in which it currently exists, which one might suspect is only a construct—is the same as the distinction between the representational and the nonrepresentational. This ex negativo concept of the real would fall into the latter category, as it is the coded denotation, the characteristic-filtering gaze, and the eyes schooled by the conventions of seeing and the desire for categories that give any form of realism the ability to deceive us with its temporal and stylistic artificiality. Either from a Kantian concept of a fundamentally unapproachable reality or from the constructivist view of artificiality that is void any reality whatsoever, if when looking at something the viewer takes into consideration the means of viewing, the methods, or the experime...

Le manifestazioni dell'arte postumana vengono lette attraverso i radicali cambiamenti sociali dei primi anni '90: l'avanzare della cosiddetta "società della performance",  l'affacciarsi di disturbi come l'Information Fatigue Syndrome e la depressione, il conseguente e generalizzato ricorso agli antidepressivi cambiano radicalmente la struttura del soggetto contemporaneo. Il contributo analizza l'opera di artisti come Cindy Sherman, Robert Gober e Paul Mcarthy in relazione a questo radicale mutamento.

This essay examines the disruption of linear time in experimental forms of “history painting” as represented by Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics (2001-2005). It analyses how the aesthetics of heterochronoia—multiple temporalities—play a crucial role in the development of a new understanding of the politics of “history painting.” As Schmidt’s work reveals, a radical conception of history exists outside the “singular moment,” and in dialogue with heterogenous visual cultures (news media, art history, advertising). In attempting to understand the import of Schmidt’s work, this essay considers his methodologies for creating a heterochronous mode of history painting, particularly his anachronistic engagement with the work of Theodore Géricault and the iconic history painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Unlike previous critical responses to Schmidt’s work, this paper argues that (after Géricault) the artist’s use of investigative “journalistic” methodologies for SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics do not generate an aesthetics of exposé but rather an aesthetics of “fictionalization.” This aesthetic is defined by the recalibration of documentary and speculative data as a means to reconceive the landscape of the perceptual. The findings of this research demonstrate that the use of disparate fragments—or data—to visualize otherwise diminishing historical events underpins contemporary history painting’s capacity for advancing a distinct economy of affect that circumvents the limitations of the news media and its “monopoly on reality.”

Este artículo plantea una exposición y revisión crítica del método psicoiconográfico de Mary Matthews Gedo a través de su confrontación con autores como Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, Jean Sutherland y Georges Didi-Huberman en torno a los usos de la teoría psicoanalítica en la historia y crítica de arte. Esta aproximación crítica permitirá diferenciar los usos del psicoanálisis que derivan en la psicoiconografía frente a aquellos vinculados a la recepción del psicoanálisis lacaniano en el contexto de
la crítica de arte norteamericana por parte de autores vinculados a la revista October, como Krauss o Foster. A pesar de señalar algunos aciertos metodológicos, como la interpretación de las imágenes a partir del proceso de elaboración onírica, la aproximación crítica se centrará en dos aspectos concretos del método de M. Gedo: la excesiva importancia concedida a las experiencias traumáticas infantiles en la producción artística de Picasso en obras como Guernica, y el desmedido “furor interpretativo” de la vida privada del artista que lleva a cabo en la crítica de obras como La vida o El viejo guitarrista.

Este trabalho foi feito a partir das discussões do módulo de estudos em Cinema, Estética e Psicanálise, do Pet Facom-UFJF. Trata-se de um estudo sobre o dispositivo de repetição no conto "Pierre Menard, autor do Quixote", a partir das reflexões de Hal Foster sobre realismo traumático. O objetivo geral deste estudo é pensar no processo de comunicação entre o leitor e o texto de Jorge Luis Borges, se distanciando tanto das análises de forma e conteúdo, quanto da pesquisa com leitores empíricos. Através dos métodos de Foster e das teorias da recepção de Wolfgang Iser e Roland Barthes, propomos algumas reflexões sobre os efeitos gerados no leitor pelo dispositivo de repetição do texto.