ISSN 1618 - 8101

This paper is a discussion of the ways the American artist Mark Dion approaches to the dominating anthropocentrism of modern science. The study is based on three artworks that demonstrate key transitional moments of Dion's art practice. The paper opens with the examination of On Tropical Nature (1991), the artist’s pivotal early work. The first chapter will posit that, in the frame of this work, Dion empowers the functional site of the forest, displaces the taxonomic system, activates a fictional character of an amateur scientist, and, based on representation of nature in botany, establishes his way of conducting artistic discourse about social and cultural stereotypes. The second chapter moves to The Library for the Birds of Antwerp (1993), and focuses on the artistic manoeuvre that evaluates the connection between living beings and their representations, viewed through the prism of the interplay of zoology and art. This vision explores the possibilities of the structurally constructed distance between human and non-human. In this part, the progression of Mark Dion`s strategy, including the urban functional site, the open-endedness strategy, and the viewer inclusion will be outlined. The third chapter concentrates on representing the order of the human past as a science related subject, as the next multi-factor move that emerged in Mark Dion`s Dig series. The chapter focuses mainly on one of the most debatable artworks, The Tate Thames Dig (1999). It will be argued that such fields of humanities as art, anthropology and archaeology, featured by this artwork, are producing a new synergy in the field of reconceptualisation of the anthropocentric doctrine. Conclusively, the development of a river as a functional site and a performing science related activity there, will be foregrounded.

In a number of writings that were only narrowly circulated, Richard Wollheim took a stand against two pivotal theses at the centre of aesthetic reflection and, above all, of critical and historical-artistic practices: i) that art is a language (and thus artistic meaning is produced and understood in the same way as linguistic meaning); ii) that art inherently is a form of communication. In Wollheim's view, such theses are the mainstream conceptions shared by disciplines and approaches as diverse as semiotics, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism, and a significant portion of cognitive science. In this paper, I mainly concentrate on (i) and I reconstruct, discuss and defend Wollheim's arguments against a recent interpretive misunderstanding that deems them inadequate vis à vis Donald Davidson's philosophy. My contention is instead that, at a closer analysis , the latter works in fact as a pivot to Wollheim's aesthetics, especially against the arguments put forth by Nelson Goodman, the most rigorous defendant of (i) and (ii).

This exhibition seeks to advance towards a space of continuity. The authors presented are emblematic, are historical, and they contemplate some of the dimensions of plasticity inscribed into the perspective of Looks and Writings. They do not, however, represent an exhaustive survey of all the important names that stand out in the historiography of Portuguese art, which is why there is a pressing need for future events to complement this first showing. The history of Portuguese art in the 20th century may also be constructed by focusing upon the inter-relationship between the image and writing, a persistent and relevant trend that has involved authors of unquestionable talent, and has accompanied the general development of poetry and literature and the performing arts. At the beginning of that century, the most representative and high-profile case in Portugal (though achieving recognition only belatedly) was Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who made use of fragments of writing in his compositions, giving them a privileged place in keeping with the languages of synthetic cubism, futurism and Dadaism, which were at that time emerging (definitively). As was the case with other unquenchable artists, the very act of integrating external elements into his painting led to an expansion into new combinations, revealing an overlapping relatedness peopled by words from his private hoard, chosen for their creative and provocative seductiveness.

José Oliveira is a book artist who takes inspiration from the history and evolution of the Western book and of Western writing. His artist’s books take the form of codices, scrolls and leporellos and embody the beliefs, grief and hopes of their author. They ask us about our conceptions of the book and the nature of reading. They are evidences of their author’s resolute rejection of contemporary techniques applied to books. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2182-8830_2-1_7

El Discurso da cuenta de las vivencias y motivaciones en torno al trabajo que presenté para el Casa de las Américas, titulado, "José Lezama Lima: estética e historiografía del arte en su obra crítica".