Antoni Tàpies e Bill Viola: un’arte che sopravvive alla mercificazione

Abstract

The paper propos a focus upon two contemporary artists through Adorno’s idea of “modern art”, in other terms of an art able to counteract the globalization of the culture industry. The artistic production of Antoni Tàpies and Bill Viola replies to condemnation that Adorno makes about all those movements which call fundamentally in question the concept of art and the notion of work. These two artists save the status of art in the post-industrial society, where the radical transformations of cultural system threaten the survival of artistic creation, as if the aesthetic rationality could only abdicate to an instrumental rationality. Tàpies, as well as Viola, belongs to that group of artists that makes us the consciousness of our mortality, where the dimension of critical reference of our world is always present.

Keywords

• materiality
• spirituality
• pathos
• videoart