Images Re-Vues (Oct 2012)
Art ornemental, art environnemental : au-delà ou en deçà de l’image (art médiéval, art contemporain)
Abstract
We propose a kind of archaeology of some paradigms that have been at work in contemporary art since the middle of the 20th century — paradigms of which Matisse’s ornamental vitalism has been the great initiator. They are a de-sublimate and an-aesthetic recasting of the decorative, ritual, and environmental constituents of traditional arts, that of Middle Ages included. In Brazil, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica have thus broken new ground, between 1960 and 1980, for an art springing from and getting out of easel painting to aim at an utopic fusion between art and life. Their artistic practices, marked by the denial of image, have been oriented towards the making of objects the manipulation of which is the sole reason of coming in existence ; they also invited to participate in performances that cannot be anymore a pure spectacle, and tried to think an architecture associated with colors to create a stimulating environment for those who wander through it but have nothing left to properly contemplate.
