Presentation: The Artist in Representation: Images of Artists through the History of Art

Abstract

For this dossier at Modos, we proposed the theme “the artist in representation” in order to inquire about the historical constructions of the artist's image, bringing this reflection to the Brazilian and Latin American context. Well explored in French and English scholarship, this subject acquires special relevance in this specific geography, marked by the social distinctions related to manual labor and the late emergence of the art system in the modern sense. The ways in which we understand this figure in the history of art result from the visual and textual discourses built upon the artist. His or hers representations are present in portraits and self-portraits, sculptures, paintings and engravings. It is also built through artistic criticism, the press, caricature, literature, biographies, or autobiographies. Our starting point was the following question: in what ways did the transformations of perception about artists and their meanings (social, cultural, symbolic and political) mark the writings of art history?