Facing the mirror: Michel Foucault’s writings on representational art in relation to artistic productions of the 1960s

Abstract

This article will call attention to Michel Foucault’s writings on art in the 1960s in relation to the artistic production of those years. It intends to understand the modes of proposition and expression common to the philosopher writings and the works of contemporary artists, especially in the aspects of representation, appropriation, mirroring, audience and authorship, trying to clarify that these two manifestations reflect each other in their essence. It also intends to demonstrate the exemplarity of the Foucaultian analysis to artworks based on two assumptions, the primary attention to artistic objects and the comparative method aimed at them. Those principles are the methodological basis to this article.