Borges overcame a situation of economic hardship and made himself a name in Caracas’ art circuit during the 50s. According to Ashton, he found his “voice” toward the end of that decade (37). But it is during the 60s when the richness of his work starts to be noticed by critics. For Cuevas, it is during this decade that the painter reached artistic maturity (140). After a few years away from painting dedicated to installations and multimedia art, Borges returned to it in 1969, achieving his usual work rhythm in the early 70s when “…he attained a more complex and premeditated treatment of the image” (Barnitz, 128). On this issue, Traba’s analysis is interesting; according to her, before the break from painting, Borges’ work was about denouncing
…show more content…
His faceless personages are easily seen as things. In Reunión con círculo rojo (1973) the characters sitting on a semi-circle have a doll-like quality which deviates the attention of the spectator to the texture and color of their clothes, to the formless objects below the sofa (excrement perhaps?) and to the almost imperceptible red circle that functions as a red on red in the carpet. The lack of definition of the persons let us see the vibrancy of matter with more sharpness: the red geometrical figure (a vibrant color indeed), the materials of the clothes, the presumed excrements, and the humans. Each of the elements integrates an uncanny yet harmonic composition, but at the same time each one shows its own power, its own thing-power, as Bennet would say …show more content…
For Althusser, the Italian painted “Similarities (rocks, bones, animals, men) where there are differences –and by 'painting ' these similarities, he 'painted ' differences: his animals and men are distanced from the nature fixed for them by our 'idea ' , i.e. by the ruling ideology, of man.” (232). This men with ‘form of things’ are Cremonini’s own way to show us that, while there are indeed differences among objects, these do not lead to a hierarchy, they rather let us see each thing own vibrancy and at the same time the belonging of each element to an assemblage.
It is strange why this matter did not call for the attention of art historians and critics studying Borges, since he has been quite vocal about it. In an interview he said: “My relationship with a painting is also the relationship with a reality that offers answers, that is not passive, and talks to you” (Ramos 83). In 1977 the artist published a book containing some of his reflections accompanied by drawings of El Ávila, the mountain located at the north of Caracas. In La Montaña y su Tiempo (1979), he writes:
And all of a sudden I realized that in this city, which is like a Babel of refrigerators, the objects seem to shout: we have a particular character, we are, we have not disappeared, we have a way of identifying ourselves. And then I look
His faceless personages are easily seen as things. In Reunión con círculo rojo (1973) the characters sitting on a semi-circle have a doll-like quality which deviates the attention of the spectator to the texture and color of their clothes, to the formless objects below the sofa (excrement perhaps?) and to the almost imperceptible red circle that functions as a red on red in the carpet. The lack of definition of the persons let us see the vibrancy of matter with more sharpness: the red geometrical figure (a vibrant color indeed), the materials of the clothes, the presumed excrements, and the humans. Each of the elements integrates an uncanny yet harmonic composition, but at the same time each one shows its own power, its own thing-power, as Bennet would say …show more content…
For Althusser, the Italian painted “Similarities (rocks, bones, animals, men) where there are differences –and by 'painting ' these similarities, he 'painted ' differences: his animals and men are distanced from the nature fixed for them by our 'idea ' , i.e. by the ruling ideology, of man.” (232). This men with ‘form of things’ are Cremonini’s own way to show us that, while there are indeed differences among objects, these do not lead to a hierarchy, they rather let us see each thing own vibrancy and at the same time the belonging of each element to an assemblage.
It is strange why this matter did not call for the attention of art historians and critics studying Borges, since he has been quite vocal about it. In an interview he said: “My relationship with a painting is also the relationship with a reality that offers answers, that is not passive, and talks to you” (Ramos 83). In 1977 the artist published a book containing some of his reflections accompanied by drawings of El Ávila, the mountain located at the north of Caracas. In La Montaña y su Tiempo (1979), he writes:
And all of a sudden I realized that in this city, which is like a Babel of refrigerators, the objects seem to shout: we have a particular character, we are, we have not disappeared, we have a way of identifying ourselves. And then I look