Postmodernism of “Reaction”: Decade of the ‘80S in Portugal
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Postmodernism of “reaction”: decade of the ‘80s in Portugal Urszula Beata Staszkop Master Dissertation in Art History September, 2017 Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em História de Arte Contemporânea realizada sob a orientação cientifica de Prof., Dr. Joana Cunha Leal A dissertation submitted as partial requirement for the conferral of the degree of Master of Arts in Contemporary Art History, held under the supervision of Prof, PhD. Joana Cunha Leal. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my profound gratitude to my dissertation supervisor Professor Joana Cunha Leal for the continuous support for my work. This work could not have been successfully conducted without her comments, remarks and words of the encouragement through the whole process of writing. I would like to thank my parents and sister for their unconditional support and believing in me. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. I would also like to thank my boyfriend, Tiago Oliveirinha for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement through the last two years of my studies and through the process of researching and writing this dissertation. My sincere gratitude goes to my college and friend Pedro Gonçalves. Thank you for the daily dose of stimulating discussions and for helping me, when I needed it the most. I would also like to acknowledge Justyna Rosenthal and Piotr Ducher for their patience and engagement, while proofreading my work. At last, I would like to thank all of my numerous friends and relatives who have helped me throughout this last year. 3 POSTMODERNISM OF “REACTION”: DECADE OF THE ‘80s IN PORTUGAL URSZULA BEATA STASZKOP ABSTRACT The phenomenon of “return to painting” of the 1980s is usually linked with emerging neo- conservative politics and booming art market. Therefore, historiographical literature frequently presents this international trend as “embarrassment” to art history, synonymous with the term “reactionary postmodernism” (Foster, 1983). However, the analyses of the critical history of the phenomenon allow us to recognize the paradoxical role played by figurative painting in the theoretical debate regarding the exhaustion of modernist discourse. On the one hand painting was accused of a reactionary position and an attempt to return to pre-modernist ideals of representation. On the other hand, it seemed to break with those ideals through hybridisation of painterly discourse and advance in the practices of appropriation and deconstruction. This dissertation seeks to focus on the postmodern painterly strategies and critical discourse in the works of the artists associated with the “return to painting” phenomenon. The work brings critical and historiographical analyses of the paintings associated with such trends as neo- expressionism, transavantgarde, New Image Painting and return to painting in Portugal. Those premises will allow us not only to develop already asserted ideas, but also distance the “return to painting” phenomenon from its pejorative image. Simultaneously, the work attempts to contribute to the discussion regarding return to painting in Portugal. The phenomenon that vividly marked its presence on the local artistic scene remains mostly unexamined. Therefore, the dissertation aims to enrich the discussion regarding postmodern painting in Portugal. Keywords: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Return to Painting, Neo-Expressionism, Transavantgarde 4 PÓS-MODERNISMO DE “REAÇÃO”: ANOS 80 EM PORTUGAL URSZULA BEATA STASZKOP RESUMO O fenómeno do retorno à pintura na década de 1980 é habitualmente associado às emergentes políticas neo-conservativas e ao crescimento exponencial do mercado de arte. Consequentemente, esta tendência internacional é frequentemente exposta pela historiografia como “indigna” da história da arte, sinónimo do termo “pós-modernismo reacionário” (Foster, 1983). Contudo, a análise da história crítica deste fenómeno possibilita-nos reconhecer o papel paradoxal que a pintura figurativa exerceu no debate teórico relativo à exaustão do discurso modernista. Por um lado, a pintura foi acusada de posicionar-se reacionariamente e procurar um retorno a ideais de representação pré-modernistas. Por outro lado, aparentou a existência de um corte com esses mesmo ideais através da hibridização do discurso pictórico e do desenvolvimento de práticas de apropriação e desconstrução. Esta dissertação procura analisar as estratégias pictóricas pós-modernistas e o discurso crítico presente nas obras dos artistas associados ao fenómeno do retorno à pintura. O trabalho revê as análises críticas e historiográficas das pinturas associadas a tendências como o neo- expressionismo, a transvanguarda, a New Image Painting e o retorno da pintura em Portugal. Esta revisão permitir-nos-á não apenas desenvolver ideias já conhecidas, mas também demarcar uma distância em relação à imagem pejorativa associada ao fenómeno do “retorno à pintura”. Simultaneamente, este trabalho procura contribuir para a discussão sobre o retorno á pintura em Portugal. O fenómeno marcou vivamente a cena artística nacional, mas permanece largamente por examinar. Consequentemente, esta dissertação pretende enriquecer a discussão sobre a pintura pós-modernista em Portugal. Palavras-chave: Pós-modernismo, Postestructuralismo, Retorno à Pintura, Neo- Expressionismo, Transvanguarda. 5 Table of contents Introduction ........................................................................................................ 7 Methodology and Objective ............................................................................ 7 Structure........................................................................................................ 12 The renewed context in the 1980s ................................................................. 14 Chapter 1: Return to painting – theoretical and critical background ................. 18 Chapter 2: Return to painting – international context ....................................... 39 2.1 Die neue Wilde in Germany .................................................................... 44 2.2 Italian Transavantgarde ........................................................................... 55 2.3. New Image Painting and neo-expressionism in the USA ........................ 64 Chapter 3: Return to painting – Portuguese context .......................................... 73 3.1 “Depois do Modernismo” (1983) ............................................................ 76 3.2 “Os Novos Primitivos: Os Grandes Plásticos” (1984) ............................. 86 3.3 “Arquipélago” (1985) .............................................................................. 92 3.4 “Continentes” (1986) ............................................................................... 98 Conclusions .................................................................................................... 104 Bibliography .................................................................................................. 113 6 Introduction Methodology and Objective This work thinks through and attempts to move beyond the paradigms of “return to painting” which vividly marked the Western art world and its peripheries from the late-1970s to the late-1980s. It outlines the critical history of the phenomenon, simultaneously attempting to distance painting’s discourse from its pejorative image created for the most part by “October” magazine editors including Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp and Craig Owens. The aim of the dissertation is to undermine the “return to painting’s” image as regressive, non-critical and non- discursive (Buchloh, 1982; Crimp, 1981) and attempt to subvert the perception of the phenomenon as “embarrassment” to art history, which dominates historiographical accounts (Foster, et.al., 2007). Simultaneously, the dissertation attempts to analyse the phenomenon of “return to painting” in Portugal, placing it among other trends associated with the term of “reactionary postmodernism” (Foster, 1983) which dominated the international painting scene in the 1980s. Hence, one of the aims is to contribute to enrich the discussion regarding postmodern painting in Portugal. As there is no intellectual paradigm apart from postmodernism which would be more synonymous with the decade of the 1980s, the following work adapts the theory of Hal Foster (1983), who cogently and persuasively argued that there were two postmodernisms:1 “In cultural politics today [1983], a basic opposition exists between a postmodernism which seeks to deconstruct modernism and resist the status quo and a postmodernism which repudiates the former to celebrate the latter: a postmodernism of resistance and a postmodernism of reaction.”2 1 I have adopted the theory of two branches of postmodernism in order to outline the critical discourse which focused on valorisation of the photography discourse (postmodernism of resistance), at the same time discrediting figurative painting (postmodernism of reaction) and downgrading it to a mere reactionarism enclosed in an ahistorical use of pastiche. Postmodernism of resistance, on the other hand, was celebrated as an epistemological shift of aesthetics which took on the task of articulating history not only as a set of facts, but as a constructive narrative of identity, regarded not as an ontological condition, but internally bifurcated and structured by language. The reasoning behind those radical distinctions and alignment of critics with the second