The contemporaneity of Bispo

Authors

  • Kaira Marie Cabañas University of Florida

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2178-0447.ars.2018.143624

Keywords:

Arthur Bispo do Rosário, contemporary Brazilian art, psychiatric art, Frederico Morais

Abstract

Arthur Bispo do Rosário, psychiatric patient who represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale in 1995, is perhaps the best known Brazilian outsider artist. The analysis I propose to do of his work considers and respects the rights of people with mental illnesses, addressing their work through the perspective of contemporary art. Bispo never assigned artistic status to his production. I investigate if classifying his work as contemporary art, as Frederico Morais does, leaves one type of epistemic control (the psychiatric) to adopt another: a timeless aesthetic formalism. I support the need for more studies to understand how Bispo, whose psychopathological identification is intertwined with race and class discrimination, became one of the most prestigious Brazilian artists.

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Author Biography

  • Kaira Marie Cabañas, University of Florida

    Professora de história da arte na Universidade da Flórida, em Gainesville, e autora dos livros The myth of nouveau réalisme: art and the performative in Postwar France (Yale University Press, 2013) e Learning from madness: Brazilian modernism and global contemporary art (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Foi curadora convidada da exposição “Espectros de Artaud: Linguagem e as Artes nos Anos 50”, no Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, em Madri (2012). Possui bacharelado em estudos comparados pela Duke University (1995), mestrado em história da arte pela Yale University (2000), e doutorado em história da arte pela Princeton University (2007). Cabañas também escreve para a revista Artforum.

Published

2018-04-13

Issue

Section

Articles

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