Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Barnett Newman'

La notion d'impossible fut différemment formulée par trois artistes d'une même génération : Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Cette notion peut simplement se définir comme un écart entre intention et réalisation ; un écart nécessaire que Marcel Duchamp désignait en 1958 comme le << coefficient d'art >> d'une oeuvre. On retrouve en ces termes les éléments d'une pensée typiquement romantique de l'impossible, visant (tragiquement) a résorber l'écart entre l'art et la vie. Dans les années trente, la génération de bacon, de Kooning et Newman se voit confrontée aux avatars d'une telle esthétique : instrumentalisation de l'art par les régimes totalitaires, art régionaliste, prolongements de l'abstraction, vélléités révolutionnaires du surréalisme. Leur génération grandit ainsi dans l'idée d'une possible réforme du monde par l'art, et s'épanouit dans la désillusion de cette utopie dans l'après deuxième guerre mondiale. Une fois posés les termes d'une double trahison du surréalisme et de l'abstraction par ces peintres, il s'agit d'étudier les aspects spécifiques de leur art qui sous-tendent cette réalisation impossible de l'art dans la vie :l'inachèvement, et les multiples modes d'interrogations des limites entre l'espace réel et l'espace de l'art. Il apparait finalement que ces artistes ont fait de l'impossibilité même de fondre l'art et la vie le facteur dynamique de leur esthétique, cherchant en cela à maintenir l'utopie, le rêve, au bord d'une réalisation qui les détruirait. En cela l'impossible représente une menace perpétuelle qui n'épargne pas les schémas à travers lesquels l'histoire de l'art aborde (entre autres) l'art de leur génération (expressionnisme abstrait, peinture d'action, color-field, école de New York, de Londres. . . ) C'est également dans la contradiction que ces artistes apportent à ces catégories, à leur raisons d'être, que se perçoit leur conception d'un temps et d'un espace nouveaux en perpétuels devenir.

Expressionist painter, Barnett Newman hoped that standing before one of his paintings, a viewer would feel a "sense of place". Art history however often identifies Newman as a perpetually displaced artist; displaced because his work is considered ahead of its time, and displaced because Newman could only defend the uniqueness of his aesthetic project in the terms of a shifting context. Central to Newman's predicament were the demands of an art practice which privileged the visual over the linguistic as a form of direct communication. From the perspective of 2003, when Modernism can register like a lost world, the alterity of the visual and the linguistic remains central to debates in the visual arts. Re-positioned as a central figure of twentieth century art practice, Newman and his pre-occupations with place and position are as intriguing as ever.

La partie historique relate la genèse de l'expressionnisme abstrait. La partie théorique définit les concepts et méthodes utilisés dans la troisième partie : nature et buts de l'activité artistique du peintre, avec une analyse appliquée des effets de rétroaction dans la recherche de nouvelles voies artistiques; étiologie de l'œuvre d'art, avec un examen particulier de la relation d'expression, philosophiquement redéfinie; méthode d'analyse des qualités plastiques; méthode d'étude des rapports entre fins artistiques et œuvres. La partie critique étudie l'œuvre peinte de Pollock, Rothko, Newman. Après une étude de la littérature critique sur Pollock, l'auteur propose sa propre interprétation, centrée sur la période des drippings. L'art de P. Est rapporté à l'esthétique pragmatiste américaine et éclairé par le concept d'interaction, simple et complète. Ce concept explique l'évolution du peintre, du figuratif à l'abstrait et vice-versa. Les traits originaux de l'œuvre de Rothko sont son aura (intemporalité esthétique), sa charge sacrale (réminiscence de motifs religieux dans un art profane) et une composition particulière, dite "figurale", de la peinture. L'auteur analyse la pensée artistique de Newman à travers ses écrits, et définit ses peintures comme "tableaux-symboles" (ou le tableau contient moins une image du sujet, qu'il n'est lui-même à l'image du sujet). L'art de N. Est rapporté à la théorie du sublime dans l'art et la littérature, du pseudo-longin à nos jours. Annexes : diagrammes et schémas de tableaux, traduction française d'un essai de Newman, index des noms, index analytique des termes de théorie de l'art (ou poétique), d'esthétique, de critique d'art et d'histoire de l'art
Three parts. The historical part relates the birth of abstract expressionism. The theoretical part defines the concepts and methods applied in the third part : nature and aims of the artistic activity in painting, with a special analysis of feed-back effects in the discovering of new artistic ways; factors of the work of art, particulary the expression of the artist, philosophically re-defined; method of esthetic analysis of pictorial qualities; method of investigating the relations between artistic aims and works. The critical part studies the painted work of Pollock, Rothko and Newman. After an investigation of the critical literature on Pollock, the author explains his own interpretation, focused on the drippings period. P's art is linked up to the american pragmatist esthetics and explained through the concept of mere and complete interaction. This concept helps clarify unexplained shifts in p's evolution, from representative to abstract art and from abstract to representative art. The salient features of Rothko's work are its aura (esthetic timelessness), its sacral meaning (reminiscent of religious topics in profane art) and a peculiar shape ("figural" shape) of the painting. The author analyses the esthetic thinking of Newman in his writings and defines his paintings as "symbolic pictures" (the picture itself is an image of the subject matter, rather than containing an image of it). N's esthetics is linked up to the theory of the sublime in art and literature from pseudo-longin untill today. Appendix : diagrams of paintings, french translation of an essay by Newman, index of names, index of technical terms (theory of art, esthetics, art criticism and history of art)

Master of Visual Arts
The title Normal What refers to a group of paintings that emerged from my Masters of Visual Arts 2004/05 studio project. Individual paintings are chronological self portrait reflecting upon my own experiences and those in the wider community who at some point in their lives have had to endure the struggles, and negative stigma that is so often attached to those who have become marginalised and detached from mainstream society. People found in this category include the disabled, homeless, unemployed, and those with addiction problems. Each painting bears a close connection with techniques associated with abstract expressionist painting. This radiates through the vast expanse of drips, stains and explosions which appear to suffocate the paintings delicate monochrome surface. Strong references to Kristeva’s theory on Abjection arrive through the aggressive and violent outbursts of paint that evoke an atmosphere of symbolic horror, personal dysfunction and social oppression. This emerges out of the shadows and private spaces of the painting’s domestic interior. Deep emotional, psychological, sociological sensitivities are raised throughout my studio practice. Combined with a series of unresolved tensions, and questions surrounding normality run deep a consequence of society’s push for normality are being felt most acutely by those effected by this form of sociology. The ideas raised through my studio project had a profound influence on the research being conducted for the dissertation. Kristeva’s theory on Abjection, along side the practices of Eva Hesse, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin emerged from a group of highly emotional abstract paintings. This strengthened the connection between the studio project and the dissertation. Aimed at deepening a personal understanding an commitment to researching the subject of normality and how it could be successfully articulated through a visual narrative.

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Artes, Departamento de Artes Visuais, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes, 2013.
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A presente investigação se debruça sobre a associação entre os Sudários de Bené Fonteles, que formam a série Sudários / Auto-Retratos, o painel cerâmico Le Chemin de la Croix, de Henri Matisse e a exposição The Stations of the Cross. Lema Sabachtani, realizada em 1966, por Barnett Newman, assim como sobre a natureza desta associação e como ela pode ser abordada pela História da Arte, teórica e metodologicamente. Esta pesquisa trata, portanto, da espessura do olhar entre aquele que vê a obra de arte e a própria obra porque trata dos espaço-tempi em que sua percepção se abre a uma rede de relações. Diante de uma obra nos desfiguramos e reconfiguramos enquanto sua imagem se modifica. Mas quando a obra concerne a uma transformação exemplar, esses conteúdos de desdobram e se redobram em inúmeras questões, como é o caso do tema da transformação mais recorrente em nossa cultura cristã e ocidental, no grande drama expresso pela Paixão. O interesse por essas obras, portanto, foi imposta pela expressa categoria de identificação autoimpingida do artista com o tema, com o pathos do processo de criação e com a temporalidade complexa que a constelação dessas obras acaba por sedimentar. Assim, a investigação levou à reflexão sobre o impacto do jogo entre o pathos e o anacronismo sobre o discurso na História da Arte como montagem de tempos heterogêneos, baseada em pressupostos oferecidos por Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin e Georges Didi-Huberman. _______________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT
The subject of this PhD research project is the association of Henri Matisse's Chemin de la Croix, Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross. Lema Sabachtani Exhibition and Bené Fonteles' Sudários, as well as what the order of this association and how it can be brought up by Art History, theoretically and methodologically. Therefore, this research is about of the thickness of the outlook between the one who sees the artwork and the artwork itself, because it talks about the space-times in that perception that opens itself into a web of relations. In front of an artwork we desfigure and reconfigure ourselves as the image modifies. But when the artwork approaches to a model transformation, these contents unfold and refold themselves in numerous questions. That is the case of the more recurrent transformations in our Western Christian culture, in the great drama expressed by the Passion. The interest by these artworks, therefore, was imposed by the artist’s self-inflicted identification category with the subject, with the pathos of the creation process and with the complexity of the temporality that the constellation of these works deposits. Thus, the inquiry induced to the speculation about the impact of the relation between the pathos and the anachronism about the discourse in the Art History as montage of heterogeneous times, based in presuppositions offered by Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin and Georges Didi-Huberman.

Pour mieux cerner l'optique en laquelle la grande peinture américaine fut élaborée après la Seconde Guerre mondiale , cette étude élargit la focale par l'examen conjoint des œuvres de Barnett Newman et de Jackson Pollock. Sous des aspects contraires, les deux veulent en effet créer chez le spectateur un sens du lieu et lui rendre sensible la constitution de l'espace au lieu de lui en donner des représentations. Rouvrant le débat sur le modernisme entamé par Clément Greenberg, la thèse admet que cette peinture tient sa spécificité de ses réponses à la crise du tableau de chevalet diagnostiquée par le critique, et voit comme elle prend en compte la question de la place du spectateur étudiée par Michael Fried dans la continuité de celui-ci. Elle affirme cela dit la nécessité d'une approche philosophique de la construction picturale du lieu qui soulève des questions touchant à la spatialisation, au passage d'une forme « à priori » de la sensibilité à des formes sensibles, à la position puis à la réforme du sujet dans sa relation avec l'objet. La réflexion part ainsi du kantisme pour en dépasser les cadres stricts, naviguant entre l'idéalisme transcendantal et la phénoménologie. Elle croise les références à Fichte, Husserl et Lévinas avec celles de l'esthétique et de l'histoire de l'art, en prenant soin de les ancrer dans l'analyse d'oeuvres singulières. Elle espère ainsi mieux saisir la façon dont ces œuvres produisent du sens hors des voies de l'iconographie et déterminer les significations historiques qui s'y rattachent. Une définition plus large du modernisme est ici en jeu, ainsi qu'une conception de l'abstraction qui en affirme le socle anthropologique et la fonction cognitive.

Cette recherche tente de comprendre toute l‘importance de l'absence de cadre autour des toiles peintes à partir des années 1940 par les peintres américains Mark Rothko et Barnett Newman. En symbiose avec cette pratique, une esthétique nouvelle était en train de se constituer ; grâce à l'examen de l'œuvre de Robert Ryman (qui offre la démonstration du plein développement de cette esthétique externe) il s'agit d'en déplier la démarche. Celle-ci est fondée sur le rejet d'un modèle qui avait besoin du cadre comme synecdoque : une esthétique illusionniste où le tableau était une fenêtre donnant accès à un monde fictif. Mais, l'absence de cadre visible n'équivaut pas à une absence de cadre, car l'objet empirique ou ornemental n'était que la forme visible d'un ensemble de fonctions, d'un système sémiotique que la thèse s'efforce de formuler, qui travaille l'œuvre et qui en détermine l'adresse. C'est ce cadre invisible qu'il s'agit de rendre perceptible. Les manifestations de cette invisibilité du cadre sont repérées et analysées dans les impulsions iconoclastes et contradictoires de Newman et Rothko, les résistances pratiques de Ryman et les brillantes stratégies d'impact de Stella et de Kelly. Mais, elle se trouve également à l'œuvre à la fin du XXe siècle dans la pratique de l'installation. Le questionnement du cadre, c'est le questionnement (si grisant pour le spectateur contemporain, petit-fils de Duchamp) de la limite et du regard. C'est aussi la performance invisible de la main de l'artiste
This research began out of a desire to fully understood the importance of the absence of the picture-frame around the paintings of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Such an absence was a descision which participated in the creation of a new aesthetic turned outwards from the canvas. This external aesthetic was fully developed, and indeed is still being developed, in the work of Robert Ryman. What was abandoned was an aesthetic for which the frame was a synecdoche, the model which supposed the painting to be a window onto an illusion. But the absence of a visible frame is not an absence of frame since the ornamental frame is but the visible form of a set of functions, a semiotic system which this dissertation attempts to reconstruct and analyse. This system of the frame forms the work and determines its address, both enunciative and manual. It is this invisible frame which the study tries to render perceptible through an analysis of the iconoclastic and contradictory impulses running through the work of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, through the pragmatic resistances to reproduction and to appropriation in that of Robert Ryman, and through the bold brightness strategic to the paintings of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. It is also to be found at work in the installations current at the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first. The questionning of the frame therefore is a questionning of the limit and of the gaze such as the contemporary viewer is accustomed to enjoying since Marcel Duchamp. It is also the questionning and renewal of the performance of the artist's hand which forwards the work and gives it edge and energy

Denna uppsats utgår från målningen Vir Heroicus Sublimis från 1950 av den abstrakta expressionisten Barnett Newman och installationen One and Three Chairs från 1965 av konceptkonstnären Joseph Kousuth som en undersökande metod för att förstå intentionen med mitt eget verk Sitta från kandidatutställningen Lampa, Blomma på Konstfack hösten 2020. Arbetet med uppsatsen har haft en undersökande form från början till slut utifrån fria associationer mellan Sitta och de konsthistoriska verken som ingång.

El propósito de este estudio es abordar el concepto de espacio y, en particular, su desocupación, a través de tres obras: Caja Vacía/Metafísica de Jorge Oteiza, Who´s afraid of red, yellow and blue de Barnett Newman y el Pabellón de Alemania de Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. El discurso se construye a través de un transitar sobre la banda de Moebius y en su vaivén y en su doblez aparecen y desparecen imágenes, ideas y textos sobre los que fluye la voluntad de construir una interpretación nueva sobre el objeto descrito. Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze y Gaston Bachelard son los tres sostenes teóricos de esta estructura. Y más cerca y más lejos de este texto siempre se mantiene la difícil tarea de entender cuál es la forma de habitar y de ser (Ich bin) del hombre en la tierra.
The purpose of this study is to address the concept of space and, in particular, its disoccupation through three different pieces of work: Empty/Metaphysical Box by Jorge Oteiza, Who´s afraid of red, yellow and blue by Barnett Newman and German Pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The discourse is constructed through a move on the Moebius band, its swing and double apparition and disappearance of images, ideas and texts which build a new interpretation of the subject matter. Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze and Gaston Bachelard are the three theorists of this structure. The difficult task of understanding what is the way of living and being of man (Ich bin) on earth always remains what is closer and further away from this text.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1988.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Arts, 1983
Barnett Newman's mature work i.e. from 1948 - 1970 is characterised by monumental paintings, flat planes of single colour and vertical stripes as the only pictorial element. Despite this severe reduction of form, the titles of these works suggest profound and esoteric concepts. This dichotomy of simple form and complex meaning creates a problem of understanding as there is no obvious correlation between the two. A guide to interpretation is needed and is indicated even more by the wide disparity between the interpretations by different critics. In particular T.B. Hess, in his 1971 book on Newman, introduces references to Kabbalistic themes that complicate the issue further. Newman's widow and some critics reject Hess's premise yet the image of Newman as a Kabbalist artist persists in writings as recently as 1980. This dissertation examines Hess's theories, rejects most of them and attempts alternative interpretations. Newman was a prolific writer and his stated philosophy may be studied as an index to the understanding of his work. This emerges as concerned with sublime, spiritual and heroic content; and the absence of pictorial, nostalgic references from nature is intended to evoke in the spectator a corresponding spiritual and emotional response. Whether the artist's aims were realized remains unanswered in this work because the title- form relationship is still to some extent, obscure; but it is hoped that lines of research into Newman's work other than those by Hess, are strongly suggested.

Tese de mestrado, Pintura, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas Artes, 2012
The present work aims to identify the main features of the aesthetic thought of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. This identification was drawn from the analysis of the Apology to William Abbot, in order to situate his thinking chronologically, identifying the respective theoretical and philosophical principles, and see if they have points of contact with the austerity in artistic thought and practice. Secondly, we try to detect the resonance of these principles in the achievement of a specific work: The Stations of the Cross: Lema sabachthani, by Barnett Newman. The analysis of this concretion evaluates the work beyond the strict observance of each of the assumptions identified above, allowing for a deeper understanding of issues relating to asceticism in art. Finally, we consider the same concepts in the development and implementation of a plastic intervention for the Santa Maria de Alcobaça Monastery. The proposal for Alcobaça is designed in a way not to alter or perpetuate any image in the Monastery, thus meeting the aesthetic despoliation advocated by St. Bernard and suggested by the aforementioned work of Barnett Newman

A defining feature of American abstract expressionist painting is its enormous size and scale. Heroic ambition, the vast American landscape, and the sense of "something big" happening in American painting are often cited as determining factors in this phenomenon. This dissertation examines how Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko not only painted large-scale canvases but, following trends in modern architecture, shifted their painting towards the construction of architectural environments, thus promoting the transformation of painting from a window in the wall to a wall without a window. The artist and architect Tony Smith, a close friend and colleague of these painters, played an active role in encouraging their interest in modern architecture. As a result of their investigations into the physical, as well as conceptual, limits of the canvas, these artists shifted the viewer’s experience from a perceptual experience of pictorial space to a physical encounter with actual space. In contradiction to the notion of the purely optical, one could describe this as a somatic viewing experience, tactile and active, which anticipated specific concerns of 1960s minimalism. This achievement redefines Pollock's, Newman's, and Rothko's legacy to the subsequent generation of artists and places their production into a broader historical framework.
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Marc Chagall est un artiste juif qui a défié l’interdiction mosaïque de représenter la divinité. Il a entre autres réalisé plusieurs tableaux sur le thème de la Crucifixion, un sujet particulièrement délicat pour un artiste attaché à son identité juive et à un art à tendance autobiographique. Ce mémoire examine les conditions qui ont permis l’adoption et le développement, par Chagall, d’une iconographie revisitée d’un important motif chrétien. Parmi les circonstances qui ont facilité l’hybridation culturelle à laquelle se livre Chagall dans ses Crucifixions, il faut signaler la liberté nouvelle, à la fois au niveau des dispositifs figuratifs et du traitement pictural, apportée par le modernisme dans l’approche des grands genres traditionnels dont relève la peinture religieuse. Dans un tout autre registre, le mémoire se penche sur les circonstances historiques exceptionnelles ayant exercé une pression pour que l’expérience tragique des Juifs du XXe siècle trouve à s’exprimer dans des images à portée universelle.
Marc Chagall is a Jewish artist who challenged the Mosaic interdiction to represent the deity. He has among others in the modern period made several paintings on the theme of the Crucifixion, a particularly sensitive issue for an artist attached to his Jewish identity and practising an art with a strong autobiographical component. This dissertation examines the conditions which allowed the adoption and the development, by Chagall, of an important Christian subject whose iconography he freely revisited. Among the circumstances that facilitated the cultural hybridization in which Chagall engaged in his Crucifixion, we must point out the new freedom, both at the level of figurative devices and pictorial treatment, brought by modernism in the approach of major traditional genres to which religious painting belongs. On a quite different register, the dissertation examines the exceptional historic circumstances met by Chagall before and during the execution of the Crucifixions. These circumstances have exerted pressure that allowed the tragic experience of the Jews of the XXth century to find expression in images of universal significance.
Pour respecter les droits d’auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de ses documents visuels et audio‐visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

The Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops from the 1950s to the 1970s were a series of professional workshops held in northern Saskatchewan, under the auspices of the University of Saskatchewan and Regina College, for the creation and advancement of a dynamic arts culture in the province and as a way for the individual artists there to overcome feelings of isolation from the Canadian cultural hubs. Throughout the course of the Workshops provincial and federal attitudes, and cultural policies and perspectives on cultural nation building exerted an overarching influence in the shaping of the Workshops. The Workshops drew the attention and support of many established celebrity U.S. artists and it is due to their presence and influence at the Workshops that it is possible to examine the provincial and national response to perceived U.S. cultural imperialism. The founding and maturity of the Workshops is a case study of the ways in which the politics of Canadian nationalism and the effects of U.S. cultural imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries interacted to impact the growth and development of art communities across Canada. The Workshops serve as an example of the effects, on a regional art movement, of Canada’s relationship with the United States, and Canadian response to the perceived threat of cultural imperialism from the U.S. Because the Workshops were a microcosm of cultural production, involving artists who, aside from their participation at Emma Lake, were often fairly isolated from the ebb and flow of art currents inherent to larger cultural centers, the Workshops are also an important case study of the effects of national and provincial policy on the regional arts. The Workshops’ history reveals that ideas of nationalism, regionalism and continentalism can come together to have a profound and unique effect on the development of an art community.
Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-12-20 17:29:24.88

碩士
國立臺北藝術大學
美術史研究所
97
Abstract In his own critical writings, Newman often focused on primitive art, nothing its capacity to express the most intense and perhaps most honest emotion,: “We, living in times of the greatest terror the world has known, are in a position to appreciate the acute sensibility primitive man had for it”. Artists of Newman’s generation admired the simplified, sometimes crude forms of the various native art traditions; the link between “primitivism” and modernism was already well established. Newman’s own appreciation, however, derived not so much from formal interest but rather from what he called “subject matter,” Newman offered a philosophical regimen of writing that he would impose on himself－“The Plasmic Image”. Newman regarded (OnementⅠ) as marking a breakthrough for his work, and a new beginning. The first several paintings have black as well as stripes or“zips,”as he came to call them, referring perhaps to the sound that masking tape makes when it is pulled away. By thus conflating the experience of space with that of time, Newman arrived at the description that best suits the intended effect of his mode of painting－it gives the viewer (the painter, first of all) the experience of being part of the picture, as if you had gotten inside of yourself, as if you could see your own consciousness emerging. As the painting is created, so is the painter. Indeed it might be fair to say that Newman created his works with the state, the polity, in mind. He called himself an “artist-citizen.”Like his other favored terms, this one may appear innocent at first but eventually bristles with contradictory connotations. Artists are extreme individuals, whereas citizenship entails working for the furtherance of the group. Some decades later, the post-modernist thinker, Jean-Francois Lyotard, was to write that in the “aesthetic of the sublime...the logic of the avant-garde finds its axioms.”And it is clear from the way in which Newman polarizes the two concepts. Arthur C. Danto spoke on art, language, and culture. “Beauty and sublimity” compare with Barnett Newman’s concepts.

Tese de doutoramento, Belas-Artes (Desenho), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, 2013
Esta tese teórico-prática debruça-se sobre transformações ocorridas no campo do desenho ao longo do século XX e início do XXI, com importantes implicações para o presente desta área central da prática artística. Desde a prática bidimensional do desenho até à conquista efectiva do espaço e do tempo, estudam-se obras que se entendem como paradigmáticas nesse percurso. Num primeiro momento a tese incide sobre aspectos das obras de Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti e Pierre Bonnard, que contribuíram para renovar e manter a prática bidimensional do desenho; posteriormente são centrais as contribuições de Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline e Barnett Newman para a ampliação do âmbito do desenho. Além da representação, em direcção ao espaço e ao tempo mais vastos; as obras paradigmáticas de Robert Smithson e de James Turrell, respectivamente “Spiral Jetty” e “Roden Crater”, são reveladoras da conquista efectiva para o desenho de espaço e de tempo, entendidas estas variáveis num sentido concreto. Sem esquecer a diversidade de processos do desenho, a parte prática insiste na pertinência da manutenção da bidimensionalidade dentro do campo expandido do desenho.
This teoretical and practical thesis is concerned with the transformations wich took place in the field of drawing during the past XX century and the beginning of the current century. Relating to these transformations paradigmatic works of art are studied, starting with bidimensionality towards the conquest of time and space. Important to the renovation of image in drawing, examples of the oeuvre of Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Pierre Bonnard are considered. The works of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Barnett Newman are central to the expansion of the field of drawing away from the figure towards space and time. “Spiral Jetty” and “Roden Crater”, seminal works from Robert Smithson and James Turrell, reveal true space and time as part of the new elements of drawing. Without forgetting the huge diversity of existing drawing practices, the practical side of the thesis insists on the relevance of maintaining a focus on image-making through drawing.

The spiritual dimention in art, in the European context, has been, for centuries, almost exclusively related with religion. However, in the modernity, with the loss of prominence of religion, and with the divorce of art and the Church, that dimention has became accessible to be freely and autonomously explored by art, and in this specific case, by sculpture. If, in general, from the point of view of modernism, it is known that art has lost its notion of transcendence, in accordance with a destructive demand of the artistic tradition, concentrating, instead, on exploiring and evaluating its own possibilities, however, it is also possible to notice the presence of a strong spiritual dimension in the life and work of many modern and contemporary artists. This dissertation is the result of a research of this spiritual dimention in the 20th and 21st century sculpture, through an analysis of the life, work and/or cultural circumstances of nineteen artists, namely Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Jean Arp (1886-1966), Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Henry Moore (1898-1986), Barbara Hepworth (1913-1975), Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), Alberto Carneiro (1937-2017), Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Lourdes Castro (1930), Germaine Richier (1902-1959), Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Anselm Kiefer (1945), Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), Richard Long (1945), Rui Chafes (1966), Anish Kapoor (1954) and Diogo Pimentão (1973)