Vanguards and exhaustion: the stresses of modern art in two artists

Abstract

The proposed article will investigate two modern artists: the Uruguayan Joaquín Torres-García and the Portuguese Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. The starting point of this reflection is the entry “Form less” by Georges Bataille, published in 1929 inthe journal Critical Dictionary Documents ( 1929-1931). It brings to us the discussion performed by Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois on the occasion of the exhibition L' informe. Mode d' employ. This analysis shed light on the “form less” operation as a performative character.

Building on these theoretical texts, we intend to bring up and discuss the possible consequences of some concepts dear to modernity that circulate around the depletion of vanguards and elaborated in the process simultaneously own movements. Besides this widely recognized work of Krauss and Bois, some critical texts about other works of Bataille and also about the theory of modernity are references throughout this essay, to oppose and show the singularities present into two artistic productions.