From the Aesthetic Ontology of Modern Art in Oteiza to Postmodern Dissolution

Revisions Based on a Documentary Interview with the Catalan Artist

Abstract

The manuscript aims to analyze, based on the reflection of an interview given by the prominent Spanish sculptor of the 20th century, Jorge Oteiza in the context of the Venice Biennale in 1988. It will be stated that synthesized in these works of art They are: Modernity and Postmodernity. In this interview, the disagreement that Oteiza experiences around the so-called post-modern art will be shown, reflected in exhibitors at the same biennial, such as arte povera or the work of Mario Mertz.

But what are the basic characteristics of the contrasting works that make us think of those times? Is Oteiza's exasperation the expression of the inevitable? And what makes such change inevitable?

In the ethos of each historical period, art also reflects the immanence of the city project. A modern city reads like a work by Oteiza. The large and widespread contemporary cities are read as works of “Poor Art”, especially in some works by Mario Mertz, which Oteiza himself is in charge of criticizing, accusing him of wanting to lull man to sleep, instead of building him or awakening him, as they sought. the formalist-constructivist avant-garde of modern art, or, exploring its unconscious contents, seeking a new horizon from which to awaken it from its state of latency.

In our extended urbanized reality of the central zone of Chile, the modern city has been blurred and appears, just as in “Poor Art”, fragmented groupings of waste among which man himself is one of them.