Oteiza y Aguilera Cerni (1958)Dialéctica para una interpretación de lo político e ideológico en arte

Abstract

The end of the 1950s marked a crucial point in Basque artist Jorge Oteiza’s career, as he sought to apply the knowledge he had gained from his sculptural work to the field of the city. Prior to his collaboration work with a number of architects, Oteiza’s first essay was a draft for an unpublished lecture entitled “The City as a Work of Art, written at the behest of Valencia-based critic Aguilera Cerni for a season on art and urban planning within the Valencian context of Spanish “normative art”, a movement which advocated the organic return of art practice to the social sphere. This meeting will provide an opportunity to consider the relationship between the political and the ideological in art from an aesthetic perspective, enabling us to examine the clear contradictions inherent in the desire to transform society.