Form and expression: Merleau-Ponty in Ferreira Gullar's art criticism (1956-1961)

• Grant number: 21/14487-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2022
• End date: January 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: José Luiz Bastos Neves
• Grantee: Daniel Donato Ribeiro
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas (CCNH). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In Ferreira Gullar's art criticism (1956-1961), Merleau-Ponty's philosophy plays two strategic roles. In the first moment, the philosopher provides the critic with arguments to accuse the exacerbated rationalism of the Concretists, derived from their interesting reading of the concept of form (Gestalt), enforcing the same laws of physical form in art. In the second moment, the concept of expression, also informed by his readings of Merleau-Ponty, is used by the critic to define the task in which he saw himself involved with the Neo-Concretists. In the background of this critical dispute is a central question that the theory of the non-object aims to address, namely, how the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity could be overcome aesthetically. The phenomenological tension in which the non-object is inserted is precisely that of sustaining a place for overcoming this classic dualism. Thus, we will seek during this research to demonstrate how the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty is one of the mainstays of the argumentation in Gullar's critical program, especially in these two moments; and to analyze how the critic defines the non-object, having participated as a fundamental scheme for the apprehension of the artwork and a possible solution to the problem.(AU)