Harlequins, Goddesses and Titans. Women in Three Works by Ángel Hernández
Keywords:
Apollo, Dionysus, Abstract Figurative Art, Work of Art, Silhouette, Will to ArtAbstract
The article, written from the prism of the philosophy of art, approaches the pictorial work of the contemporary Venezuelan visual artist Ángel Hernández, to confirm the hypothesis that in his art the aesthetic foundation corresponds to the Dionysian-Apollonian tension of Nietzschean disposition, expressed in his figurative-abstract style. For this purpose, the case method was used, with the variant of the paradigmatic case and a sample of three recent works by the Latin American artist. The main conclusions confirm the initial hypothesis, suggesting, for example, that the Apollonian foundation of the works, in terms of what lies behind the metaphysical parsimony of Hernández’s women (e.g. a perfect simulation of Godward’s women) is, after all, a kind of simulacrum. Such a revelation is but the connection with the idea of Sils-Maria’s Nietzsche who understood Apollo as the god of simulacrum precisely in the face of Dionysus’ dismembering direction. One of the conclusive metaphors reads as follows: Harlequins, Goddesses and Titans: the figures of the women in the works of Hernández.
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