«The body is a repository of marks», we are told at one point in one of Carlos Motta‘s visual essays, Lágrimas (2017). Many of the works of this Colombian artist speak about colonial and postcolonial marks, metaphorical scars on flesh and desire, indelible despite the passing of centuries. Jacques Derrida, for whom the concept of cultural «sign» or «scar» was so important, said that it is not possible to escape the Judeo-Christian tradition. Even the death […]
As a student at the Royal College of Art in London, David Hockney had already developed an idealized image of America as a mecca for sexual freedom, an image forged between Walt Whitman’s verses and his fascination with Californian beefcake magazines, whose photographs of athletic ephebes inspired the poses of his own models. At that time his formal experimentation owed more to the obscene graffiti of public toilets than to museums. The academic atmosphere was […]
