Shapes of fragility The expression, the expressed, and the expressible in the artwork 'Sin pan y sin trabajo' by Ernesto de la Cárcova."

Main Article Content

Juan Pablo Quiroga
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6735-9902

Article Details

Artículos
Quiroga, J. (2024). Shapes of fragility, 6(11), 33-49. https://doi.org/10.25074/actos.v6i11.2653
estadisticas

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Abstract


The artwork "Sin pan y sin trabajo" by Ernesto de la Cárcova, produced in 1894, has been acclaimed as "the first painting of workers' protest in Buenos Aires." However, despite its recognition as a powerful social critique, little exploration has been conducted into the systematic alterations that mark the series of echoes, adaptations, and transpositions that account for its social circulation. This paper aims at reconstructing the social history of this artwork, analyzing its significant properties, its relationships with other discourses, and its development across various instances of acknowledgment, from initial reviews to reinterpretations, versions, and transpositions that emerged during the 2001-2002 crisis in Argentina. This approach will enable a better understanding of the piece a more fragile entity than the "sublime" object critics have portrayed it to be. Simultaneously, it will allow us to experience the limits of expressibility within the field of visual arts in the 19th century and the ever-unstable position of social critique within the cultural field.

Keywords

Visual Arts, Semiotics, Social Discourses Theory, Transposition
Visual arts
Semiotics
Social discourses theory
Transposition