Tag: ontología del arte
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The criterion is not in the hand
A study from Columbia University, published in June 2025, quantified what many of us had intuited. A group of individuals were shown identical works, some labelled as human-made and others as generated by artificial intelligence. The latter were rated sixty-two per cent lower than...
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More beautiful
In Kerala, during the Onam festivities, there exists a popular tradition known as Pulikali: men who paint their bodies as tigers and dance through the streets of Thrissur to the rhythm of percussion. It is sustained by neighbourhood groups that spend months preparing the paint, the movements, and the music. This August 2026, an actor...
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The artworld in the place of Ideas
There is a question that has permeated the philosophy of art since its first formulation and which is almost never articulated as what it truly is: what renders a work more than the object that sustains it? Why this canvas, and not the one beside it? Why this urinal and not all the others...
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Two Regimes, One Sculpture
In a field in Montauk, there sits a figure in the lotus position, nearly eighteen metres tall, constructed from twelve shipping containers that traversed the sea for years before being decommissioned. It is titled Meditating Figure, by Matt Johnson, and has been part of an open-air exhibition since late June. For the...
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The light that constructs the work
There is a decision made regarding every painting you have observed in a museum which is never communicated to you: the intensity and quality of light permitted for your viewing. This is neither a minor decision nor technical in the innocuous sense of the word. It determines which colours reach you, which tonal relationships…
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Painting an impossible sky
On Wednesday, 12 August 2026, a total solar eclipse will traverse Spain: the first visible from the Iberian Peninsula in over a century, according to the National Geographic Institute. It is an opportune moment to recount a matter I find most compelling regarding the phenomenon: that for centuries, European painting depicted an eclipse…
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Changing the past by decree
Between 2005 and 2009, two Chinese artist brothers, Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, produced a series of sculptures concerning Mao Zedong. In one, Mao appears kneeling, repentant. In another, seven Maos aim their rifles at the figure of Christ. A third series depicts him with breasts. These are satirical, irreverent and recognisable works…
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That which no longer launches
On 31 December 2020, Adobe withdrew support for Flash. Twelve days later, it blocked the execution of any content still utilising it. For almost everyone, this was a footnote, the end of a technology that had been dying for years. For museums that had collected internet art, it was another…
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Pigments I no longer grind
At university, I learned to manufacture my own paints. I arrived at grinding the pigment on the slab with the muller until the lumps were broken, at incorporating the binder little by little, at noting when the paste had bound. I also learned to prepare my supports: to stretch the canvas, to size it, to apply the primer and to…
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Authenticity does not reside in the material
A painting from four centuries ago has been relined, its varnishes removed and replaced, its frame altered on several occasions, its fissures stabilised, and certain areas repainted by hands other than those of the author. If one were to count the atoms, perhaps very little of the material that emerged from the original studio would remain. And yet…