An antimodern vision: Beatriz Milhazes´s beauty

Abstract

Today, the conventions and stereotypes that characterized artists are eroded and have been debased. Current changes include, among others: a progressive questioning of artistic autonomy through a desire to create artworks that cross the boundaries of disciplines, and an emphasis on repetition rather than on originality. We live in a time in which art is radically transformed, and it is possible to link the practices of many contemporary painters with these new conditions. This article is centered on Beatriz Milhazes (Río de Janeiro, 1960) who, while still painting, expands and puts her very medium at stake. She acknowledges the long and important tradition of painting, yet tests its limits, either to cross them, revise them, or reshape them. She subverts the specificity of painting (flatness and originality; the creation of a purely optical experience). Therefore, even when she “paints,” that is, she employs the greatest medium of Art History, she still proposes a reconsideration of the notion of “art” or “high culture.”