THE ANTAGONIC IN THE PROGRAMMING OF DIANE ARBUS'S LOOK IN TWO PHOTOGRAPHS

Abstract

This essay proposes as an object of study to reflect on the antagonistic concept in two photographic series by Diane Arbus, "Mexican dwarf in her hotel room in N.Y.C. 1970" (ARBUS, 2003) and "feminist in her hotel room, N.Y.C. 1971", (ARBUS, 2003. To this end, it is chosen as a foundation the theoretical discussions of relational aesthetics developed in the 1990s by the French curator Nicolas Bourriaud, the critique of Bourriaud's relational aesthetics by Clarice Bishop in his Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2006), the concept of the dark coined by Susan Sontag in the work On Photography (1986) and the concept of estrangement by Sigmund Freud developed in the work "The Unsettling" (1919),  and the work Inside the white cube, the ideology of the art space, by Brian O'Dohert. The intended objective is to establish conceptual and imagetic approximations and distances between the artist's aesthetic approach, the photographic act and the influence of the curator/museum. The question that motivates this work is elaborated as follows: what narratives about antagonism are present in these photographs? How does Diane Arbus construct her relational aesthetic? What is the influence of the curator in the construction of the new narratives inserted in the museum's art circuit?

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2024.041-017