VISUAL TRANSLATION FOR ART INTERPRETATION. A NEW METHODOLOGY INFORMED BY CRITICAL THEORY

This paper is concern with investigating a new methodology for art interpretation that operates visual translation in order to understand the work of art in its political, social, historical and cultural context. This new methodology is informed by critical theory ‒in the extended meaning of the term‒, which questions traditional aesthetic approaches over the work of art: concepts as beauty, truth, sensoriality, which had been problematized in the field of aesthetics are now reproblematized in the field of critical theory. Nevertheless, the endeavor intended trough visual translation doesn’t just entail the process of rethinking traditional aesthetics, but also a radicalization of thinking over the artistic practices, as well as over the reception and production of artistic work in the socio-political and cultural context, and over the consequences of its public reception. More and more perspectives on art historicization and art interpretation transgressed the limits of traditional disciplines –as the aesthetics and the history of art– and engages in the exploration of other theories from political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, urban geography, linguistics or literary theory. In this respect, visual translation could facilitate interdisciplinary conceptual relations, generating hybrid theories that could inform a new methodology of work for interpreting the contemporary artistic phenomenon. In the field of contemporary art, the application of this hybrid theories can generate interpretative openings from the perspective of a series of critical theories of culture, from critical semiotics to ideological critical theory, from Marxist criticism to feminist critical theory, or from psychoanalytical critical theory to postcolonial theory. Also these interpretative methods, constituted heterogeneously, can be composed combinatorically in a manner in which we can find a Marxist critique psychoanalytically oriented, a psychoanalytic critique semiotically oriented, or various permutations between Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives, or between Marxist and feminist thoughts. In other words, translation, from a transcultural perspective, opens up a new interpretative instrumentary, unfamiliar to traditional approaches over the work of art, instituting a new conceptual apparatus, informed by critical theory which rethink the old premises of art history, reevaluating the position of art historians within the pre-existing institutional structures and questioning the power dinamics inherent in this field of study. Este articulo propone la investigacion de una nueva metodologia para la interpretacion del arte que, desde la traduccion visual - entendida como una forma de mediacion entre el lenguaje del arte y el lenguaje de la cultura -, analiza la obra de arte en su contexto politico, social, historico y cultural. Esta nueva metodologia se basada en la teoria critica, en el sentido extendido del termino, que cuestiona los enfoques esteticos tradicionales sobre la obra de arte. Asi, conceptos como belleza, verdad, sensorialidad, que habian sido problematizados en el campo de la estetica, se reproblematizan ahora en el campo de la teoria critica. Sin embargo, el esfuerzo que se pretende con la traduccion visual no solo implica el proceso de replanteamiento de la estetica tradicional, sino tambien una radicalizacion del pensamiento sobre las practicas artisticas, asi como la recepcion y produccion de las obras en el contexto sociopolitico y cultural y sobre las consecuencias de su recepcion publica. Cada vez mas perspectivas sobre la interpretacion del arte transgreden los limites de las disciplinas tradicionales como la estetica y la historia del arte, involucrandose en la exploracion de otras teorias nacidas dentro de las ciencias politicas, la sociologia, la psicologia, la antropologia, la geografia urbana, la linguistica y la teoria literaria. En este sentido, la traduccion visual podria facilitar las relaciones conceptuales interdisciplinares, generando teorias hibridas que conformarian una nueva metodologia de trabajo para interpretar el fenomeno artistico contemporaneo.