DOI Artikel:
Santos, Mariana Pinto dos: On belatedness: the shaping of Portuguese art history in modern times
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52521#0043
Mariana Pinto dos Santos
ON BELATEDNESS.
THE SHAPING OF PORTUGUESE ART HISTORY
IN MODERN TIMES*
INTRODUCTION
Portuguese history of art had its own twentieth-century master narrative,
a simulacrum of the modernist master narrative that has been widely criti-
cised but not entirely put aside. Heir to the nineteenth-century compulsion
for mapping and archiving national history in its early days the history of art
in Portugal was part of that broader held of knowledge comprising archae-
ology anthropology ethnology and, of course, history That compulsion per-
sisted, but it was modernised with an approach that became institutional art
history practice and was motivated by the will to innovate and develop both
art practice and art history (and criticism) in order to match foreign proposals
regarded as models.
This article will briefly trace the genealogy of art history writing in Por-
tugal until the significant development that Portuguese history of art expe-
rienced after World War II, especially with the work of José-Augusto França
(b. 1922), who was responsible for establishing a historiographic canon for
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Portuguese art and was also the founder
of the academic discipline of art history in Portugal. I propose to analyse the
concept of b&latedncss that is found in his writings, tracing its background,
and to demonstrate how it has been associated with the concept of civilisa-
tion. Both performed a structural role in Portugal's cultural history Putting
the Portuguese case in context will help to see how much of the narrative on
This article was written in the context of the project Iberian modernisms and the
primitivist imaginary (PTDC/ART-HIS/29837/2017) - co-financed by COMPETE 2020,
Portugal 2020 and European Union (European Fund for Regional Development).
ON BELATEDNESS.
THE SHAPING OF PORTUGUESE ART HISTORY
IN MODERN TIMES*
INTRODUCTION
Portuguese history of art had its own twentieth-century master narrative,
a simulacrum of the modernist master narrative that has been widely criti-
cised but not entirely put aside. Heir to the nineteenth-century compulsion
for mapping and archiving national history in its early days the history of art
in Portugal was part of that broader held of knowledge comprising archae-
ology anthropology ethnology and, of course, history That compulsion per-
sisted, but it was modernised with an approach that became institutional art
history practice and was motivated by the will to innovate and develop both
art practice and art history (and criticism) in order to match foreign proposals
regarded as models.
This article will briefly trace the genealogy of art history writing in Por-
tugal until the significant development that Portuguese history of art expe-
rienced after World War II, especially with the work of José-Augusto França
(b. 1922), who was responsible for establishing a historiographic canon for
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Portuguese art and was also the founder
of the academic discipline of art history in Portugal. I propose to analyse the
concept of b&latedncss that is found in his writings, tracing its background,
and to demonstrate how it has been associated with the concept of civilisa-
tion. Both performed a structural role in Portugal's cultural history Putting
the Portuguese case in context will help to see how much of the narrative on
This article was written in the context of the project Iberian modernisms and the
primitivist imaginary (PTDC/ART-HIS/29837/2017) - co-financed by COMPETE 2020,
Portugal 2020 and European Union (European Fund for Regional Development).