The impossible masterpiece: a reading of the theme of idealization and failure in art

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Andrei Fernando Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: ArtCultura (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/artcultura/article/view/47248

In the literary discourse of the nineteenth century, idealization emerges as a theme and a metapoetic topic capable of eliciting an important reflection on the meaning of artistic creation, its challenges and limits, as well as on the rhetorical relations between reality and representation. In this context, many narratives addres this matter, one of the most celebrated of which being The unknown masterpiece (1831), by Honoré de Balzac, which takes painting as a reference to develop an emblematic representation of the artist engaged in an obsessive pursuit of perfection, establishing certain approximated perspectives. Based on Balzac’s elaboration, here we look at how other texts – such as The Madonna of the future (1873), by Henry James, and the narrative “Paolo Uccello”, from Imaginary lives (1896), by Marcel Schwob – share this dynamic and what conceptual and formal implications they have to language and the imaginary. keywords: idealization; art; narrative.