In this essay, which appeared in the catalogue for Veinte disecciones (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1982), the exhibition of works by Roberto Obregón, the researcher Susana Benko reflects on cultural symbols, conventions, and codes and the different meanings they might have in the past and the present. She then goes on to talk about the symbolism of “the rose” in mythology, religion, literature, painting, and mass culture. In the second part of her essay Benko analyzes this Venezuelan conceptual artist’s use of the rose; she discusses his tendency to challenge the symbol and subject it to a new visual and conceptual reading, and mentions the ambiguous nature of the dissected roses he uses in his work.     

The Venezuelan conceptual artist Roberto Obregón (1946–2003), who died prematurely, created his first series of “dissected roses” (done in watercolor on paper) between 1979 and 1982, some of which were exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (1982). The rose was Obregón’s signature theme, and the critics considered his ‘dissections’ to be outstanding works in the field of Venezuelan conceptual art. They appeared in his work again in 1990, this time as enormous petals cut out of acrylic, vinyl, or linoleum mounted on large surfaces, almost on the scale of a mural. 

Focusing on Obregón’s watercolor series, Susana Benko (b. 1953) discusses the unprecedented symbolic content that contradicts (many conventional) symbolic interpretations of “the rose” in Western culture.

Benko was an expert on this artist’s work, and she and Obregón were friends. Her essay does not say anything about his life or his complicated personality, but it nonetheless conveys a profound understanding of his refined sensibilities gained from his solitary life that—via the image and the idea of the rose—inspired him to produce his coded, aesthetically impeccable paintings. The essay is also interesting because it refers to a specific series within his consistent theme of dissected roses. Benko discusses Obregón’s treatment of this symbol, which possesses mythical and sacred connotations [sub rosa in its occult meaning] as well as being a hackneyed, sentimental image. She also reviews the more significant aesthetic, visual, and conceptual aspects of Obregón’s “deconstruction” of roses and their subsequent “reconstruction” by means of a change in the structure and reading of the object: going from round and enveloping to a linear, syntactical version. Benko’s text is illustrated with images taken from literary sources, such as the essay “La rosa de Milton” by Jorge Luis Borges. The essay’s critical discourse also highlights the humanistic and spiritual facets of Obregón’s dissections.  

For more on this subject, see the essay by Margarita D’Amico “Las flores de Roberto Obregón” [doc. no. 1051362]. See also the artist’s article about his career “(Sin título) [Creo plenamente en la figuración…]” [doc. no. 1063124]; and Lourdes Blanco’s essay “Roberto Obregón” [doc. no. 1097358].