In this text, Venezuelan painter Oswaldo Vigas once again expresses his opposition to the notion of “research” in art. He believes that experimentation is part and parcel of science and, as such, irrelevant to creative processes. Indeed, it tends to lead to false results in art. The painter bemoans the fact that Venezuela had witnessed the rise of an art bound to technology and to the rational utopia of reason, which led to what he considers decorative proposals. In closing, he asserts that the rebirth of painting in Venezuela pursues other paths; it has abandoned the universalist discourse of scientism to rescue instead regionalisms and local languages.

In this text, Oswaldo Vigas (b. 1926) takes a firm stance against, while delving the concept of “research” in art. The essay is a response to the article by Manuel Quintana Castillo [M. C.] entitled “No existe una ciencia del arte” (El Universal newspaper, Caracas, October 29, 1984) which was based on statements Vigas made in the interview “Detesto la palabra búsqueda” (El Nacional newspaper, Caracas, October 18, 1984, C-18) (see ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1152801). This exchange of ideas formulates a retrospective criticism of artistic tendencies that had made use of rational and analytic criteria, tendencies central to the visual arts scene in Venezuela in earlier decades. The sole virtue of the artworks yielded by engaging scientific discourse was, in Vigas’s view, formal novelty. Though Vigas’s statements were somewhat late—the peak of geometric abstraction took place in the fifties and of Kinetic art in the sixties—they were relevant in the eighties in the context of a “return to painting” that stood in contrast to the tendencies of earlier decades. The art scene at the moment this article was written backed Vigas as, in relation to the making of art, he privileged the value of the pictorial experience, of the subjective universe, of the role of chance and of intuition, along with hard work, over a set of procedures foreign to art and its practices.

Vigas discusses the same topic in his text “La sin razón de mis brujas” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1153349).

On Vigas’s art, see Juan Liscano’s “La reiteración de Vigas” (doc. no. 1152769); Roberto Montero Castro’s texts “Vigas en el ojo ajeno - Plástica e identidad latinoamericana” (doc. no. 1153266) and “Oswaldo Vigas: La lucha por descubrir la identidad americana” (doc. no. 1168108); Joaquin Gabaldón’s “La monstruosidad en el arte” (doc. no. 850831); Lenelina Delgado’s article “De la pintura al tapiz” (doc. no. 1153365); A. Feltra’s article “Vigas sufre de afán publicitario” (doc. no. 1155580). See as well the interview “Oswaldo Vigas explosivo: Antes las brujas, ahora las bombas” by Paco Benmaman (doc. no. 1153245).