From censorship to consecration: the apparitions of la civilización occidental y cristiana

Abstract

This article analyses the itinerary of La civilización occidental y cristiana (1965), a work by Argentine artist León Ferrari, through its appearances. It starts from its first exhibition at the Di Tella Prize, in 1965, its withdrawal from the competition and the questioning of its artistic character by the critic Ernesto Ramallo until its consecration, in 2007, as a central work in the trajectory of the artist honoured with the Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and, in 2015, as one of the works presented in the exhibition International Pop, which was articulated with the movement to rewrite the pop art canon. In this way, this text also examines the exhibitions as legitimizing instances of art, as it discusses the arc between censorship and the consecration of Ferrari's work, especially its insertion in the list of works of a self-titled expanded pop canon. Thus, it is intended to approach how this canon has been formulated and operated from a “rhetorical of the global” that aims to give cognoscibility and intelligibility – and even a global aspect – to artistic productions from non-hegemonic regions and, also, how this has changed the analyses referring to the work in question.